An Interview with Children's Author
Karen Magnuson Beil
by Debbi Michiko Florence
Karen Magnuson Beil grew up in Vernon, CT and began her writing career as a reporter in Chicago. Later she worked as a writer and editor in upstate New York. When her children were small, she wrote freelance magazine articles and rediscovered her love of children's books. She found herself writing less for adults and more and more for children. "There is no better audience than children," she says. "They are enthusiastic, demanding, and deserve our best."
Her first picture book, GRANDMA ACCORDING TO ME, celebrates the special relationship between grandparents and grandchildren and was illustrated by Reading Rainbow favorite Ted Rand (Doubleday). A CAKE ALL FOR ME is about a hungry pig who must make a decision about a cake: to hog it all or share? (Holiday House, illustrated by Paul Meisel). Her nonfiction book for mid-grade brought her back to journalism. FIRE IN THEIR EYES: WILDFIRES AND THE PEOPLE WHO FIGHT THEM was chosen by the American Library Association as a Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. The National Council of Teachers of English said it was one of the year's best 20 nonfiction books. It was on the nonfiction honor list of the Voice of Youth Advocates, highly recommended by the ALA Orbis Pictus Committee, and kids in Maine selected it for the Maine Student Book Award list.
MOOOVE OVER is a fun counting picture book for kids. It’s great for parents to read to their children, as well as for teachers to use in the classroom. How did you come up with the idea for this counting book?
MOOOVE OVER was like a jigsaw puzzle without the boxtop, a handful of pieces to be fitted together. Piece One was a joke that my mother used to play on my daughters. She’d pile in the backseat of the car with them and ask if they had enough room. When they answered yes, she’d say, “Well, then move over!” and give them a playful push. It always brought giggles. The first time I heard it I knew I wanted to use it in a book.
Then, with the success of A CAKE ALL FOR ME, my editor suggested we do another math-related picture book. So I talked with kids and teachers during school visits and scoured my local library for Piece Two: a math topic that hadn’t already been done. Counting by twos was unclaimed, just waiting for me. I had a crazy joke and a math focus, then all I needed to tie the pieces together was a character in a dramatic situation that forced him to count quickly.
I love the pushy cow in the story. And the counting trolley driver. How did you come up with the characters for the story? And how do you decide what animals to use?
These animals are people substitutes. They got their start in A CAKE ALL FOR ME. In my kitchen/office I was hungry and wrote the story in first person so it was, well, autobiographical. My kitchen is not a good place to write. But illustrator Paul Meisel pictured the characters as farm animals. Our editor asked what kind of animal I’d like as the main character. Animal? After I got over my initial shock, I realized the only animal who’d eat a whole cake by himself was a pig. I went back on my diet.
I loved Paul’s illustrations and the humor he brought to that book so I was thinking about animal characters for MOOOVE OVER right from the start. Choosing the animals was fun. Pushy, obnoxious, rude, bossy. . . Remember the Elmer’s Glue mascot, Bossy the cow? This animal who bellows “Mooooove over!” could only be a cow. In an earlier draft, the driver was a long-horned steer. It seemed appropriate to have a steer at the wheel. But Paul turned him into a dog, probably figuring the horns wouldn’t fit in the trolley without clobbering the passengers. And of course we wouldn’t want to injure the passengers. After all they’re dealing with an obnoxious cow already. As for the rest of the characters, I was connecting images and sounds, especially words to bolster the math, like pair, team, duet, duo, twosome. A team had to be horses. And a “pair of pigs,” “duet of ducks” sounded good.
You share activity suggestions at the back of the book to use with the story. Was that your idea? Did you come up with the activities?
Yes. Isn’t it always easier to learn when you’re having fun? I wanted to capitalize on the story’s fun by including games and directions for making hands-on manipulatives that would help extend the experience of reading the book. The story came first of course. It had to be fun to read aloud with plenty of action and places where children could chime in. Not every book warrants activity suggestions, but I wanted this book to be useful beyond the story, to help kids see math as a fun and natural part of daily living.
I came up with a batch of ideas which I then hashed over with two terrific math-maniacs: my neighbor, Beth Bini, a second-grade teacher, and children’s librarian Joyce Laiosa. Beth is a math-teacher leader at Altamont Elementary School, in Guilderland, NY, and Joyce excites kids with math programs at the Voorheesville Public Library. Beth and Joyce added to my collection and then kid-tested the activities. Some found their way into the book, others will be on my website.
You’ve written another counting book, A CAKE ALL FOR ME. Did you like math as a child? What were your favorite subjects in school?
Funny you should ask. Well, not really, maybe, yes, definitely. I loved math-word puzzles and, in high school, geometry. Drawing all those angles was great fun, like art. But my favorite subjects were English, history, science, art. I loved learning to diagram sentences. It was logical like algebra and helped make sense of our beautiful language full of complexities. I loved getting lost in a book. But I had to work hard at math; it didn’t come naturally to me. I hope in writing these books that maybe I can save some child from struggling the way I did by making math fun from the start.
Did you always know you wanted to be a children’s writer? Tell us a little about your journey.
My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Helen Abuza, cheered me on as a writer. She assigned lots of reports. I loved doing the research so much that occasionally I’d be too "sick" to go to school. I’d stay home working in my pajamas at a card table—reading, researching, and writing, and having a blast. Hey, things haven’t changed much.
By the time I was a teenager, I’d dreamed of being an artist, an architect, a swimmer, a dancer, an English teacher. But oddly enough it was in a meeting at a prospective college that an interviewer predicted I’d be a writer. That was the first I’d even imagined that it might be possible to do what you really love.
I transferred my sophomore year from Upsala College in New Jersey to Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. I wanted to write for National Geographic Magazine. I pictured myself on safari writing at a card table in a tent on the African plain. I spent the next three years getting so caught up in reading Chaucer and Shakespeare that I failed a math course (oops). After graduation, I landed a job at the legendary City News Bureau, a wire service operated by Chicago’s daily newspapers as a training ground for "cub" reporters. We were all young, just out of school, and were called the "City News kids." Working there taught me valuable lessons—how to meet a deadline, ask tough questions, doggedly follow a story, and read upside down. This last skill is useful when interviewing people with reports on their desks.
I’ve worked as a science writer and editor and supervised a staff of creative people—writers, artists, photographers, and designers. In one challenging job, I was responsible for helping reporters get answers to questions during the environmental disaster at Love Canal near Buffalo, NY, in the late 1970’s.
I left my job so I could spend more time with my two-year-old daughter. I wrote freelance magazine articles when we weren’t making play-dough or jumping in puddles. We read piles of picture books. Kim – later joined by her sister Kirsten - would beg for book after book. They discovered it was easy to delay bedtime, knowing it was hard for me to say no to another book. I was hooked. My mother was a children’s librarian and an avid reader. My father mesmerizes us with stories, recites poetry, and loves history. Two aunts and an uncle were children’s book illustrators. My aunt Bette Darwin, who illustrated Beverly Cleary’s book SOCKS, still meets with her illustrator friends once a month to play and make art. So this may be a genetic condition.
What do you like to do when you’re not writing?
I love to spend time with my family, read, walk, do yoga, dance, collect shells and stones on my favorite beach on the Cape, watch movies, build and fly kites.
What’s the best thing about being a children’s writer?
There are lots of 'best things.' If I have to pick just one, it’s the writing itself—creating something from scratch that might encourage some child somewhere to love to read. I like the idea of letting the words loose on the world and knowing that readers will make something of their own from them.
What’s the hardest thing about being a children’s writer?
The business part of writing.
Where and how do you write? Do you have a writing schedule?
I write on a laptop. My day is like anybody else’s work day, except that I don’t go to "the office." But if I can’t sleep at night, I head to my desk. Nine-to-five can become much longer than an eight hour day, or it can make room for a walk in the woods.
I used to write in a kitchen closet, just big enough for a washer and dryer. There I could keep an eye on the kids and the supper bubbling on the stove. But when I was researching my mid-grade nonfiction, FIRE IN THEIR EYES, it became too confining. So many books, so many taped interviews, so little room. I migrated to the living room. I love it here—bright windows on the north and south walls, a view of the birds in the garden, and away from the refrigerator.
What can fans expect from you next?
Holiday House has a picture book that’s tentatively called, WHO REALLY BUILT JACK’S HOUSE? Next up is a new challenge—a novel I’ve been thinking about for a few years. I have several picture book ideas in various stages, fiction and nonfiction, but I’m trying to keep them at bay to leave mental room for the novel.
Interview © 2004 by Debbi Michiko Florence.
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