Story behind the story: Preschool Day Hooray!

Linda Leopold Strauss is the author of numerous books for children, including A Fairy Called Hilary and The Princess Gown. She is also a good friend and writing critic who has taught me a lot about writing for children. As I promised in my previous post, she has generously agreed to share the story behind her new picture book, Preschool Day Hooray.

Can we read that book again?

So there I was, in the barbecue sauce aisle. And Sticky Fingers Barbecue Sauce caught my eye. Little kids get sticky. Little kids like sticky. Maybe an early picture book about getting sticky?

I started playing with the Sticky Fingers idea when I took my morning walks. At first I stuck (pardon the pun) to the sticky theme. Sticky arms (a hug). Sticky toes (mud). Sticky nose (a star sticker). Taffy apples. Etc. And then I started getting high on word combinations. Licky lolly. Smacky kiss. Wrecky trucks. Clicky seatbelts.

I’d moved far beyond sticky. Where would it end?

Some mornings I remembered to bring my dictaphone with me on my walks; other mornings I had to keep saying word combinations over and over till I got home. Some were clever; some were probably just stupid. But the point here wasn’t to judge, just to think. And to collect.

I honestly can’t remember how or why I decided to put the word combinations together into a long poem. I only know that it happened. It turned out that they could be fashioned into a poem about a toddler’s day, breakfast to bedtime. A poem that rhymed! Don’t write rhyming picture books, say the experts. They don’t sell. But this one rhymed. It just worked out that way.

When reading certain picture books to my toddler granddaughter, Leila, I’d noticed that she would flip pages WAY ahead of the page turns. Hurry, hurry! These books (for Leila‘s purposes) had far too many words. So I knew that for toddlers, word count was important. My new manuscript came in at 85 words.

I tried very hard to keep those words clever, not too sweet, toddler-friendly, and not so far off from standard usage that I would be teaching young children totally incorrect (as opposed to playful) English. I also worked hard to keep the rhythm from being sing-song, interrupting the basic pattern with two stanzas of a different rhythm. I polished and polished.

And then I sent it out. At that point it was called Sticky Fingers, Drippy Milk.

Some weeks later, I returned from a trip to find an e-mail from an editor at Scholastic expressing interest in the manuscript. But she wanted me to change it to focus more on the preschool part of the day. Then she asked me to make it all about preschool. I had to give up some of my favorite stanzas, but I got to add others.

I sent her new ideas and “outtakes.” I talked and she listened; she talked and I listened. I think we worked really well together. I tried to pack as many preschool activities as I could into a given stanza. “Painty hands and/Gooey glue./Green on paper/Blue on…shoe!” covered only art activities. Instead we went with “Painty hands and/Gooey glue./Tricky puzzles/ I can do!”

I also consulted friends and family. My older daughter urged me to add something not totally positive to the text, so I had one of the children fall down on the playground, requiring a…bandaid! Toddlers love bandaids! That’s currently Leila’s favorite page.

And I polished and polished again. Which one to choose?

“Clappy hands  

And tappy feet,

Sing the songs

And feel the beat.”

Or

“Clap your hands

And stamp your feet,

Sing the songs

And tap the beat.”

Or

“Clap our hands

And stamp our feet,

Sing the songs

And feel the beat.”

Or

“Clappy hands

And tappy feet,

Sing the songs

And snap the beat.”

When you’ve got only 85 words to work with, you drive yourself crazy trying to get each word right.

Of course a book like Preschool Day Hooray! (the title changed partly because Scholastic wanted the word “preschool” in the title) depends enormously on the artwork. Writers often lose control at this point -- all I had to offer the illustrator, to shape her vision, to make it match up with mine, were my 85 words. Happily, Hiroe Nakata got it right. I am in awe of her ability to create movement and expression with her paintbrush. Just look at the little person on the dedication page! And the care she took with every tiny detail. The identifying picture over each child’s coat hook in the preschool classroom. The line of ants on the playground. The bird popping out of the cuckoo clock. Wonderful!

And then came June 1. Publication! I got to hold the book in my hands. And the other day, when I had a bunch of young children at my house, I saw them identifying the teacher in Preschool Day Hooray! as “their” teacher. I watched them looking carefully at Hiroe’s illustrations, one by one. I heard them say proudly, “I go to preschool!”

And best of all for this writer, I heard them saying, “Can we read that book again?”