Favorites

"What's your favorite book that you wrote?"

"This is a question young readers often ask me, and many other children's book writers. But it's a hard one to answer honestly. Though I did highlight a few author's favorites on the Children's Books page, I had an argument with myself about my choices the whole time.

"Why is this question so tough?

But different books have different moods

"I feel a lot of different ways. Sometimes these ways even contradict each other.

"Because I have many moods, I write books in many moods, from many points of view --- silly and serious, rollicking around and sleepy. Some rhyme, some don't. Some answer questions, some ask them, and some leave the reader (and maybe the author) guessing. (What could be sillier than an alligator arriving on a motorcycle, in this illustration for Alligator Arrived with Apples, by Ariane Dewey and Jose Aruego? And could it be any more different than the ghostly, beautiful painting of Jerry Pinkney's shown below? Yet both are right at home with two of my books, because the books are so different in feeling.)

Something mysterious

"Just as with reading books by other people, sometimes looking back on something I wrote awhile ago I really like a book of my own: it catches the way I feel at the present time or clicks into what I'm thinking about, and I think, 'Hmmmm... not bad, CD, you really did nail that.' While at other times I also think, "No... not so good after all. ' Or, 'Now why did I do that? It would have been better if...'

"I have also heard many people who have children of their own (I don't) say 'My books are like children; I don't love one more than the other, I care about each of them in a different way, for different reasons.' This is also true. After all, if I didn't care about something, why would I write about it?

"Every so often I write something that I really don't get at the time. Home Place is in that category. I don't think I understood it until years after I had written it. That's a little bit what I meant about how a book can even leave its author guessing. There is something mysterious about the whole process. (Left, Jerry Pinkney's illustration of a woman who may have lived in a long-ago, might-have-been home, is as mysterious as writing itself. From Home Place).

Illustrators can make or unmake a favorite

"But I can say I think certain illustrators captured the mood of what I was trying to write better than others did, and this, too, affects my choice of favorites. Jerry Pinkney certainly did this on Home Place and Half a Moon and One Whole Star --- actually, he not only captured but amplified where I was going. I also adored the old-fashioned pictures Susan Paradise did on Brass Button.