The image came to me more than fifteen years ago: A boy living in a forest in a ramshackle cottage. His only companions? His strange and unloving parents. He has never seen another human being.    Without too much thought, I knew this was a loosely disguised analog of my own childhood. I also knew it was a starting point for a much larger story, one that went far beyond the details of my life. I understood, too, it was a story beyond my own ability to tell. If the narrative w

In March of this year, Candlewick Press released In the Desert , the penultimate in a series of ten lavishly illustrated poetry picture books focusing on the world of animals. By the time the last book is on the shelves, I will have published somewhere around 150 short poems about the creatures with whom we share the planet. Animals. I live in rural New Hampshire. Last spring, a black bear strolled across our yard as if he owned the place. (And us!) One early autumn morning a

In the past week alone, the New York Times has run three stories about birds and birders. A participant on a recent trip where I was...

I can’t say we were close friends, or even that I knew her well. Though we collaborated on three books, we met just twice. The first was...

Some books are are more challenging for the writer than others. For me, In the Sea, the third book in the Candlewick poetry series, was...

Every book teaches the writer something. Or it should. This second book in the series taught me two things. The first was how little I...

It started when a friend ran into some undeserved financial trouble and a bunch of authors and illustrators – none of whom are strangers...

Believe it or not, this is a portrait of a saint. Saint Michael, in fact. It's by the Italian Baroque artist Cesare Dandini (1596-1657)....