Margaret Read MacDonald    425-827-6430 phone/fax
  11507 NE 104th Street
  Kirkland, Washington 98033
 

   Linn, 1999.
   ISBN 0-208-02426-3
   Paperbound.

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   Illustrated by Julis Paschkis.  August House, 2001. 

   August House, 2001  ISBN 0874836166

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   Illusrated by Tim Coffey.  Albert Whitman, 2001.

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     "This is WAY more than anybody will want to know about my career.   I got started typing at this and found I just wanted to tell it ALL.  Just nibble at the parts which interest you.  I am assuming this website is mainly for the ncouragement of  would-be librarian writers.  So I have sort of  “told it all” for your benefit."

Tell about your library career.  What influenced you to become a librarian?

     I went into librarianship because I had an anthropology major and knew I would need a Ph.D. to get a job and then have to go where the job was.  Since I thought I might want to get married, I decided on a more practical degree in Librarianship.  My aunt Sally Johnston was a librarian and LOVED it.  I realized that in Library work I wouldn’t have to pick a major…I could just be interested in EVERYTHING.  Since I had changed my major every semester all during my college career, this seemed like a perfect career choice.   I planned to work in an anthropological library like the one at Berkeley.  That was my goal.

     During the last summer of my work at the University of Washington Library School, I found I had finished all of my required courses in reference services.  I could take anything I wanted.  I decided to just have fun.  I signed up for a course in Children’s Literature and a course in Storytelling.   My professor for both was Bernard Polishuk, Coordinator of Children’s Services at the King County Library System.   He had a masters degree in Philosophy!   But he LOVED working with children and books.  He made it sound like such an ENLIGHTENED career.  And SO intellectual.  I had never considered work with children before but he convinced me that this was a career of great importance for only the BEST thinkers.  A mission, so to speak.

     On the last day of the storytelling class I was to tell my first “long” story ever.  As I crossed campus, I ran into Mr. Polishuk.  “Aren’t you in my class?”   I allowed as how I was.  “Oh how wonderful!  You are going to become a Children’s Librarian!”  I explained that I was going to work in academia.   How could I miss out on the chance to be a Children’s Librarian?  He began to declaim the importance and joys of this career.  I explained that it did sound attractive but that it was too late.  I hadn’t taken any other courses in the field and I didn’t even know the advisor for the children’s lit people.  That mattered not at all, he said. “Come to King County!  We will TRAIN you!.”

     Later, in class, I told my first long story “The Fast Sooner Hound.”   When I had finished, Mr. Polishuk LEAPED to his feet from the rear of  the class.  “Miss READ!  You have GOT to become a Children’s Librarian!”

     I went down to King County Library System headquarters the next week.  He hired me and his staff trained me.  The rest is history.

Do you have a library degree?

I have an M.L.S. from the University of Washington
               M.Ed.Ec. (Educational Communications) from the University of Hawaii
               Ph.D. (Folklore) from Indiana University.   This degree was also granted jointly by the Library School at Indiana.    So I have one Ph.D. but it is valid from either department.   I took SEVEN written qualifying exams (they combined one, each department required four) and completed all coursework for BOTH departments.  Think I must have been crazy.  But just one thesis, the basis for my Storyteller’s Sourcebook.

What kinds of library positions have you held and where?

     Have worked as a public librarian for San Francisco Public, Hawaii State Library (bookmobile on Oahu),  Montgomery County Maryland,  Mountain-Valley Library System (Sacramento Calif, multi-county regional system, I was Children’s Consultant), and King County Library System (my first year in the profession, and 25 years on my return to the NW).  School library work with the Singapore American School, the Fairfield Girls School (Singapore), and volunteer work in my daughter’s school, The Community School (Kirkland, Washington).

How long have you been a librarian?  Since 1965.   36 years?  AAACK!!!

Are you currently working as a librarian, and do you plan to continue in this career?

     I am a Children’s Librarian at the Bothell Regional Library, a branch of the King County Library System.   I am Lead Children’s Librarian and work with one half-time Children’s Librarian, Mie Mie Wu.  This was a medium size branch until five years ago.  Now we are remodeled and are a BIG branch.   I do three pre-school storytimes a week,  school visiting, summer reading programming,  etc.  Mie Mie does the toddler and infant storytimes in our branch and handles most of the class tours since I work 1-9. 
     Yes, I plan to continue in the library profession until I retire.   See below for why I love this combination of work.

Which came first in your life, your career as a librarian or writing for children?

     My library career came first.  The writing grew from my needs as a librarian.  I really needed a motif-index to children’s folktale collections.  I had used the Stith Thompson, but that was useful only as a guide to esoteric academic collections.  So I started building my own index.  This seemed to be going to be a LOT of work.  So I wondered if it could be my Ph.D. dissertation.  I went to Indiana University for a summer course (then I was working for Montgomery County Library System and they graciously allowed us to take summer courses on library time!).   Dr. Richard Dorson was pleased with my project and encouraged me to begin work for the Ph.D.  And over time he encouraged my work on a dissertation which became The Storyteller's Sourcebook(Gale Research, 1982).

Did you library work have anything to do with your work as an author?

     EVERYTHING to do with it.  See below and below and below.

     After receiving my Ph.D. I moved to Seattle, Washington and began work again for the King County Library System.  I was engaged then to teach Storytelling as an adjunct at the University of Washington Library School, because Prof. Spencer Shaw was president of ALSC that year and needed free time.  Excellent timing for me!  Then Mae Benne began work on a research project, so I got to teach another year.  And then I was asked to develop a storytelling course for a local school district.   By now I was beginning to use some of my own stories to teach and finding that this worked very well.  Soon I needed to have these materials put together in a book to use with my students.  So I wrote Twenty Tellable Tales (1986) and managed to get it published.  I had gone through TEN publishers trying to get someone to take on The Storyteller's Sourcebook project.  So now I had lots of publishing connections. Bruce Carrick, of H.W. Wilson was happy to do Twenty Tellable Tales and published my next three collections as well.

Did your library work directly influence your work as an author?

     My work as an author grows DIRECTLY from my work as a Children’s Librarian.  Note  the caps in Children’s Librarian.  That’s how I think of us.  We ARE important.

     One of my earliest books (Booksharing: 101 Programs to Use With Preschoolers, 1988) was created because
Virginia Mathews asked me to write it. She was one of those ten publishers that I “went through” en route to finding one who would actually sock the money needed into publishing The Storyteller's Sourcebook (a massive motif-index).   She asked if I kept a record of my pre-school storytimes.  In those days King County Library System gave us each forms to keep such records.  So I had piles of them all filled out from past years.  She told me to go home, and look in my closet, that I had the book already written there.  She was right.   After that, I kept on keeping records and always created a new storytime each week.  In a few years I had Bookplay: 101 Creative Themes to Share With Young Children (1995) ready for publication.

     And I kept on telling up new stories each spring for my summer reading club promotional visits to the ten schools in our area.  These became the many storytelling collections I have produced.  Each was instigated though by a need.  After publishing Twenty Tellable Tales, I called my husband’s cousin, Christine DeWeese (who owns a pre-school in Flourtown, PA).  She was teaching 2nd grade that year though.  I talk very fast and when I told her I had written a book called “twenty tellable tales” she thought I said “twenty terrible tales.”   “Twenty Terrible Tales!  My 2nd grade boys will LOVE it!”  I was deflated.  I had written the wrong book.

     After I hung up I started thinking that I could write THAT book too.   Of course I already had a closet full of Halloween texts I’d been working up over the years.  So I did.  The publisher didn’t like the title “twenty terrible tales” though.  So it became When the Lights Go Out: Twenty Scary Tales to Tell (1988).  Later I was teaching another in-service for teachers, this time for the Northshore School District in Bothell, WA.   My students turned on me and swore they could tell NONE of the wonderful stories I suggested since they were all too violent or too amoral.  Jack shouldn’t have kept the money from the robbers.  That was not moral.  The Little Rooster shouldn’t have taken the treasure from the Sultan.   The little boy couldn’t eat a whole whale, that was too violent.  Etc.   So I racked my brain to put together a list of tales which were neither violent nor amoral for them.  And I decided I needed to work on a new book.  I began with the notion of a collection of  MORAL stories.  But these all proved too violent.  The wicked character always got SUCH a comeuppance.  So I opted for gentle stories instead and prepared my favorite collection, Look Back and See :  Twemty Lively Tales for Gentle Tellers (1991). 

     Meanwhile I had been tossing stories into a bin for a holiday collection.  But by the time I got around to working on it, the “St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, etc.”  stories I had stockpiled seemed very narrow in outlook.  Instead I was telling folktales for festivals from all over the globe.  So the book became Celebrate the World :  Twenty Tellable Folktales for Multicultural Festivals (1994).

     After publishing a book or two, I began to notice gaps in our collection which I thought I could fill.   Parents came in each spring asking for skit books to take to the schools’ nature camps.   We had only some rather old collections on the shelves.   As a folklorist, I realized that camp skits are really kidlore.  So I began to ask every kid I met for camp skits.   My own girls were in junior high and high school just then, so every time they held a slumber party I would insist that everyone cough up a skit.  Soon I had 101 skits and The Skit Book: 101 Skits From Kids (1990) was quickly put together.   Shoestring Press, which had published Booksharing and Bookplay under their Library Professional Publications imprint,  had by now added a children’s line called Linnet Books.  The Skit Book fit nicely into their publishing plans.

     A few years later, one evening my kids and I were sitting around the kitchen table singing rounds and ran out of songs.   I checked the library next day and found we needed some new material there.   At first I thought I could pull that book together by myself.  But while visiting Winnie Jaegar, a musician friend, I mentioned the project.  Winnie ran into her bedroom and came out lugging and armload of boxes full of rounds!    I invited her to join the project and Winnie took a lively role in the song selection and did all of the notation for the tunes. 

     After we had accumulated a mass of prospective songs to include,  Winnie and her housemate, Mary Whittington, held a Round Sing!   Friends came to sing the rounds and help us finalize our selection.   I decided the collection should have a sort of “going on a hike singing” storyline and convinced my publisher, Diantha Thorpe (Linnet Books) to engage my Guemes Island artist friend, Yvonne LeBrun Davis, to provide illustrations for The Round Book: Rounds Kids Love to  Sing (1999).   Do you see how one book leads to another?   And working with publishers you care for, you can develop new book ideas together,  deciding where the gaps are in your library collection and matching those needs to the publisher’s capabilities.

     During the Gulf War I was horrified to find everyone seemingly buying into the old “Hooray we are winning a war!” notion.   I wondered what I could do.  One thing I could do would be to prepare a collection of folktales on themes of peace.  I called Diantha Thorpe and her husband Jim.   They agreed at once that this would be an important book and one we should do.  They had a contract to me within a week.  A year later Peace Tales: World Folktales to Talk About (1992) was published.   Almost never does a book come into being this quickly.  But we all wanted the book to become available as soon as possible.   Usually one waits months, even years for an answer from editors about  submitted manuscripts.   Of course in this case there was no manuscript.  Only an important idea, and an author and publisher who trusted each other.

    Shortly after I began using Peace Tales in my workshops,  I realized that I needed a companion volume.   When I flew to Borneo and learned of the devastation of those forests,   I knew I had to get to work on Earth Care.  This book was to have had a parallel title with Peace Tales but another author had his lawyer threaten a lawsuit if I used a title so close to his own folktale collection.   I reeled with amazement at such pettiness within our storytelling community.  But Earth Care: World Folktales to Talk About (1999) seems the best title after all for this collection of tales chosen for their messages of caring.   These are not just stories about animals and plants, but are tales which carry messages.   Interestingly it was difficult to discover stories on themes of peace within the folktales of our world’s peoples.   Folks seem much more apt to tell stories about how to trick, how to win, how to get the princess.  Not many stories about cooperation in our world folklore.   But it was easy to find stories about caring for the land and sea.  It seems all peoples have realized the importance of these acts and taught earthcare in their stories.

     By now I was touring doing workshops and keynotes in many places and I needed a collection of MRM [Margaret Read MacDonald] stories which was affordable.  The H.W. Wilson books were wonderful but pricey.  I had been connected with Ted and Liz Parkhurst through an American Folklore Society friend who suggested me as author for a Northwest volume in their regional ghostlore series.  I contracted to write Ghost Stories From the Pacific Northwest (1995),  then noticing that they were doing inexpensive paperback editions, I proposed a how-to book on storytelling for them.  The Storyteller's Start-up Book (1993) resulted, a handy guide for beginners, with twelve good stories to cut their teeth. Note that sometimes book contracts slip past each other.  Though the ghostlore book was contracted first with August House, the storytelling book, which was more fun to write and took less research, passed it by and was published first.

     Just about this time, August House decided to start a picture book line.   I sent Liz Parkhurst a bevy of picture book manuscripts but none of them struck her fancy.  (Even though you know the editor personally, have an “in”, and are an established writer, your ms still has to strike the editor’s personal fancy.)   Liz did want to do a book with me though, and she remembered that her young daughter Lucy had been especially taken with “The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle” from The Storyteller's Start-up Book.   She asked if I could redo that as a picture book.  Now you do not just take a tale from a collection and slap it into 32 pages and call it a picture book.  This is an entirely different art form.   So you begin again,  finding a way to shape the story so that it flows happily from page turn to page turn and ends tidily just at the 32nd page.   Nancy Dunaway Fowlkes illustrated The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle: A British Folk Tale (1995) with a spunky fairy which children love.

     Now I was established with an August House picture book success,  so we followed this with Tuck-Me-In Tales: Bedtime Stories From Around the World (a 64 page picture book, 1996).   The 64 page picture book is an unusual format, and quite a good buy for the consumer.   August House and I had planned to do an illustrated collection of bedtime stories.  But the illustrator, Yvonne LeBrun Davis, started out doing full doublepage spreads.   They were totally gorgeous, so I didn’t stop her, but instead raced home and edited my collection down to six stories which could flow together into a sweet extended bedtime stories picture book experience.  I just learned today that the book will be out in paperback soon! 

     Yvonne is an artist who lives on Guemes Island, where my father lived.  I had seen her art in the local gallery and noticed one day an etching of miniature samurai stealing eggs from under a hen.  Tuck-Me-In Tales contained a story about miniature samurai!  It was as if she had already started to illustrate the book without even knowing about it.  And her specialty was etchings of birds.  The book contained two bird tales.  I called her and asked timidly if she had ever considered illustrating books.  She had always wanted to do a children’s book.  So I went to her studio and photographed a series of her etchings and mailed them off to August House.  They agreed that she would be great for Tuck.  And she later illustrated The Girl Who Wore Too Much for them too.

     I had begun to perform with a musician friend, Richard Scholtz.   He suggested that we make a tape.   August House agreed to float this project, so we created a tape (Tuck-Me-In Tales audiotape, 1997) to accompany the picture book.  Richard’s authoharp and dulcimer music make a perfect, soothing accompaniment to the stories, which I kept close to the book text so that children could turn the page if they wanted to follow along.  I also paced this very slowly in parts, thinking of the soon-to-be-sleeping child. 

     Later Richard and I wanted to do another CD and August House declined it.  So we produced it ourselves in Richard’s home studio and I did the marketing.  Cockroach Party!  (1999) received excellent reviews from the library media  and our first edition of 1,000 CD’s has paid for itself and earned a small profit.  But this is a LOT of work.   Every sale means someone has to pack it up and mail it, send a bill, follow-up to make sure it is paid.  We have made more money on this endeavor than on the August House produced tape,  and it is fun to have copies which haven’t cost us much to give to friends.   But I’m not sure we will do it again.  Still if we keep performing together and end up with lots of fun stories we want on tape, we might.

     And my lively, audience-participation folktales were such a hit that I just kept creating more of them.   Every spring I lug home bags full of anthropological tomes from the university library and plow through them for weeks  looking for new stories which would be fun to share.  Then I work them up and tell them during my spring visits to the schools.  I tell stories all day at each school, so I can easily tell twenty or more stories per day.  Lots of practice.  Each night I rush home and type up any that seem to be settling into a winning mode.  Then I keep working on them through the summer and editing at them.  They all go into a pile for some later book, whenever their time comes.   Most recent winners from this pile are those in Shake-It-Up Tales!  Stories to Sing, Dance, Drum and Act Out! (2000).  Another book which grew from my need, since I am doing lots of “playing with story” workshops now and needed even more lively material to share.

     Once a librarian author is established and has a reputation for carrying through on publishing projects in a timely manner,  it is not difficult to sell ideas to the library-publishing market.  In fact the library-publishing editors are actively looking for good people to write for them.  Trying to sell picture books or novels is something entirely more difficult.  But for librarians who have something to say to their peers and are able to conceive of the project and propose it intelligently to an editor, the possibilities are there.   You must be able to show a need. The editor wants to know what books are already available on your topic.  Why is another one needed?  Who would buy it?  You must sell your book to the editor just as you would sell any product.   And you must make such a strong case that the editor can sell your book idea to his board as well.  Few editors have the clout to make a publishing decision alone.   They must convince the company owners, the marketing people, the other editors. 

     Now that I had a reputation for delivering the goods,  library-publishing editors began to call me with book ideas.  I rejected most of them.  At this point I had to look at my life span and figure what I could accomplish within it.  I decided to do only books which only I could write.  That is, books on which I had a special slant, or topics no one else would be likely
to tackle.   Before I learned how to say no, though, I did agree to a couple of interesting projects.  Judy Sierra was writing a collection of Cinderella tales for Oryx Press and Art Stickney, the editor there, wanted to bring out four similar collections all at once.  He called  me to see if I would do one.   I thought it over and decided it would be fun to do a collection of Tom Thumb stories.  And I suggested George Shannon, Betsy Hearne, and some others for titles in the series. The Oryx Multicultural Folktale Series: Tom Thumb (1993) was my contribution.  George did A Knock at the Door and Betsy did Beauties and Beasts.  Each included over thirty variants of the one story plus activities and commentary.

     An editor from Gale Research called asking if I would prepare an encyclopedia of world holidays for them.  The Folklore of World Holidays (1992) was a MASSIVE project. I worked for two years and sent a manuscript of over 1,000 pages.  They wanted MORE.  I finally sent in 1,800 pages.  It was an incredible research job.  But huge reference books paid well in those days.  Now Gale has stopped paying royalties and pays a set fee for work.   But that book made the most money of any I have written.   However after five years they wanted a new edition.   My contract allowed me first refusal on writing this, but I was in Thailand as a Fulbright scholar at the time and could not do it.   The next edition does not bear my name in any form, nor do I receive a cent from it, though it is at least 80% my work.  This is usual though and nothing to fret about.  I had read the contract before I signed.   Just something for writers-to-be to note.

     At a later date a book packager called asking me to help with a storytelling encyclopedia.  I agreed and gave lots of free over-the-phone advice.  Later,  when I was asked to edit the book (under an editor, under a packager, under a publisher),  I declined.   Within a week the publisher called and asked me to do a similar book directly under them!   I didn’t like that book idea in the first place, but I proposed another book about storytelling and Traditional Storytelling Today: An International Sourcebook (1999) was under way.   This was another of those MASSIVE projects.  I had to discover folklorists/anthropologists who had worked with traditional storytellers,  find their addresses, and convince them to write essays for the book.  I convinced 100 to do so and thank goodness email was invented just then!   With manuscripts flying around the world e-mail really enabled my task.   Then, while I was in Thailand the second time, Garland Publishing decided to drop this project!   I already had all of the manuscripts on their way.  But by now I didn’t even worry.  This is publishing.  You just have to be patient and keep at it.   Eventually Fitzroy-Dearborn picked up the project and produced a very handsome book indeed.  And their international marketing strategies will place this book in many libraries where it belongs all around the world.

     Meanwhile back at the branch…our reference librarian, Su Vathanaprida, had noticed that there were few Thai folktale collections indexed in my Storyteller's Sourcebook.  She demanded to know WHY.   I told there that was all we had in English.  So she set out to fix that situation.   Su ordered books from Thailand, and sat down to write down all the stories she could recall from her own childhood growing up in Lampang.   There her grandmother had told her stories every night.   I worked hard to edit Su’s texts, trying not to lose her inimitable telling style.  And I asked Su to write a special chapter on the place of Buddhism in Thai life, to help explicate the stories in Thai Tales: Folktales of Thailand (1995). 

     Because of that book I was later invited to spend two winters in Mahasarakham, Thailand as  a Fulbright scholar!   Anne Pellowski knew of the book and suggested me to Dr. Wajuppa Tossa as a person who could teach storytelling techniques to her students in Issan.  Wajuppa and I self-published a couple of sweet little Thai/English folktale books for use in our
workshops while there too.  Self-publishing is a simple and useful way to get your materials out to those who need them.  You might always ask yourself….how MANY people need to read this?  How much is enough?   Maybe a self-published edition of 500 books will serve your needs well.  This quantity might place the book into all the local libraries which need it and fill the needs of your students and fellow librarians.

     Su and I continued to work together trying to develop a Thai picture book which we could sell to a publisher.   August House decided to publish The Girl Who Wore Too Much: A Folktale From Thailand (1998) and engaged Yvonne LeBrun Davis to do the illustrations.  Yvonne had lots of help in making sure these were ethnically correct, because by now I was hosting Thai students from Issan (the area in which the story is set) and her studio was overrun by very insistent Thai advisors!  I ended up living only 30 km from the spot in Issan where the story took place.  But THAT is another story.

     Meanwhile our editor at Libraries Unlimited (publisher of Thai Tales) moved to Fulcrum Press and they began a picture book line.  I began to send her manuscripts and soon Slop! A Welsh Folktale (1997), with illus. by Yvonne LeBrun Davis,  was in print.

     At an ALA pre-conference on storytelling I was asked to give a presentation.  An editor from HarperCollins was in the audience and liked what I had to say.  He mentioned to a friend that he would like to meet me sometime and she dragged me across the exhibit hall to make that happen.  I began to send him manuscripts to consider and after a time he purchased FOUR of them!   The Parent's Guide to Storytelling (1995) was published in paperback only and never reviewed for some reason.  It sold well but was remaindered by 1998.  I was able to get the rights back and August House will re-publish it in 2001.   This is a pitfall to expect when selling your work to large publishing houses.  The book is a star for one season only and unless it strikes lightening it may never be heard of again.  Even if it strikes SOME lightening it may sink like a stone.  Pickin' Peas (1998), with Pat Cummings illustrations, won a Parenting Magazine Reading Magic Award and was on the children’s choice award lists in Tennessee and Wisconsin.  The other two HarperCollins acquisitions are still awaiting publication.  And a third picture book has also been acquired by them.  Now if they could only contract with an illustrator  … 

     I was becoming more and more interested in the form of the picture book.  I developed text after text and tried valiantly to market them.  While I continued to have luck with my “own” publishers,  it has been very hard to make a sale to others.   I get wonderful encouraging letters from many editors and I keep at it.  I counted up recently and found that I had mailed out 330 manuscripts in the last ten years, to 30 different publishing houses.  From that effort to publishers with whom I had not previously published, I have sold to date ONE picture book.  You will note that this is an author who has 30 books in print (some with awards), and who is sending only “requested” manuscripts to editors who know her name.   So be prepared for the long haul when you enter this game. 

     I keep a pile for rejections (I receive several each month).  I don’t even bother opening them right away.  If it comes back in the mail it is a rejection.  They will call you if they want to buy it.  Once every two months I get out the rejection pile and mark my file cards with the rejects.  I keep a card for each publisher and a card for each picture book manuscript.   Then I reshuffle, print clean copies of the manuscripts, probably edit a little more, and send them out again.  A manuscript sitting on your shelf can NOT sell.   Keep them moving.   And never take the rejections personally.   You have to connect
EXACTLY with the whims and needs of a specific editor to make a sale.  My one sale?   Watch for Mabela the Clever (illus. by Tim Coffey, 2001).   I love working with the smaller, family owned presses and had been sending things to Albert Whitman for a long time.  I was delighted when they finally took on one of my picture book manuscripts!

     Sometimes fortune strikes.  I was able to catch Seattle illustrator Julie Paschkis between books and convinced her to illustrate my Fat Cat!  (August House, 2001).  Her illustrations are fantastic!  And Julie’s last book was just named one of the ten best illustrated children’s books of the year by the New York Times.  Which will no doubt help create interest in her future work…i.e. Fat Cat!

     Alongside this library-publishing train ran some personal research into my mother’s home community, Scipio, Indiana.   I interviewed older folks there over a ten year period, amassing over 200 hours of tape and transcribing over100 hours.  To repay the community,  I prepared a history of Scipio, Scipio, Indiana: Threads From the Past (1988).   I found a local history publisher who was willing to publish it for me at a reduced rate if I would let him include it in his catalogue and keep some copies to sell.  I paid him around $8,000 to set-type (by hand then), print and bind 500 copies.   The Presbyterian church ladies back in Scipio sold the book for me.  I prepared an advertisement and mailed to genealogical societies all over the US.  Our local genealogy librarian helped me with a list.  I sold around 30 in this way, and over the years the church ladies have sold most of the rest.  It eventually paid itself out.   The point was not to make money, but to place this important information in the hands of those who will need it to do historical research in the future.

     However my real reason for the Scipio research was to prepare a folkloric look at the storytelling of that community.  I tried for years to find an academic publisher for this work, but I insisted on writing it in such a way that it was “readable” by the folks of Scipio themselves.  I kept all of the scholarly commentary in notes at the chapters’ ends.  This made the book neither fish nor fowl and I  couldn’t sell it to either an academic publisher or a local-interest publisher.  Finally I placed the book with University Press of America; they have a useful proposition under which they will publish an academic title (if five reviewers approve of it), if the author arranges sales of 100 copies of the paperback edition.  They send out review copies to the important journals and market the book to the academic market.  Scipio Storytelling: Talk in a Southern Indiana Community has received fine reviews in the folklore and anthropology press.  And a  search shows that it has found a place on many university shelves.  So my years of hard work were worth it.

     The threads of this writing career are clear.  One contact leads to another.  Editors move from house to house.  Publishing houses expand markets.  Persistence pays off in the end.  Money is NOT the goal.  Producing fine books which meet clear needs IS the goal.  Sometimes a book makes a nice monetary payoff.  But usually this is not the case.  Most writers tend to eke out a living by building up a body of work which dribbles in bits of royalty here and there and by doing enough school visits and conference appearances to pay the rent.   The librarian-writer who keeps her day job is smart!   Besides…without the children to inspire….what would there be to write about?

What are the benefits of being a librarian/writer?

     Having the research tools right on your desk every day!
     Having access to kids daily!
     Being inspired by those kids daily!
     Access to the newest books.

     Building a strong critical sense through constant discussion with other librarians and through conferences, workshops, etc.  For example my critical sense of the picture book was heightened by my year on the Caldecott Committee.

     The chance to chat with editors at national conferences is invaluable!   You can get to know folks BEFORE you mail ms to them.  Now nothing is “over the transom.”

Are there any drawbacks to being a librarian/writer?

     Self criticism is intense. You KNOW if you get it wrong.
     The reviews fall on your desk whether you want to see them or not.  Sometimes you would rather NOT.  Publishers tend to send you only the nice ones.

How do you juggle the time?

     I arranged my work schedule so that I work three nights per week.  This means I go to work at 1:00 p.m.  I work every other weekend (all librarians here do), so I have all Fridays off.  So I have four mornings each week to write.   I do not clean house, go have coffee with friends, write letters, or ANYTHING other than write on those mornings.

Are there any conflicts from being a writer/librarian?

     Because I am at a stage of my career now in which  I am invited to speak at many conferences, to tell at storytelling festivals, and to offer workshops,  I have trouble arranging all this within my work schedule.  I try to make these trips over weekends when I am off anyway.   I try NOT to be gone on my pre-school storytime days.  It doesn’t always work.  This is a constant juggling act.  My Branch Manager is very considerate.  She values my work and does what she can to let me use my vacation time as I need it.   But this IS all my vacation time.   I can’t do any of this on branch time, of course.  I can attend two conferences a year on branch time (of course I can’t be paid for anything I do at those two conferences).  I can see that I am a pain for my Branch Manager.    I also try to keep a low profile re my publications and tours, etc.  It would be easy to come off as a show-off if you aren’t careful about these things.  Our library cohorts are proud of us and glad for us.  But we need to be careful not to overdo the “famous author” bit.

     One final bit of advice.  Don’t forget to write for journals and magazines.  If you have something to say…SAY it!  Send articles to parenting magazines, library journals,  educational publications, the local newspapers.   Writing hones your skills and it shows publishers that you can deliver the goods.

Forthcoming Books
No pub date yet:
   Ghastlies.  HarperCollins.
   The Little Old Woman and Her Pig.  HarperCollins.
   The Squeaky Door.  HarperCollins.
   Ten Traditional Tellers: Interviews and tellings. August House.

   Parent’s Guide to Storytelling,  Spanish Language Edition.  Argentina.
   Editor, Indonesian folktale collection. With Murti Bunanta. Libraries Unlimited.
   Editor,  Brazilian folktale collection. With Livia Almeida.  Libraries Unlimited.