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My friend Kelly Milner Halls recently participated in the Writing Process Blog Tour on her blog and asked me if I would follow her in the tour, answering a few questions about my writing. Of course, I said yes. Kelly is such a wonderful children’s author and all-around awesome human being that I thought it would be a great way to let my readers know about her and her books. She also asked Claire Rudolf Murphy to participate, and she should be posting her answers on her blog in the next couple of days.

I’ve asked Douglas Florian and Nikki Grimes to follow me in this blog tour, so next week you should be able to read about what they are working on and how and why they write what they do.

So, without further ado, here are my answers to the four questions posed on this blog tour:

What am I currently working on?

I’m currently working on a rhyming picture book. In the past, most of my books have been poetry collections, but these days I find myself writing more picture books.

How does my work differ from others in my genre?

With a few notable exceptions (e.g., Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, Douglas Florian) most children’s poetry books aren’t humorous. They tend to be more informational; poems about nature, animals, etc. So I guess it’s fair to say that my books differ from most children’s poetry books in that they are funny. At least, I hope they are. :-)

Why do I write what I write?

As a child, I loved hearing and reading funny poems and songs. So mostly I write the same sorts of things that I loved reading as a kid. I also loved reading kid detective novels, but I haven’t tried my hand at one of those yet.

What is my writing process?

Any time I get an idea, I jot it down in a note on my phone or laptop using Evernote.

I don’t have a regular writing time or location. I write whenever I can make time, and I do it wherever I happen to be. Usually that’s at home, but often I will go the the library or a coffee house to work.

When I am able to carve out a little time to write, I start by going through my ideas to find one that I would like to work on. I do all of my writing on my laptop computer using a number of programs, including Evernote, Rhymesaurus, Rhymezone.com and Thesaurus.com. I write and revise, write and revise, write and revise, until I feel like there is nothing else I can do to improve the poem. When I’m finished writing t, I file the poem in Evernote and then come back a day or two later. Often times I will see something I didn’t notice before, and I’ll make a few final revisions. At that point, the poem is usually ready for posting on my website or including in a manuscript.

May 12 is the birthday of English poet Edward Lear, who would be 209 years old if he were still alive. He is well known for his drawings as well as for the poems and limericks that he wrote. Lear has been called a nonsense poet because he liked to use made-up words along with real ones in his poems. He also wrote about fanciful things that wouldn’t happen in real life. You may have read or heard his most famous poem, “The Owl and the Pussycat,” which is often taught to young children. Here is a short excerpt:

They dined on mince, and slices of quince
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Edward Lear grew up near London as one of 21 children in his family. He was raised by his sister Ann, who was more than 20 years older than him. Lear was often sick during his childhood, suffering from asthma and epilepsy among other health problems.

Lear’s drawings and paintings of animals were first published when he was a teenager. As an adult, he enjoyed traveling to faraway places and painting landscapes of what he saw in his travels. He published his first book of nonsense limericks in 1846.

A limerick is a kind of short, funny poem that has five rhyming lines and starts with the words, “There was a…” Limericks usually have the same kind of rhythm. Edward Lear didn’t invent this kind of poem, but he did help to make it popular.

Here is one of Edward Lear’s nonsense limericks. Try reading it out loud and notice the rhythm and rhyme patterns:

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, “It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!”

If you like these, here are a few more of Edward Lear’s most famous poems:

• The Owl and the Pussycat
• The Quangle Wangle’s Hat
• The Jumblies
• The Pobble Who Has No Toes
• The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo