Leo Lionni and Frances Foster

Thank you to Barbara O'Connor, who had the honor and pleasure of working with the great Frances Foster, for sharing this interview with me.
Sort of a behind-the-scenes look at how the business once worked.

 CLICK HERE to read it.

And proof that the story I heard many years ago in a children's lit class at Simmons College, about Little Blue and Little Yellow, was indeed true:


 

"Leo did Little Blue and Little Yellow — originally, just to amuse his grandchildren during a train ride"







(This post was inspired by my earlier post about Things We Save.)

Things We Save

I've been thinking about Christmas wrapping paper. And ribbon. And tape.

My husband's aunt saved her ribbon, ironed and reused it. Her children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews were fascinated and in awe when they received gifts with NO TAPE! Not a piece of it. Gifts were beautifully wrapped using that ironed ribbon.

She was a Quaker lady who'd lived through the Depression and managed just fine and dandy.




I always save ribbon.
And sometimes get made fun of.

I also save boxes from year to year.

(The challenge is making sure the tags have the right names on them when I "wrap" and reuse those Christmas boxes.)





Stick with me. This is going to be about writing, soon.

This week I had a chance to re-read FREDERICK by Leo Lionni. Several times.

"...I am gathering words. For the winter days are long and many, and we'll run out of things to say."

I adore that sentence.

Even if there's not much to winter in Florida, writers always need to think about choosing the right words for our stories and our characters. It's hard work! We can't run out of things to say!

Here are a few helpful writing links, some about words, for the new year.

The Emotion Thesaurus creator, on character flaws.

Excellent example of explaining to kids why we can cut the adverbs and adjectives!

Speaking of words, I've been reading poetry lately. Two novels-in-verse. A quick poem here, another there. I like this post about writing and sharing poetry with young readers. 

And if you're still reading, a very special treat.