Outside Inside

Outside, Inside is a poetic story of contrasts about all the fun things a little girl does indoors during a thunderstorm. It will always be very special to me since it was the first book I ever got published. In fact, when the editor called to tell me that Simon & Schuster would be publishing it, I cried on the phone. This was not the best negotiation tactic. It’s very difficult to pretend that you’re some hard-nosed businesswoman after you’ve just blubbered on the phone about how this is the best day of your life and that you’d do it all for free.

I wrote the first draft of Outside, Inside on a stormy day. I love that warm, cozy feeling of being indoors during a big storm. The text for the book was only one page long, but it took me over a year to make the words sound just right. I kept re-reading the story and adding or taking away words before I thought it was good enough to submit. Of course my editor wanted me to make MORE changes. Editors, you know, are paid to torment writers this way. I felt the story was perfect, but after I thought about her suggestions I had to agree with her. The book was 250 words. I revised 249 of them.

I was very pleased with the illustrations Linnea made using cut paper. I especially love the illustration withMolly twirling on her tiptoes. The funny thing to me is that I do not mention frogs or a pet bird once in the text,and yet Linnea has them throughout the book. I love seeing how illustrators add their own details to the story.