What’s New

• I reviewed four recent picture books with unreliable narrators and storytellers for The New Yorker (4/20/26). I’ve been a subscriber and avid reader of The New Yorker since I was in my 20s, so it was a real joy to see something I wrote in a magazine that once published E. B. White. You can read about these funny new picture books here: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-thrill-of-picture-books-that-let-kids-in-on-the-joke
• I’ll be at the Sullivan County Youth Book Festival at the Ethelbert Crawford Public Library in Monticello, NY on May 30th from 10 am to 3 pm. Come see me!  
• Bulldozer’s Big Rescue and Bulldozer Goes to School, the first two books in my new early chapter book series, Bulldozer and Friends, came out in January and July 2025. They were edited by the fabulous Christy Ottaviano (right) and illustrated by the wonderful Kelly Murphy. Book 1 was an Amazon Best Book of the Month and Book 2 was a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. The series features a shy bulldozer in a human family who is worried about all the usual kid things… making friends, starting school, navigating a complex world.  Early chapter books have always had a special place in my heart. I reviewed some of my favorites here:  https://shepherd.com/best-books/early-readers-with-funny-animal-friendships
• My picture book Bedtime for Little Bulldozer, which first introduced this character, came out in paperback, in January. 
• Trouble at School for Marvin and James, the third book in the Masterpiece Adventures series for young readers, is now a One School, One Book selection of the national literacy organization Read to Them! I’ve had so many wonderful school visits based on the One School, One Book program, and I love visiting schools to talk about Masterpiece with readers in grades 3-5 and the Marvin and James books with K-2 students. Please contact me or visit www.readtothem.org for a list of suggested activities for both books; you can find out more about my experience with the One School, One Book program here in their newsletter.
• For the past few years, I’ve loved doing freelance writing and editing for the Scholastic magazines. Look for my stories and plays based on historical figures and events, folk tales, and classic literature in the Storyworks magazine for Grades 4 – 6. 
• My latest novel, Duet, is out in paperback with a brand new, beautiful cover by the gifted Kelly Murphy.
• Above is a picture from ALA with my beloved editor and friend, Christy Ottaviano, holding my mystery, The Wolf Keepers.  You can see a short video of me talking about the book here.  
• I love doing writing workshops with students in elementary school. Off and on since 2018, I’ve been teaching a creative writing seminar to undergraduates at Yale called “Coming of Age: Writing about Childhood Turning Points.” In addition, I occasionally teach a 3-day class, “Creating Picture Books with Humor and Heart,” for adults at the Boyds Mills Retreat Center (Highlights Foundation) in Milanville, Pennsylvania with my friends Emily Jenkins, author of many award-winning picture books, and Sunita Apte, Executive Editor at Reycraft Books.  This is a terrific place to learn the ins-and-outs of writing for children–and to immerse yourself in a creative community surrounded by bucolic farmland and nourished by delicious food.  

What’s Next

I’ve just finished a new novel, The Book Nobody Could Read, about the Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious, real-life manuscript from Renaissance Italy that is written in a language nobody has ever been able to de-code. It’s scheduled for publication with Little, Brown in Fall 2027.

I also have a new picture book, A Tutu for You Too, coming out with Little, Brown.

What I’m Reading

Picture book: Knight Owl by Christopher Denise. This funny, touching story of a little owl harboring the big dream of becoming a knight is full of sly humor, warm emotion, and satisfying surprises. Denise teams up with the ever-amazing Christy Ottaviano to create a character who is sure to join the ranks of picture book favorites like Frances, Pigeon, and Olivia. A charmer.

Middle Grade: The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin. As my books show, I’m a huge fan of mysteries based on real-life events, and this fun, puzzly novel set in England during World War II has it all–engaging characters, a vivid setting, an unbreakable code, and legitimately high stakes. Hats off to these two!

Adult: I’ve read two of my favorite novels of all time in just the last few months: Stoner by John Williams and Light Years by James Salter. They were both published many decades ago, but the beauty of the language, the sharpness of the insights, and the fullness of the characters’ journeys left me in awe. From Stoner, about love: “Now in his middle age, he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion, but a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment, day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.”  From Light Years: “There is no happiness like this: quiet mornings, the light from the river, the weekend ahead. They lived a Russian life, a rich life, interwoven, in which the misfortune of one would stagger them all. It was a garment, this life. Its beauty outside, its warmth within.”  Happy reading!