So often, I hear writ­ers say, “I only write for myself.” I hear myself so often say, “I only write for myself.” And that’s true—but

As a writer of pic­ture books, this is the ques­tion I am most fre­quent­ly asked: “Where do you get your ideas?” I used to flip­pant­ly reply,

I’ll tell you a secret—all my sto­ries (even the long non­fic­tion ones) start with wide-lined, loose-leaf note­book paper and a blue Bic pen. These are

  Here’s the first chap­ter from a mid­dle grade nov­el to be pub­lished by Schwartz-Wade Books based on the life of a real dog, stage

Many peo­ple have asked me about the design of The Fam­i­ly Romanov. Why not scat­ter those archival pho­tographs through­out the text as is usu­al­ly done

As part of my research for The Lin­colns: A Scrap­book Look at Abra­ham and Mary, I baked Mary Lincoln’s white cake. In truth, it wasn’t

The dif­fer­ence between writ­ing fic­tion and writ­ing non­fic­tion? I liken it bak­ing a cake. In fic­tion, I’m pret­ty much allowed to whip up what­ev­er I

“I wish the bald eagle had not been cho­sen as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of our coun­try,” [Ben Franklin] said when he heard of Con­gress’s 1782 decision.

I always come up with the book’s design. It’s such an inte­gral part of the sto­ry I’m telling, anoth­er way to extend the mate­r­i­al. Thus,

Oh, how I wish I could tell you I’d dis­cov­ered a sure­fire way of orga­niz­ing my research. Sad­ly, I can’t, because I haven’t. I try,