Marion Dane Bauer's Blog, page 18
May 2, 2017
Grooming Our Own Replacements
Norma Fox Mazer and I were good friends. We taught together at Vermont College of Fine Arts back when our MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults at VCFA was very new, when it was the only program of its kind. And I still remember the time when Norma stopped me in the […]
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April 25, 2017
A Book Is …
A book is like a garden carried in the pocket. Chinese proverb
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April 18, 2017
The Way I Breathe
When I was a child coming upon adolescence but not quite there yet—the tween years we call that time of life now, but there was no word for it then—I remember wanting more than I had ever wanted anything to have someone listen to me. Not just any someone, but one of that pack of […]
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April 11, 2017
Daydreamer?
As a young man, I was often told that I was a daydreamer, a rubbernecker, an exaggerator. But in a fiction class all the things I had been criticized about came together to create something meaningful. That was a very powerful feeling for me. Adam Johnson Adam is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short […]
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April 4, 2017
Point of Re-Entry
Two weeks ago I wrote about a picture book I have been working on for months, both researching and writing. Since it’s not a text that has come easily I have shown it repeatedly to three of my fellow writers as I worked. They each responded to my multiple requests with thoughtful and candid critiques. […]
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March 28, 2017
I want to be famous…
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do. Naomi Shihab Nye
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March 21, 2017
Only a Picture Book
It’s only a picture book, but years passed between getting the idea and finally knowing how I wanted to tackle it. Once I’d figured out an approach, it took months to research. Not months of constant work, but on and off months of searching, digesting, searching again. And though coming in at just over 400 […]
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March 14, 2017
If a poem is worthy…
If a poem is worthy at all, it isn’t tough—it is frail and exquisite, a mood, a moment of sudden understanding, a cobweb which falls apart at a clumsy touch. Jennings Thompson, editor of Silver Pennies
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March 7, 2017
The Tale of a Picture Book
Jump, Little Woods Ducks is my fourth picture book to be illustrated by the naturalist, photographer Stan Tekeila. While most of my picture books have been more traditionally illustrated by artists, working with Stan has been a privilege and a joy. On our first book together, Baby Bear Discovers the World, Stan said, “You write […]
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February 28, 2017
Happiness and Freedom
Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learn to distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible. Epictetus, 55 […]
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