Launching Catch That Cookie!

My new picture book, Catch That Cookie!, a collaboration with Caldecott-winner David Small, has just been published, and on September 10, I’ll be heading out to Kalamazoo, Michigan to launch the book with David.

I’m excited to spend the time with him and his wife Sarah Stewart and to meet their locals at the Kalamazoo Public Library and the indie store, The Bookbug. Then David and I will be coming back to Maplewood, New Jersey, to launch our book here.

Catch That Cookie! wouldn’t exist if my family and I didn’t live in Maplewood. When my son Marshall was four, he brought home a gingerbread-man recipe from preschool, and he wanted to make it. By June of that year we still hadn’t made the cookies and he wanted to bring some to his class picnic. So I borrowed the cookie cutters from his teacher, Mrs. Gray, and we baked those cookies in 90-degree heat. When we put them in the mini-van to drive to the picnic, Marshall locked all the doors. He didn’t want the cookies to escape.

I was dying to know what Mrs. Gray had done at school to convince Marshall that cookies can run. And so I interviewed her and learned about the annual cookie hunt the teachers do, and that inspired Catch That Cookie! This book literally took a village to create. And so I’m really excited that Mrs. Gray and some of the other Morrow teachers, as well as David (!) will be joining us to launch the book at two different events, one a scavenger hunt at the Maplewood Library, one a drawing lesson by David Small at Words Maplewood.

We’re also doing an event for people who want to write or illustrate picture books, or who are just interested in learning about collaboration. We’re happy to team up with Studio B and some other local authors for this event too!