Judy Sierra is the author of the New York Times #1 picture book bestseller Wild About Books and its sequels ZooZical, Wild About You, and Everyone Counts, all illustrated by the incomparable Marc Brown. Her rhyming books have been described by reviewers as "rollicking" and "Seussian," and they have won many Children's Choice awards.
Before becoming an author, Judy created puppets and performed puppet shows as a traveling children's librarian. Later, she became a full-time puppeteer, working on a children's television show in San Francisco and creating puppets for TV, for films, and for street performers. She and her husband, Robert Kaminski, toured schools and museums across the U.S. as artists-in-residence specializing in shadow puppetry. Judy's first book was Magic Window: The Shadow Puppet Workbook, a self-published paperback.
Besides writing in rhyme, Judy has collected world folktales in books like Nursery Tales Around the World and Can You Guess My Name? Classic Tales Around the World, both of which received the Aesop Prize from the American Folklore Society as the best children's folklore book of the year.
FAQs
How did you begin writing children's books?
I never imagined writing children's books until I heard a talk by picture book author and illustrator Uri Shulevitz. He explained that a picture book is like a small theater. I said to myself, "I know a whole lot about small theaters—puppet theaters. I should write a picture book!" I would think of each one as a puppet show. The words would be the script, and the page turns would be the entrances and exits of characters and the changes of scene.
I took classes in writing for children and within a year I'd sold the manuscript that would become my first picture book, The Elephant's Wrestling Match, illustrated by Brian Pinkney.
Is it fun being a children's author?
Many parts of being a children's author are lots of fun. For example, even though I'm a shy person, I love standing on stage and sharing my books to a room full of teachers or a school auditorium filled with kids. And of course signing a book contract or winning a book award are thrilling. On the other hand, creating a book that kids will want to hear and read over and over? That's a long and difficult process.
How do you get your ideas?
Ideas for books arrive in different ways. Sometimes I give myself a challenge, for example, I wondered if I could I write a funny, exciting story about a rather boring subject, good manners. That challenge resulted in Mind Your Manners, B.B. Wolf, illustrated by J. Otto Seibold. Later I wrote another book on manners, Suppose You Meet a Dinosaur (which takes place in a grocery store), illustrated by Tim Bowers.
The idea for my bestselling book, Wild About Books, came from a library poster that showed wild animals reading books. "How did they learn to read?" I asked myself. "And where did they get all those books?" I wrote the title in my idea notebook, but it took me five years to come up with just the right story—and half a year to rhyme it.
What were your favorite books as a child?
As a preschooler, my favorite book was The Golden Book of Poetry. I asked to hear the poems so often that I knew every one by heart long before I could read.
Later on, I read and re-read the Oz books and Nancy Drew mysteries. I devoured books from the school library and the public library. My favorite of all favorites was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.
Which picture books inspired you as a writer?
I was inspired by the picture books that made me a read-aloud star when I worked at the public library. Some favorites were Maurice Sendak's Pierre, and Alexander and the No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst, and also the folktale picture books of Gerald McDermott and Ashley Bryan.
What are you working on now?
I am almost done with a set of kamishibai illustrations for my husband to use with his tabletop story theater, and finishing a book about how to write a rhyming picture book