Friday, October 28, 2022

"Meet Douglas Gardham, the hardest-working Canadian novelist you’ve never heard of"

 Jul. 16, 2016 "Meet Douglas Gardham, the hardest-working Canadian novelist you’ve never heard of": Today I read this article by Mark Medley in the Globe and Mail.  It was a very inspiring article about how Gardham self- publishes his book and drives all across Canada and the States to sell his book at bookstores.  I have talked to authors who sell their books at the tables in bookstores.


Gardham is a real hard worker who hustles a lot to sell his books.  He's got a lot of tenacity and motivation to follow his dream to be a successful writer.  He kind of reminds me of the days from 2008-2012 when I was constantly pitching my script and trying to get it produced.  I was mainly emailing TV production companies and not doing physical work like him driving and talking to bookstore customers:



On a recent Saturday evening, Douglas Gardham is sitting behind the wheel of his black Acura TL, on a highway west of Toronto, making his way back to Alliston, the small town where he lives. The road is slick from the rainstorm that passed through the area earlier that afternoon, and traffic is relatively light. The radio is off, and the car, for the moment, is quiet.

He seems tired. It’s almost 10 p.m., and it has been, for Gardham, a long day; he’d arrived home just after one that morning, having spent the previous week-and-a-half in Mexico with his wife, where they celebrated their 30th anniversary, and left his house at 10 a.m. to drive to a Chapters bookstore in a big-box shopping mall on the border of Oakville and Mississauga.

He spent the subsequent nine hours standing behind a small table, near the entrance, hawking his two self-published books to strangers.

“It was a better day than I thought it would be,” he says, his eyes darting between the road ahead and the rear-view mirror. “I didn’t think we’d get to that number.”

He sold 29 books that day, surpassing the 16 sales he averages at each event. This is Gardham’s career. Every weekend for the past three years, with very few exceptions, Douglas Gardham has travelled to a different bookstore, from British Columbia to New England, to sell his books. 

Three years ago, just after his first novel, The Actor, was published, he quit his full-time job of 20 years to try and make it as a writer. By his own estimate, he’s driven more than 115,000 kilometres during his travels, which have undoubtedly cost him much more than he’s earned. 

This weekend, he’ll be in London; next weekend, it’ll be Peterborough; at the end of the month, he’ll visit Toronto. He has events booked through the rest of 2016. When I ask, as we leave Mississauga behind, how long he can keep this schedule up, he doesn’t hesitate at all before answering.

“I can’t see myself stopping.”

You’ve probably never heard of Douglas Gardham. I’d never heard of him, either, when, a little more than three years ago, he e-mailed me out of the blue. He’d just published The Actor, which he’d been working on since 1998, and was trying to drum up some media attention. 

As a rule, I rarely write about self-published books – there are too many, they are largely terrible and most of them are not readily available in bookstores. I told him to send me a copy of the book, though I had no intention of writing about it.

Over the months – and eventually years – that followed I began to think of Gardham as my benevolent stalker; he sent me regular updates, links to blog posts he’d written, interviews he’d conducted with small-town papers and radio stations and tagged me in tweets, which often included a photograph of Gardham, taken in whichever bookstore he happened to be visiting that weekend, smiling and holding up copies of The Actor and The Drive In, a short-story collection he published in late 2014. 

Most authors publicizing a new book spend a month or two spreading the word, but Gardham kept going and going. Last year, while visiting in-laws in Ottawa, I spotted him at the Chapters in Kanata; I watched from a distance, pretending to flip through a magazine, as he greeted everyone who walked by, fascinated by this author who was in the midst of a seemingly endless book tour. I felt sorry for him, to be honest, but I also admired his commitment. 

Finally, a few months ago, after receiving one of his newsletters and realizing it had been three years since he’d first contacted me, I could no longer help myself. Who was Douglas Gardham?

We meet at the Indigo at Bay and Bloor in Toronto one Saturday in June. Gardham, who is 54 years old, has been told he looks like a slightly younger Bill Murray, although I’d describe him as John C. Reilly’s older brother. 

He’s wearing olive slacks and a purple plaid shirt and, when I arrive, is in the midst of preparing for the day. (He goes on to sell 18 books.) He shakes my hand with a child-like giddiness, and we sit and chat in a nearby Starbucks, agreeing how strange it is to be finally meeting after all these years. I apologize for taking so long to interview him, and he laughs.

“I didn’t have a clue what I was doing,” he says of his early media outreach. “I had to come to the realization [that] I’d been writing most of my life, but from the world’s perspective, I’d just started.”

The Actor, a bizarre, David Lynch-like thriller about obsession, delusion and determination, tells the story of a man named Ethan Jones who, still haunted by the disappearance of his college girlfriend years earlier, moves to Hollywood to try and become a star

It’s a novel about pursuing dreams, about never losing faith – lines include 

“You just can’t stand there and expect something to happen” 

and “You only get to go through [life] once, you know. You got to make it count” – and it’s difficult not to draw parallels between Gardham’s life and that of his protagonist.

Ethan, even when his career is floundering, is constantly telling people, “You won’t forget me,” and to remember his name because “you’ll hear it again someday.”

“I’ve talked to so many people who are not necessarily doing what they want to do,” he says. 

“They have something inside them that they would like to do but they just can’t. And that’s how The Actor was originally written – the idea of someone getting out from what they were doing and chasing a dream.”

Gardham was born in Toronto in 1962. His mother was an elementary school teacher who became a stay-at-home mom after the birth of Gardham and his two younger siblings, while his father worked for Bank of Nova Scotia. The family moved from town to town – Oshawa, Kitchener, Petrolia – before settling in Markham. 

Gardham was a talented athlete – “If you talk to my father today, he would still say [I] could have played professional hockey” – and an avid musician (his high school band was named Atlantis; they make a cameo in The Actor). After graduating from Carleton with a degree in mechanical engineering, he moved to Toronto, where he worked for the Ministry of Transportation by day and played the occasional open-mic night, although his dreams of becoming a musician ended at the Free Times Cafe on College Street.

“I invited a bunch of friends one night and it was just a disaster,” he recalls. “I was so embarrassed. That’s actually when I started to write short stories.” (The Gift, one of the stories collected in The Drive In, dates from this era.)

He bounced around, from city to city – Toronto, Cambridge and, finally, Alliston – and job to job – a computer company, a snowplough manufacturer and Husky Injection Molding Systems, where he spent two decades. The entire time he was leading what he calls “a double life.”

“Engineering is not particularly creative, and there’s a reason,” he says. “You want the planes to stay in the air, boats to float, wheels to stay on your car. You don’t want to get creative in those areas. So, for me, writing was always that outlet.”

His first novel, which he wrote on the bus to and from work, was called H20 and was about an engineer working for a lawnmower company who invents a hydrogen-powered car that threatens the oil industry and leads to the abduction of his wife. 

A second novel, with the working title Misunderstood, concerned a man who learns of a sexual assault only to realize “he’s closer to it than he thought he was.” His third novel was The Actor.

After completing a manuscript in 2000, Gardham then tried to find a literary agent or publisher, sending the novel to several of the big American imprints.

“I knew nothing,” he admits. “I would get rejection after rejection. I can remember being in Bolton” – where Husky is based – “and literally phoning New York from a pay phone to see whether they’d looked at my submission or not.”

He put the novel aside for a while, writing short stories instead, but “it never went away. It would just eat away [at me]. And every two or three years, it would come back and say something like, ‘Is this it?’ ” 

Finally, after a decade of frustration, he turned to iUniverse, the Indiana-based publishing service that has released some eventual bestsellers, including Lisa Genova’s Still Alice and, here in Canada, The Best Laid Plans, by Terry Fallis.

The novel was published in April, 2013; the following month, Gardham was asked to transfer to a new position at Husky, something he had little interest in doing. “I really felt like I had something special and I couldn’t let it go any more,” he says. So, during a meeting with colleagues, he asked them to search for his name and The Actor on the Internet.

“ ‘Wow, an author with your name.’ That was the first response. I said, ‘That’s actually me. That’s my book.’ ”

His last day of work was May 31, 2013; his friends held a book launch for him the next day.

I visit Gardham in Alliston on a Monday afternoon in late June. He lives in a spacious suburban house with his wife, Laura, a personal trainer. (They have a son who lives in Toronto and a daughter who lives in Vancouver.) Upstairs, he shows me his office, the walls hidden by bookshelves showing off his wide-ranging taste in books: Nino Ricci and Alice Munro shelved next to Joe Hill; Jonathan Franzen’s Farther Away next to Neil Pasricha’s The Book of Awesome; two copies of Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures; Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries and Ron MacLean’s Cornered; Claire Tomalin’s biography of Charles Dickens and Walter Isaacson’s biography of Albert Einstein; Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler and Stephen King.

“I wouldn’t be here without King or Robertson Davies,” he says as I study the spines. “It was King that inspired me through his ‘Constant Reader’ notes that I could actually write, and Davies always said writing is more about diligence and discipline than anything else.”

Gardham is disciplined in his diligence. He held his first signing in the summer of 2013 and has since then done more than 125 events. The weekend before we first met in Toronto, he’d been in Massachusetts and Vermont; the following weekend, he drove up to Sudbury for the day, arriving back home at three in the morning. He sold 27 books that day.

“I think Doug probably does more signings at Chapters-Indigo than any other author in Canada,” says Keith Ogorek, the senior vice-president of marketing at Author Solutions, the parent company of iUniverse. 

“I don’t know what his motivation is. I don’t know how he’s wired – I haven’t seen his Briggs-Myers [personality test] or anything so I don’t know why he does it.”

Gardham’s wife, Laura, describes her husband as “an introvert,” and Gardham himself initially dismissed the idea of doing in-store events, saying, “I’m the guy that comes in the store [and] goes to the shelf and looks at books. I’m not the guy that’s coming to the table.”

The table is always flanked by a banner, about seven feet tall, which Gardham printed at Home Depot and which features both the covers, and short blurbs about, his two books. He will stand there – and he is adamant about this part, saying “if you’re not famous, and you don’t have a lineup at your book signing, stand up!” – for hours on end, rarely, if ever, taking a break. 

He brings snacks from home. He greets everyone who walks by with a cheerful hello, and always brings a stack of business cards to hand out to those who listen to his “20-second elevator pitch,” which he has delivered tens of thousands of times.

The Actor is the story of a young man’s journey of self-discovery and overcoming the trauma of a personal tragedy in his life, which he does in a somewhat unique way – by chasing a dream,” he says, delivering it like an infomercial voice-over when I ask him to try it out on me. 

“Except the dream isn’t quite what it seems. It’s a story of love and hardship, persistence and overwhelming joy. It reads like a thriller but it’s more than that. And the tagline for the book is ‘The Actor can portray anything you can imagine.’ ”

Both times I watched him at work, he sold a book within the first five minutes; he happily signed their copies when the customers returned from the cashierHe often asks them to pose for a photo, which he will post on social media. The days can be long, and sometimes boring, but “it’s a privilege and good fortune to actually do something that I just never really thought was going to happen.”

Gardham has an admittedly scattershot approach to publicity; the bookstore events are just one part of it. He blogs, updates his Facebook page and sends out an eclectic collection of tweets to his 86,000 followers. 

“I think you have to be everywhere. You have to consider almost everything. I know some things work and some things don’t.” Numerous times, he tells me how little he knows about the publishing industry, but this ignorance serves him well.

“You’re not supposed to call Heather Reisman?” he asks me at one point. “Why not?”

Gardham has already written his next two novels, The Musician, which he hopes to publish next year, and The Author; together, they form a trilogy. Despite his relative success with self-publishing – he’s sold more than 4,000 books in total, a solid number for Canada – he very much hopes to land a “traditional” publisher. 

He talks of reaching “the next level.” He’s planning more events in the United States, calling it “wide-open territory.” And although he’s visited many bookstores multiple times, he still sees potential growth closer to home. “There’s what, 3.5 million people in the [Greater Toronto Area]? My last number was 4,300 books [sold]. I have a long way to go.”

Just how long he’ll be able to go remains uncertain. His life, he admits, “was planned and predictable before. It’s not like that any more.” When I ask him about finances, he says, in the business world, “you’re usually five-plus years before you actually break even.” He’s been at it for more than three. 

Writing is his only source of income, and currently, “I’m relying on savings that we’ve got. But we’re not far off.” He can’t imagine going back to work. “If you’re not willing to give up everything for it, you don’t want it bad enough.”

Laura says that while “I really, really want it to work for him, because it’s something that he cares deeply about, of course I have concerns.” Such as? “That it won’t be sustainable. The books have got to hit a tipping point. One of these books has got to fly. It’s got to go big in order for him to make a living as an author.”

But even if he gives up everything, success is not guaranteed. We’re sitting at his kitchen table, having just returned from lunch at his local diner, and I ask him if he ever considers that.

“You can strive for something as much as you want but there’s no guarantee it’s going to pay off in the end,” I say.

That spending almost every Saturday for three years on the road is not enough. 

That saying hello to strangers 500 times in one afternoon is not enough. 

That quitting your job is not enough. 

That visiting bookstores from Belleville to Brampton to Burlington is not enough. 

That writing is not enough. 

That none of it is enough.

“You just don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says. “But not to try, and to wish you had, is a whole other category. And I’ve had enough of that to know.”



Here are 2 comments right now:

Doug88888 12 hours ago
Very interesting. Both inspiring and concerning at the same time. I do, however, commend him on his persistence and dedication to his craft and dream. Good Luck!!

Reply
+2  -0
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Pa Kettle 8 hours ago
Hard work is one thing, but how good is the novel? That's what it really comes down to.



Jul. 4, 2017: I was looking up on my blog and I decided to check if there are new comments and there are a few on the Globe and Mail website:

Rich Mole
Jul 17, 2016

I met a novelist like Gardham hawking his wares (oh, what a demeaning phrase!--I mean, "marketing his work") in Victoria's Bastion Square back in the late 1990s. He was still at it about 2012 up the Saanich Peninsula, on a special weekend during which Sidney turns a portion of Beacon Avenue into an outdoor mall. He had amassed (err, written) about a dozen titles by then. A fellow obsessive, I guess.

Used to be, about a quarter century ago, authors were merely obsessive about writing. Then they were persuaded or forced to get out and market their books--even those who were lucky enough (and I mean "lucky") to have a publisher's contract.

So, some are now burdened with two obsessions: writing the stuff and then trying to sell what they write. Writing's the fun stuff--what writer wouldn't rather be pounding the keyboard instead of pounding the pavement in search of book-buyers? Writers are writers.

Gardham says some provocative things.  “If you’re not willing to give up everything for it, you don’t want it bad enough.” That's an obsessive talking. 

“I’ve talked to so many people who are not necessarily doing what they want to do,” he says. “They have something inside them that they would like to do but they just can’t." Or won't. They think about what it would take, and say, "Nuts. Where's the beer?"

"“There’s what, 3.5 million people in the [Greater Toronto Area]? My last number was 4,300 books [sold]. I have a long way to go.” In saying this, Gardham assumes most are readers, If you believe Pulitzer Prize and National Book award-winning US author, Phillip Roth (Goodbye, Columbus; Portnoy's Complaint; The Human Stain.) the number of novel-readers is dwindling fast.

Roth believes that by 2030 novel-reading will be a "cultic" activity. " "I think always people will be reading them but it will be a small group of people," told the Guardian. What's to blame? "The book can't compete with the screen ... the movie screen ... the television screen, and it can't compete with the computer screen."

Shhh...don't tell Douglas Gardham. What the heck: the man's happy. Isn't he?


Al1311
Jul 17, 2016
Next time I see an author out promoting their book...I'm going over to find out more! Great story.

JWhatever
Jul 17, 2016
I admire the hell out of him. I hope he makes it.



My opinion: This stood out to me.  However, I will post this Charlie Brown and Snoopy picture:

It’s a novel about pursuing dreams, about never losing faith – lines include 

“You just can’t stand there and expect something to happen” 

“You only get to go through [life] once, you know. You got to make it count.”




This week's theme is about book reviews and author interviews: 

"Hippos, birdies, T. rexes and pigs" (Sandra Boynton)/ "Not just kids' stuff"



"Mo'nuttiness" (Mo Willems)/ "Bonding over books" (Father's Day)




My week:



Fri. Oct. 21, 2022 Job search: Today I passed out a resume to an office in- person.  It did say to do that on the job ad on the internet.  I am proud of myself that I woke up early and took 2 buses to get there.

Autumn cleaning: You have all heard of spring cleaning, but today I did some autumn cleaning.  I was watching some videos by Dana Claudat from the Tao of Dana.  This inspired me to clean.  My mom and grandma has told me to wipe the dust off my desk and dresser.  I did that, and I wiped the dust at the bottom of my desk chair, and the baseboards of my room.

I never wiped the dust off the baseboards of my room before.

Feng Shui To Change Your Life | The Tao of Dana (fengshuidana.com)

My 2004 computer: This stopped working again.  Last month, my dad's friend T came and fixed it and I was able to print.

However, it's not working even if I unplug some things and plug it back in.  I called T and he said the mother board is not working.

Do you have an old computer to sell to me or give away?: I put this on my Facebook page, and emailed some friends from the Screenwriters and Filmmakers group.  

I have asked this question before last year.

My printer: I talked to my dad and he showed me how the printer can't be connected to the 2013 computer.

Sat. Oct. 22, 2022 Wal- Mart in Kingsway mall: 

New Kingsway Mall Walmart Supercentre replaces Westmount Mall store | Edmonton Journal

Shoppers Drug Mart in West Edmonton Mall: I like Shoppers Drug Mart because I get to buy chips and snack foods there, and put that on my Shoppers Optimum card.

Shoppers Drug Mart | West Edmonton Mall (wem.ca)

Padmanandi: I went there for my friend Cham's birthday lunch with the Personality Meetup group.  There were 10 of us.  This was in the downtown location.  The decor has really beautiful art with some autumn leaves decorations.

We ordered: 

the coconut rice

jasmine rice, 

curry chicken, 

vegan ginger beef, 

Padmandi Vegetable Deluxe

spicy eggplant

We ate this family style where we shared the food, instead of having our own individual meals.  We all paid $15.45 each (and choose how much to tip.)  I thought the food was average.  M and D thought it was above average.

Padmanadi | Vegan Restaurant & Eatery | Edmonton

Stanley A. Milner library: D drove me to the restaurant.  D then drove me to the library and M was driven home after I got out.

I had to print my resumes to pass out for a holiday job.  It costs 10 cents per page (black and white.)  50 cents for color.

The librarian was helpful in helping me print.

City Centre mall: I passed out my resume to 10 stores.


Oct. 20, 2022 "Norwegian company hopes to generate energy, capture carbon from Alberta garbage": Today I found this article by Paula Duhatschek on CBC.  I like this article because it's about saving the environment:

A Norwegian clean energy development company is betting big on Alberta as the place to combine its waste-to-energy technology with a method of capturing carbon and storing it underground.

Varme Energy, which was incorporated in Edmonton this summer, wants to set up facilities in Alberta that use Aitos gasification technology, a two-step combustion process owned by its parent company that's been used in waste-to-energy facilities in Norway for more than a decade.

Through this process, waste that was headed for landfill instead is converted into steam that can be used for district heating, industrial processes or put through a turbine to generate power. 

"You're literally diverting the [garbage] trucks, instead of going and dumping at the landfill, they come and dump into a facility like ours," said Sean Collins, CEO of Varme Energy, a subsidiary of Norway's Green Transition Holding. 

Norwegian company hopes to generate energy, capture carbon from Alberta garbage | CBC News

Oct. 22, 2022 "Got a gas furnace? Higher prices to heat your home 'not going away'": Today I found this article by James Dunne on CBC news.  This is about saving money and saving the environment:

Simple low-cost actions include things like:

  • Lowering the thermostat while you sleep.
  • Making sure exterior doors have weather stripping and sweeps to prevent heat escaping.
  • Sealing around small holes for cable lines and vents.
  • Changing your washrooms to low-flow shower heads.


Oct. 23, 2022 "Got gift cards collecting dust? Now's the time to use them": Today I found this article by Philip Drost on CBC.  Here's another article about finance and saving money.  If you are going to buy something that you need and want, use the gift cards:

Square, a financial technology company that sells mobile payment devices, found Canadians are sitting on more than $33 million worth of unspent gift cards through its platform alone. 

And as inflation rises and wears down people's wallets, those gift cards are becoming less and less valuable. Of that money tracked by Square, $20 million is on physical gift cards, while the other $13 million is on digital gift cards.

Got gift cards collecting dust? Now's the time to use them | CBC Radio


Oct. 24, 2022 "Mom, daughter face homelessness after buying home and tenant refuses to leave": Today I found this article by Priscilla Ki Sun Hwang  

An Ottawa homeowner says she and her daughter could soon be homeless because they can't move into the townhouse she bought in April due to a tenant who refuses to leave — and she blames the Ontario government for failing her family.

Elsie Kalu says the ordeal led to her losing her job, plus she is now at risk of getting kicked out of her rental and faces threats of foreclosure — losing her property to the mortgage lender. She is begging Ontario's Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) to grant her a hearing so she can state her case to evict her tenant and finally move into the home she bought.

"Why would the government allow another person to take everything from one person? It's like robbing the poor to pay the poor," said Kalu, standing outside of the home she hasn't entered since buying it.

"It can't be right. I cannot provide social services for another citizen. I'm not rich enough."

Mom, daughter face homelessness after buying home and tenant refuses to leave | CBC News

My opinion: I like that this article is on the national news.  Now this woman can increase her chances of getting help either from the Ontario's Landlord and Tenant Board or from someone else.


Oct. 26, 2022 "Jennifer Garner shares how she celebrated turning 50: 'I basically had a wedding for myself'":

Today I found this article by Kaitlin Reilly on Yahoo:

One way Garner said she is a real person? She celebrated her 50th birthday with a lavish party.

"I basically had a wedding for myself," she said. "I was so shocked that I was doing it." Of course, she then put her guests "to work" filling backpacks with food for the charity Blessings in a Backpack.

Jennifer Garner shares how she celebrated turning 50: 'I basically had a wedding for myself' (yahoo.com)

Blessings in a Backpack feeds kids on the weekend


"Mo'nuttiness" (Mo Willems)/ "Bonding over books" (Father's Day)

Sept. 10, 2016 "Mo'nuttiness": I cut out this article by Maggie Galehouse in the Globe and Mail on Feb. 16, 2010:



A cute bird with a desperate desire to drive launched Mo Willems’s career in books.
Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! was followed by the Knuffle Bunny books, earning Willems three Caldecott Honors in a handful of years. Yet the author insists he doesn’t write for children.

“I’m writing for silly people, and it just so happens that the majority of people still willing to be silly are younger,” he says.

A former writer and animator for Sesame Street, Willems, 42, has two new books for silly people, Cat the Cat Who Is That? and Let’s Say Hi to Friends Who Fly! We caught up with him recently to find out if he is silly, too. 


Q: What's the secret to understanding children?

A: Children happen to be people. The main difference between us and them is that they're shorter. But that doesn't mean they're dumber or that they don't have emotions. You have to take them seriously. The drama that happens in my books is real.

Q: What do kids want from books?

A: Kids don't have cultural modifiers. They don't know what the Arc de Triomphe is. Watergate doesn't mean anything to them. They're working on things like walking. So you have to write the most basic, bare-bones funny. It has to be true. It has to come from an emotional place — jealousy, anger, joy — as opposed to a cultural place.

Q: In Cat the Cat Who Is That?, a new book in the youngest series you've ever created, Cat the Cat meets an odd-looking monster who might become a new friend. This monster says “Blarggie!” Does “Blarggie!” mean anything in particular?

A: “Blarggie!” is fun to say. It doesn't mean anything, but it could mean a lot of things. “Accountant” is a fun thing to say, but it means something that isn't funny. … “Blarggie” is also a big crazy word just like the monster is a big crazy thing. If the monster had been small, that wouldn't be the right word.

Q: I noticed that the pigeon of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! fame makes cameo appearances in your new books.

A: The pigeon hates it when I make books that are not about him. When I'm not looking, he has snuck into every single book I've ever made.

Q: Can you describe your writing process?

A: I think of myself as a craftsman. My father was a potter; he made pretty things, but their prettiness was secondary to their usefulness. I'm the same. 

I think people have the idea that writing is building and building, but it's more like being a sculptor. It's actually taking away, honing it.

Q: You're a man of many talents. You won six Emmys for your work on Sesame StreetYou're on NPR from time to time. Your artwork has been in galleries across the country. And now you're working on a play based on your popular Knuffle Bunny character, which premieres at the Kennedy Center this year. What's the play about?

A: Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Musical is about a girl who can't speak yet because she's too young. She and her father decide to do the laundry together, and her beloved bunny is left behind in the Laundromat. She can't communicate what's going on to her daddy. He thinks she's having a hissy fit.

Q: You got hired by Sesame Street when you were in your 20s. How did that experience shape your career?

A: When I got there I was making films for grown-ups. I was really happy to get the job because it paid the rent and I was getting to write sketch comedy. That's what Sesame Street is. It was at Sesame Street that I learned how to write for children. I wrote a lot of Elmo and a character called Baby Bear. By the time I was gone I realized this was where I wanted my career to be.

Q: Ever wish you were still writing comedy for grown-ups?

A: To be a grown-up comedian, you have to know pop culture, keep up with the scandals. I'm not good at that. I also wanted my material to be able to stand up 10 or 20 years later. Tina Fey is a genius, but 15 years from now you're going to have to explain what those jokes are about.

Q: Why can't we let the pigeon drive the bus?

A: My first answer is insurance premiums. But let's just say that the pigeon will get to drive the bus the day Charlie Brown gets to kick the football.

Maggie Galehouse is the Houston Chronicle's book editor. She grew up in New England and earned a Ph.D. in English at Temple University in Philadelphia, Penn. An award-winning reporter, Galehouse has covered education, crime, business and features for a handful of newspapers.

Occasionally, Maggie can be heard on NPR discussing books. Her book reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Houston Chronicle.

Galehouse lives south of Houston with her photographer husband and their young son, who enjoys "Encyclopedia Brown" mysteries. She writes the Bookish blog for the Chronicle.






Catching up with children's author Mo Willems (chron.com)


Jun. 14, 2017 "Bonding over books": Today I found this article by Mia Geiger in the Edmonton Journal:


Dad And The Dinosaur, by Gennifer Choldenko; illustrated by Dan Santat (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers)

Nicholas is afraid of many things, from the darkness outside to what may be lurking under manhole covers. His dad, though doesn’t share those fears. To help himself be brave like his father, Nick begins carrying a toy dinosaur — because dinosaurs aren’t afraid of things. 

“When Little Nick had his dinosaur in his pocket, he was just as brave as Big Nick.” The boy brings the dinosaur rock-climbing, to soccer games and swimming, and when his parents comment on his achievements, Nick feels proud of himself. Later, the toy goes missing.

Dad steps in, and, when Nick’s mom asks where they are going so late at night, his father answers in true dad-fashion: ‘“It’s guy stuff,” his father answered as they walked out the door.’” Multilayered, realistic illustrations combined with relatable text make the story not only about the inner turmoil of a little boy, but a deeper reflection on the bond between a father and son.


What Daddies Like, by Judy Carey Nevin; illustrated by Stephanie Six (little bee books)

A little bear and his dad spend the day enjoying different activities. From playing outside to winding down together at home, we see what daddies like. “Daddies like adventures./Daddies like swings.” Cute details abound, such as after watching the boy jump from a swing, the dad follows suit, arms flailing. 

While the young bear is in the bathtub, we learn “Daddies like splashes./Daddies like boats.” The straightforward text is sweet and wry, and the simple, soft pastel watercolor illustrations are both soothing and adorable. Little ones will love cuddling up on their dad’s lap to hear this story and look at the kid-friendly artwork.

If My Love Were A Fire Truck: A Daddy’s Love Song, by Luke Reynolds; illustrated by Jeff Mack (Doubleday Books for Young Readers)

A dad expresses the depth of his love for his son in this bright and cheery book. It starts with the father helping his son settle into sleep, then takes the reader through different venues, including a trip to the jungle, into the ocean, watching a parade and racing a car. The rhyming verses flow smoothly, lending themselves to a pleasing cadence. “If my love were a fire truck, its sirens would flash all night./And if my love were a rocket ship, it would blast off out of sight.” It’s a lovely bedtime story offering reassurance in a fun way.

Daddy Honk Honk! by Rosalinde Bonnet (Dial Books for Young Readers)

A young fox named Aput is savoring the last day of summer in the Arctic when he discovers an egg lying in the grass. “He looks and sniffs./He knocks and listens./He shakes it and …” Then, to his surprise, a baby blue goose pops out of its shell, exclaiming “Daddy Honk Honk!” 

Whatever Aput says, the baby bird responds the same way: “Daddy Honk Honk!” Aput thinks the baby bird is cute, but knows he has to find a family for him. He asks different forest animals if they would like to take the baby, but each one has a reason they can’t. They each offer a tip, though, such as the lemmings, who tell him he needs to keep the baby warm. After getting much-needed advice, he brings the baby to his house and implements all that he has learned, from cooking healthy food to keeping a watchful eye on the baby. Later, all the animals arrive at his house, to celebrate the new family. Winsome ink-and-watercolor illustrations complement the engaging story.

Papasaurus, by Stephan Lomp (Chronicle Books)

Babysaurus and his Papasaurus are playing their favorite game — hide and seek. But this time, the little dinosaur is unable to find his dad. As he encounters his friends, all of whom are different types of jungle creatures, he asks each one if they’ve seen his papa. They respond by asking if his papa has the characteristic of their own dads. The answer is no each time, with Babysaurus extolling the virtues of his papa. 

“Soon, Babysaurus saw Velo. Hey! Babysaurus called out. Have you seen my papa?/Does he have sharp claws to fight like my papa? asked Velo./No, he never fights, answered Babysaurus./Sorry, I have not seen him,” said Velo.”’ Dark backgrounds set the tone for an adventure, while the dinosaurs are rendered in bright shades of blue, yellow, orange and purple, making them the focus of each page and representative of youngsters rather than fearsome creatures. The romp through the jungle ends with a surprise for Babysaurus.

A young boy shows how his perspective affects his dad in this charming book that features brief sentences and understated artwork. “I remind you to create … /and to do things you might forget./I give you the chance to tell stories … /and I help you choose words with care.”

Whimsical sketches, in black and yellow set against ample white space, add subtle humor to the text, such as when the boy says “I show you how to talk to strangers” and the child is pictured chatting up a man on the subway as his dad looks on.



A smiling boy and his equally happy dad start out this tale, with one carrying a pan and bowl of eggs and the other holding additional cooking supplies. They make pancakes, then gleefully enjoy the fruits of their labor. Soon, though, the fun comes to a stop, as they both notice a to-do list of chores awaiting Dad. 

The boy gets an idea that turns the day around and enables them to do the activities together and to approach each chore as a playful event. “Make the beds” becomes “Sail a pirate ship.” Folding the wash and watering the garden get a fun treatment, too. The only words in the book are on the chore list, and it’s the perfect amount of text, as the characters’ faces and actions tell us what we need to know. 

Bright and breezy watercolor-and-pencil illustrations perfectly express the concept and it’s easy to smile along at the joyfulness of the father and son.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/parenting/wp/2017/06/07/celebrate-dads-this-year-with-these-books/?utm_term=.bf8577ce2ec8