Tag Archive for Firefly Book Club

Celebrating 40 Years As a Published Author, Pt. 3: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

May 21, 2026 / / No comments

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My education in children’s books began, oddly enough, in my adulthood. The youngest of seven children, I have little memory of reading books as a child — some P.D. Eastman, for sure — and no memory of either of my parents reading to me. That’s not a complaint; they had their hands full. In 1985, I was hired as a junior copywriter for Scholastic at a cool $11,500 a year. I was one year out of college, a mere welp. My primary assignment was to write the SeeSaw K-1 Book Club. You remember those, right? The following year, I was asked to help launch Firefly Book Club. And, later, as a freelancer in Albany, NY, I started the Carnival Book Club out of my home at the behest of Barbara Marcus. You could say I got my Master’s Degree in Children’s Literature at 730 Broadway in New York, working for Scholastic.

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That’s when, in other words, my head exploded just a little bit. 

I was given a cubicle, a typewriter, a lifetime’s supply of Wite-Out Correction Sheets, and a bottle of Liquid Paper. Less than a year later, that typewriter was swapped out for a Gateway computer that arrived in a distinctive, black-and-white, cow-patterned box. I dumped my Wite-Out for a lifetime’s supply of floppy disks and added “booting up” to my vocabulary.

My education really stepped up when I was asked to co-author a book with Deborah Kovacs, titled Meet the Authors and Illustrators: 60 Creators of Favorite Children’s Books Talk About Their Work. Deborah and split the assignment: I took the picture book authors and illustrators, she handled the middle-grade writers. We talked and supported each other and mostly stayed in our lanes.

Two years later, we wrote a sequel, Volume Two. And sometime after that, Scholastic collected my sections of the first two books, we added another 15 new profiles, and put out The Big Book of Picture-Book Authors & Illustrators. It contained 75 profiles in all.

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Not only did I research each creator, but I got the opportunity to interview most of them. At one time, I had a shoebox of cassettes containing hour-long conversations with James Marshall, Barbara Park, Faith Ringgold, Mem Fox, Vera B. Williams, Pat Hutchins, Bill Martin Jr., Barbara Cooney, Peter Spier, Bernard Waber, Jack Prelutsky, Tomie dePaola, Kevin Henkes, Karla Kuskin, Joanna Cole, Donald Crews, Tedd Arnold, Patricia Polacco, Charlotte Zolotow, Shonto Begay, Bruce Degen, Gail Gibbons, and more — real treasures — which I ended up throwing away. Because sometimes I’m just a big dope.

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But what an education! Not only the wisdom they imparted about their artistic process, but their demeanor and professionalism, the kindness they showed me. The goodness of their intentions. The quality of their work. It’s a little sad to realize how many of those folks we’ve lost over the years, gone but not forgotten.

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“You want to write from the heart, that’s the important thing.” — Bernard Waber.

“The most enjoyable part of creating a book is doing the initial sketches, putting the book together, the thinking part.” — Peter Sis.

“My work has allowed me to dream.” — Jerry Pinkney.

“Don’t worry about what other people are doing. Don’t try to emulate. Work from what is inside you, crying out — however softly, however timidly — for expression.” — Emily Arnold McCully.

“If I don’t have a good character, then I don’t have a book.” — James Marshall.

“Writing is very difficult and gives me a great deal of pleasure, partly because it is so difficult.” — Maurice Sendak.

“I get a lot of personal gratification thinking of those people who don’t get any attention in the world and making them really valuable in my fiction — making them absolutely shine with their beauty.” — Cynthia Rylant.

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These books came out at a time when Whole Language instruction was on the rise, when many teachers employed “real books” as a crucial part of the daily curriculum. They hungered for books and eagerly scooped up information about their favorite artists. At that time, many teachers considered it part of their job to be well-versed in children’s literature. These days, for a variety of reasons, I feel that’s no longer the case. Or certainly much less so. Now we have the demands of standardized testing, drastic cuts to librarian positions, and teachers who feel aggrieved, abused, overworked and under-appreciated. They just don’t have the time or the incentive to keep up with the tsunami of books published these days. 

When I started this blog in 2008, I continued to put a spotlight on creators I admired. I still try to do that today, though I don’t think many people read my blog here in the year of two thousand and twenty-six. Whatever. It’s not much different than writing a book. You make the thing and hope folks find it, or not. 

By using the search bar here, you should be able to locate long interviews with the following:

Aaron Becker * James Bird * Elizabeth Bird * Judy Bradbury * Lewis Buzbee * Nancy Castaldo * Carmen Deedy * Lesa Cline-Ransome * Matthew Cordell * Bruce Coville * Cynthia DeFelice * Liza Donnelly * Matt Faulkner * Ralph Fletcher * Alex Giardino * Mary GrandPre * Charise Harper * Susan Hood * Travis Jonker * Alan Katz * Deborah Kovacs * London Ladd * Jeff Mack * Vikram Madan * Daniel Mahoney * Matthew McElligott * Wendell Minor * Florence Minor * Susan Verde * Hazel Mitchell * Jeff Newman * Jessica Olien * Matt Phelan * Deb Pilluti * Lizzy Rockwell * Kurtis Scaletta * Chris Sheban * Jordan Sonnenblick * Hudson Talbott * Liza Gardner Walsh * Audrey Glassman Vernick.

In addition, I’ve featured contributions from the following writers and illustrators:

Tony Abbott * Paul Acampora * Heather Alexander * R.W. Alley * Jennifer Arena * Nora Raleigh Baskin * S.A. Bodeen * Nick Bruel * Laurie Calkhoven * Jay Cooper * Barbara Dee * Erin Dionne * Julie Fortenberry * Donna Gephart * Nikki Grimes * Keely Hutton * Laurie Keller * David Kelly * Jo Knowles * Mikki Knudson * Kevin Lewis * Lois Lowry * Elaine Magliano * Greg Neri * Jerdine Nolen * Barbara O’Connor * Aimee-Joan Paquette * Parker Peevyhouse * Yvonne Printz * Aimee Reid * Jen Sattler * Liz Garton Scanlon * Steve Sheinkin * Alan Silberberg * Charles Smith * Tonya Lee Stone * Todd Strasser * Don Tate * Matt Tavares * Chris Tebbetts * Rachel Vail * Eric Velasquez * Charles Waters * Eugene Yelchin * Suzanne Bloom * Joe Bruchac * Mem Fox * Patricia Reilly Giff * Cheryl Harness * Karen Hesse * Simon James * Eric Luper * Ellen Miles * Linda Sue Park * Karen Roosa * Jerry & Eileen Spinelli * Kyra Teis * Raul the Third * Nina Crews * Hannah Barnaby * Robin Pulver * Elizabeth Zunon.

I’m sure I’ve missed a couple dozen names along the way. Gratefully, I’ve learned something from each and every one of them. That’s the essential thing: the education never ends. There’s so much great work out there. So many good books. It’s an honor to be in this fine company, to stand on their shoulders, and perhaps to see just a little farther than I would have without them.

And if I haven’t said it yet, thank you, thank you all. 

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Category: Interviews & Appreciations, the writing process / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Memories: Working at Scholastic, 1986.

February 2, 2012 / / 16 comments

That’s me with the antenna. Wait, no, I’m in the middle.

I started at Scholastic as a Junior Copywriter for $12,500 a year, hired partly because of a writing sample, an opinion piece I wrote about the subway shooter, Bernie Goetz (no lie), and also because I was the first young, heterosexual male to enter the building in the last six years — besides the mail room guys, of course. There were three other copywriters working on the book clubs: Bill Epes, Karen Belov, and Cynthia Larkins. I may have muffed those spellings. My primary responsibility was the K-1 SeeSaw Book Club. I sat in a cubicle and banged away on a typewriter. Computers came in less than a year after I arrived, a transition that caused great upheaval. We threw away our little bottles of liquid white-out, learned how to boot up with an MS-DOS 5 1/4 floppy disk, and so on.

An aside: I just breezed through the brilliant biography, STEVE JOBS, and it so captured the changes of technology through my life. If you are around my age (51 yesterday), or maybe any age, you’ve got read it. The author, Walter Isaacson, also wrote the biography, EINSTEIN, that I raved about previously.

At Scholastic, in the old 730 Broadway location, I worked in-house for almost five years, rising all the way to lower-middle obscurity. Another memory: I remember when they instituted a new policy no longer allowing people to smoke at their desks. Suddenly you had to go down to the 8th floor to the “smoker’s lounge.” Many of us feared that our old-school copyeditor, the chain-smoking Willie Ross, would lose her mind completely. Such a violation of personal liberty, an outrage perpetrated by the PC police, and I was  sure the laughter I heard came from the belly of Big Brother.

I continued on with Scholastic as a consultant and favored freelancer. Launched and ran the Carnival Book Club out of my home in Albany, as both editor and promotion manager. Wrote some books, started doing Jigsaw Jones in 1998, and on and on. I assumed my time at Scholastic would go on forever. But not quite. I used to really, really love that place, and I know I’m not alone in that regard.

The man on the left of the photo is my great pal Craig Walker. In life you don’t get to know too many people who become mentors, people you respect and admire and love, and for me Craig heads that very short list. He was one-of-a-kind. There was a long stretch of about 15 years or so when we were really, really good friends. We probably ate lunch together three times a week for four years, usually in the cheapest, no-nonsense dives we could find. Or was that the bars we frequented? The truly remarkable thing about Craig is that so many people felt that way about him. Our relationship was special. Our friendship was unique and powerful. Dozens upon dozens of people could make that same claim — and they’d all be correct. He was just one of those guys that made you think, “I wish I could be more like him.” Craig is gone now, but as I’ve written before, I try to remember everything.

1986, the day we watched Game 6 of the 1986

World Series at Brenda Bowen’s parents’ summer

place. Me and Craig.

Let’s see, yes, that’s art director Scott Hunt next to me. I thought of Scott a few days ago when, reading the book, I LOVE IT WHEN YOU TALK RETRO, the author Ralph Keyes explained the origin of one of Scott’s go-to words, “skosh.” As in, “Let’s move that type down a skosh.” Confusingly, it came from the Korean War, but was adapted from a Japanese word, sukoshi, meaning “a small amount.” Reading about those origins, I wondered if perhaps Scott’s father spent time in Korean conflict, hanging out with Hawkeye, Trapper John, Hot Lips, and the gang. Scott used to complain that his father was a gung-ho outdoors type, always taking the children on camping trips and forced hikes up impossible mountains. Scott would say, “I hated those hikes. I just wanted to stay home and watch movies!”

And to the right, that’s Cynthia Maloney, a Kansas gal. Cynthia used to wear a deerskin vest the like of which you have never seen, in Manhattan, no less. She had the messiest desk on all three floors. I’d ask her about something, an important memo or whatever, or a mechanical board she had to review and sign, and she’d turn to this tilting mountain of paper and, after a considered time, miraculously extract the key document from the perilous pile. Cynthia was older than I was, married with children, but I always had a secret crush on her, the way you do in office life, ten cubicles down, a world away. She might have been the nicest person in the place.

Anyway, we started a preschool book club, called it FIREFLY, and as far as I know it’s still going strong today, 25 years later. I wrote all the promotional copy, including every book description, for several years. At the time, it was a big, risky project. Craig’s editorial meetings were hilarious and legendary. Scholastic of that time was led by a supremely talented trio: Jean Feiwel in editorial, Barbara Marcus (my first real boss) in marketing, and wise old Dick Krinsley, steering the ship. Around then I had the honor of writing their first hardcover catalog — it included a total of four books by, um, Harry Mazer, Anne Mazer, Julian Thompson, and somebody else. Oh, what was it? Something about child safety, I think. A book cover that Craig likened to those Heimlich posters you’d see in restaurant bathrooms. He’d say something along the lines of, “I don’t know if it’s a good thing that every time I look at the book cover, I think of choking victims.”

Jean Feiwel, do you remember that book?

Ah, forgive me, memory lane.

This is an advertisement  I wrote at that time. A full-page ad was a huge extravagance, and you wouldn’t believe how many people fussed over this, and revised it, and changed it again and again. That was my line, “Because Growing Up and Good Books Belong Together.“

POSTSCRIPT:

Jean wrote and gave me the name of that elusive title, CLOSE TO HOME by Oralee Wachter!

Craig had a flare for exaggeration, but the point stands:

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Category: Uncategorized / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Craig Walker Story, or Two

November 12, 2008 / / 2 comments

My friend, Caroline, noticed her young son fidgeting around in that nervous leaky way all parents recognize.

“Elliott, do you need to use the bathroom?”

“Yes, Mom, I do,” Elliott chirped. “And it’s your lucky day — because I have to poop!”

Which reminded me of a story my pal, Craig Walker, used to tell.

He was at Hallmark at the time. This is the early 80’s. After a lengthy effort, Craig’s major project for a new line of greeting cards got shot down. Something he had worked on for weeks and possibly months. An abject failure. So Craig and his friend, Steve, decided to drown their troubles in a sleazy bar. (Craig loved dive bars almost as much as he distrusted fern bars; when given a choice, he always went down-market. One clue to Craig is knowing that one of his all-time favorite movies was “Five Easy Pieces.”)

This place was a dark damp dump. A few grizzled denizens slumped on stools, an old jukebox with blown speakers, peanut shells on the floor, the smell of stale beer. A bar perfectly suited to their sour moods. The waitress/bartender was one of those old battle axes, gimp-legged, wearing too much makeup and yet somehow not nearly enough, missing some teeth, arthritic hands like claws. Craig and Steve ordered a few rounds, Bud in longneck bottles, defeated and miserable.

After a while, the waitress shuffled over. “Any more, boys? Happy Hour is almost over.”

I can hear Craig telling that story. Like all the stories that Craig loved, he told it many, many times. He did the same with favorite jokes; he repeated them endlessly, and laughed merrily after each telling. Somehow the repetition and accumulation made them funnier.

“Happy hour?” they repeated. There was a dumbstruck silence, and the slow dawning of recognition. They looked around. “This . . . this . . . is happy hour?!”

Craig and Steve broke into laughter.

And ordered another round.

Yep, that’s an old copy of the in-house newsletter for Scholastic, where I worked for five years. At the time, 1986, a small number of us had just launched the Firefly Preschool Book Club, which still thrives today. Craig picked the books, I wrote about them, and Barbara Marcus cracked the whip. Good times. Looking back, a significant part of my job was to sit in Craig Walker’s office for hours to discuss all the books that were offered on SeeSaw Book Club and Firefly. What an education. What a privilege. My thanks to Cynthia Maloney for hording that newsletter and passing on a jpg to me.

One more quick Craig story. After my divorce, I married Lisa in 1998. At the wedding, my mother saw Craig and exclaimed, “Craig, I’m so happy to see you again. I didn’t know you were coming.”

Craig replied, “Oh yes, I come to all of Jimmy’s weddings.”

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Category: Greatest Hits, Uncategorized / Tags: , , , , , , ,
 
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