The story behind BOOK!

Book! Book! Book!

One night, while lying in bed, words from one of my father's corny jokes fluttered through my head. I heard a chicken demanding a Book-Book-Book, and a smug frog announcing that he had Read it, Read it!
About that time, my mother commissioned an artist friend, Ann Eldrige, to draw the chicken for my father. The image of the strutting hen, who clutched three books under her wings, came to life.

A few months later, this friend created a scholarly frog crouching spellbound in front of an open book.
    Soon the sounds and images of these two creatures clucked and croaked, flapped and hopped onto blank pages. But I needed other characters in the story. I wondered: if chickens and frogs speak English, maybe other barnyard animals do, too. I consulted with a few, but none uttered words that I could understand. So there it was -- only the chicken and the frog, at least in this story, could speak in my native tongue.

    The other farm animals came trotting and plodding into the story. They gathered in the barnyard, bored with their lot in life. How did I know that they were bored? Simple. I only had to look at my family's pets who grew bored every autumn when my children boarded the bus back to school.

While writing the story (and revising it at least a hundred times), I sometimes identified with the chicken, for we are both small in stature. Sometimes I identified with the befuddled librarian, remembering my days as an elementary school librarian. How often students had left the library disappointed and empty-handed, despite my handpicked stack of "wonderful" books.
As I wrote the story, how I wished my artistic talents shone beyond mere scribbles. In my head the animals jumped and scurried, mooed and baahed, creating a symphony of sounds and colors. But since I am no more deft with the brush than I am at bungee jumping, I hoped that someday an artist would help bring the visual images to life.

    I sent BOOK! BOOK! BOOK! to thirteen publishers, all of which rejected it. Then I sent it to Scholastic and waited one and a half years for them to say, “Yes, let’s turn this into a picture book.” It took the editors almost another year to pick Tiphanie Beeke, who lives in England, to be the illustrator. Ms. Beeke and I knew nothing of each other, and never talked while she created the artwork.
After many months of waiting, a package arrived in my mailbox. I was flabbergasted! Not only were the finished illustrations wonderful, they revealed little secrets about my family. Ms. Beeke painted the horse blue, but she did not know that my son’s horse is named Rhapsody-in-Blue.
Ms. Beeke created children of color, but she did not know about my interracial family. There were two more mysteries. Why did Ms. Beeke draw four children at story hour to look like my daughters and their two best West Africa friends? Why did the only man in the story looks like my husband?

The illustrations were magical, and remain so today! Above my desk hangs the original painting of the animals holding their barnyard story hour. Look carefully at what the cow is holding, and then look to see what the librarian is holding during library story hour.
When I read BOOK! BOOK! BOOK! at libraries and schools, I always bring along my backpack full of puppets so the audience can help me tell the story. If I don’t have enough puppets, I invite other animals to join our circle. Imagine elephants and butterflies and alligators visiting a library, too!
I hope that readers have as much fun following the antics of the independent hen, the bewildered librarian and the literate frog, as I had creating them. On each page there is also another small creature created by the illustrator. Can you find it?
My wish came true and BOOK! BOOK! BOOK! was born. I hope that readers have as much fun following the antics of the independent hen, the bewildered librarian and the literate frog, as I had creating them.