Tuesday, July 23, 2013

What About Moose?

When my daughter Jordan was little, she was incredibly bossy with her younger brother.  One day when they were two and three, Josh was putting supplies away in the art cabinet. Jordan looked over his shoulder and said, "Not like that, Joshy!"

Josh turned to me and said sadly, "I never do anything right."    

Poor little guy!

Later on, Jordan was watching a Franklin episode on TV and it happened to be about bossiness.  

I watched... extremely interested to see how it would play out    Franklin was being bossy, so his friends all decided not to play with him anymore.  Naturally, he "learned his lesson" and apologized and promised not to be bossy anymore. It was so didactic.

I said to my writing partner Becky, "Let's write a story about bossiness that is not preachy."

And WHAT ABOUT MOOSE? was born. 

Moose is building a tree house with a bunch of friends.   He is so busy ordering everyone around that he doesn't realize that he is getting boxed inside. 

I am thrilled to announce that this story was recently acquired by the lovely Emma Ledbetter at Atheneum (Simon & Schuster).  

And in case, you already knew that, here is some new news-  it will be illustrated by Keika Yamaguchi!  

We are super excited to see Keika bring this story to life!