Linda Ashman
Children's Book Author

M is for Mischief, published July 2008, received a starred review in Publishers Weekly.

For more about the book, click on the title at right. For a Teacher's Guide, download this file:

STELLA, UNLEASHED: Notes from the Doghouse arrived in stores April, 2008.

For more on STELLA, click on the title at right. For Teaching Ideas, download this file:

THE DOG'S ON THE BLOGS
Stella Unleashed: Notes from the Doghouse has been reviewed on some terrific children's book blogs, including Poetry for Kids, Three Silly Chicks, Wild Rose Reader, Ethan's Bookshelf, and BooksForKidsBlog.

Linda talks about STELLA and writing with the creator of Ethan's Bookshelf and Read.Imagine.Talk right here.

And, speaking of dogs, it's been a little over a year since we got our much-loved Lab mix, Sammy. A huge thank you to Retriever Rescue of Colorado.

When I visit schools, I'm often asked the same questions. Here are three that always seem to come up:

1. What are your dogs’ names?

2. How old are you?

3. How old are your dogs?

But there's a fourth question that I also hear quite frequently that I thought I'd answer here:

4. What made you decide to write children’s books?

There’s a long answer to that question, one that involves working in offices in New York and Los Angeles, feeling uncomfortable in my business suit and professional shoes, and feeling even more uncomfortable in my soul, knowing that somewhere along the way I’d lost track of the things that mattered most to me, the things I loved.

But that’s not the story I tell kids in elementary school, even though I want more than anything for them to remember as grown-ups what they're passionate about right now.

I tell them that picture books combine three things I love, have always loved, since I was a little girl listening to my mom read "Little Orphant Annie" and recite "The Goops"; since discovering at age 5 the amazing bounty of the Public Library in Flemington, New Jersey; since poring over fairy tales and Mother Goose rhymes and the magical illustrations of Arthur Rackham, Kay Nielsen and Jessie Wilcox Smith. Three things that have always given me comfort and filled my soul and imagination: stories, the music and rhythm of language, and art.

I love picture books, the way each reading reveals more treasures in the words and illustrations. I love the language in picture books by Mary Ann Hoberman and Phyllis Root, the cleverness in a story by Lisa Wheeler, the tenderness in a book by Sarah Stewart. I love the gorgeous illustrations in Lauren Stringer's books, the never-ending discoveries in Marla Frazee’s pictures, the humor in Nadine Bernard Westcott’s and David Small’s.

And I love that picture books are meant to be shared: read aloud in a classroom or library or—best of all—by parents and their children snuggled up side-by-side.