Archive for jimmy

Photos from Some Recent School Visits

March 24, 2025 / / No comments

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I just thought I’d post a few of these shots, with and without captions, depending. 

I’ve got a busy week ahead of me, with four days of school visits, Tuesday-Friday, and then on Saturday the Poughkeepsie Children’s Book Festival. 

I’m dancing as fast as I can. 

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This is from last week, a local school.

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This last shot was kind of amazing. My first day in Tulsa, OK, and my first presentatiion: 450 5th-graders in a gigantic gym. Whoa!

 

TEACHERS, PTO MEMBERS, SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS:

In the world of author visits, I am fairly unique because I can share age-appropriate books, in paperback (cheap!), for PreK-8. Each presentation is different and, like the books themselves, geared specifically for the age and interest levels of the audience. 

I live in the Albany area of NY state, and will happily travel by car or plane to any location in the U.S. and beyond. 

Some titles typically discussed: 

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Category: Uncategorized / Tags: ,

Coming in August: TWO BALLERINAS . . . AND A MOOSE!

March 14, 2025 / / No comments

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Here’s a rough sketch for my upcoming “Ready-To-Read” book, illustrated by Abigail Burch.

It’s called Two Ballerinas . . . and a Moose.

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So then there will be two:

       

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Category: And a Moose! / Tags: , , ,

Just Putting This Here

March 6, 2025 / / No comments

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Category: Around the Web / Tags: ,

MAXX TRAX Remembered!

March 4, 2025 / / No comments

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MAXX TRAX: Avalanche Rescue! was my first published book, 1986. I worked closely with my late beloved pal, editor Craig Walker. Could not have written it half as well without him. I was a snot-nosed kid, 25. The book sold more than 1.5 million copies (no royalties, flat fee) on book clubs, first time out of the gate. A shocking success (I worked on the 10th floor as a junior copywriter at the time). Scholastic bizarrely changed illustrators for the second title — a totally new look, computer generated, and awful — and it didn’t fare well. Oh, well. Done, gone, those two books long out of print.
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And yet not entirely forgotten. I still get emails about it. Several just this year. People who remember loving MAXX TRAX as a kid. Or parents who read them with their children. They still love the thrill of trucks and action stories. I haven’t been able to sell anything like it since. This is almost 40 years ago. This photo came to me last week . . . so kind of this family to remember those books & think of me.
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Category: Fan Mail, the writing process / Tags: , , ,

MAD Magazine Remembered, Via Neko Case

February 28, 2025 / / 2 comments
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Raise your hand if you had a subscription to Mad magazine. Come on, nice and high so I can see ’em!
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It’s incalculable to measure the influence of those writers and artists on a young, spongey mind. I subscribed for years and years.
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Neko Case writes about this specific issue in her blisteringly brilliant memoir, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, which is every bit as excellent as Rickie Lee Jones’s “rock” memoir.
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It occurs to me that, at age 11, I might have read this same issue. Perhaps not. But I like that connection between Neko Case and me, the way any great book connects every reader who encounters it. We were all there together, in a sense, across space & time.
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Here’s Neko, upon discovering an old issue:
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I settled in to pore over my first-ever Mad magazine. It was the October 1972 issue. It was for kids, but it wasn’t? It was dark and funny, even though it was ten years old, which, to twelve-year-old me, was ANCIENT. Over the next few weeks, I read through it hundred of times. The women in it were all booby nurse stereotypes, but there was Spy vs. Spy, and Al Jaffee’s crazy-detailed, surreal drawings. Every part of that issue is tattoed in my brain, and acts like a memory portal to the very slow, beautiful, heavy-scented summer that changed my life for the better, showing me a different, kinder world. 
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WHAT, ME WORRY?
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Category: Interviews & Appreciations / Tags: , , , , , , ,
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