Linda Ashman
Children's Book Author

READING/SIGNING
Linda will be at the Borders Store in Park Meadows on Saturday, May 31st at 10 a.m.
For more info, click here.

THE DOG'S ON THE BLOGS
Stella Unleashed: Notes from the Doghouse
arrived in stores April 1st, and has been reviewed on some terrific children's book blogs, including
Wild Rose Reader, Ethan's Bookshelf, and BooksForKidsBlog.

For more info on STELLA, including additional reviews, click on the title at right. And for suggestions on how to use the book in the classroom, download this guide:

And, speaking of dogs, we have a new pup, thanks to Retriever Rescue of Colorado.

When I visit schools, I'm often asked the same questions. Here are three that always seem to come up:

1. What are your dogs’ names?

2. How old are you?

3. How old are your dogs?

But there's a fourth question that I also hear quite frequently that I thought I'd answer here:

4. What made you decide to write children’s books?

There’s a long answer to that question, one that involves working in offices in New York and Los Angeles, feeling uncomfortable in my business suit and professional shoes, and feeling even more uncomfortable in my soul, knowing that somewhere along the way I’d lost track of the things that mattered most to me, the things I loved.

But that’s not the story I tell kids in elementary school, even though I want more than anything for them to remember as grown-ups what they're passionate about right now.

I tell them that picture books combine three things I love, have always loved, since I was a little girl listening to my mom read "Little Orphant Annie" and recite "The Goops"; since discovering at age 5 the amazing bounty of the Public Library in Flemington, New Jersey; since poring over fairy tales and Mother Goose rhymes and the magical illustrations of Arthur Rackham, Kay Nielsen and Jessie Wilcox Smith. Three things that have always given me comfort and filled my soul and imagination: stories, the music and rhythm of language, and art.

I love picture books, the way each reading reveals more treasures in the words and illustrations. I love the language in picture books by Mary Ann Hoberman and Phyllis Root, the cleverness in a story by Lisa Wheeler, the tenderness in a book by Sarah Stewart. I love the gorgeous illustrations in Lauren Stringer's books, the never-ending discoveries in Marla Frazee’s pictures, the humor in Nadine Bernard Westcott’s and David Small’s.

And I love that picture books are meant to be shared: read aloud in a classroom or library or—best of all—by parents and their children snuggled up side-by-side.