Where did
you live when you were
a kid?
I grew up on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Our house was four blocks from the Capitol of the United States. My brother and sisters and I played pick-up soccer on the Library of Congress lawn. We rode our bikes to the Smithsonian museums. We had a hilarious, fairly unsupervised, time.
Is that why Lucy Rose and Melonhead live on Capitol Hill?
That is exactly why.
Do your characters come from real people?
Many do. Lucy Rose’s grandparents, Madam and Pop, are so much like my parents that sometimes we call them Madam and Pop. Like the book Pop, the real Pop is not a fan of worksheets or homework. Madam and my mom both write advice columns. Melonhead’s best friend, the real Sam Alswang, is a young and daring friend of mine. His baby sister, Julia is also real. She’s not a baby anymore but she still is a kid. Also, the good teachers are named after the best teachers I know. The crummy ones are fiction.
How did you learn to tell stories?
When I was growing up my parents, brother and sisters and I all came to the dinner table with our news of the day which my mom called the “Scoop du J'our”.
My dad told funny and exciting stories about his job as a newspaperman. My mom, who grew up in Louisiana, told us about Mardi Gras and relatives including our grandfather who wore spats and gambled. My siblings and I listened to them and told our own stories. We figured out how to make funny stories funnier, how to peel away extra words, what to hold back to make the ending a surprise. Three of us became writers, though I didn’t start until I was in my later twenties.
What are your hobbies when you aren’t writing?
I still draw and paint. I hang out with my family and friends. I visit schools.
I volunteer. And I read.
Do you have children or a pet?
I have both, which means I am twice lucky. My husband, Steve, and I have two grown-up daughters, Emily and Marguerite. We also have a hilarious granddaughter named Amelia. She calls me Lovey. Steve is Pop. The fourth girl in the family is Georgie. She is a small, white dog. It takes a long time to walk Georgie because she has to stop and have a visit with every other dog and every single person she sees and, since we live in the city, that is an extremely large number of dogs and people. When we have dinner, Georgie hops into an empty chair and sits at the table. Dogs who have good manners do not sit at the table but Georgie is almost 11 years old, which is 77 in dog years.
Did you have a pet when you were a little girl?
Just like Madam and Pop, we had a giant black poodle named Gumbo. We did not have a chimpanzee. This chimp was visiting. Pop was writing a story about the circus and the monkey trainer asked if I would like to see a chimp. Pop said, “Who wouldn’t like to see a clothes-wearing, backwards-skating chimpanzee?”
It turns out I was among those who would not like that at all. Pop says I was jealous of the chimp’s roller-skating abilities.