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MEET DEBORAH LEE ROSE
by Bonnie O'Brian

What did you most like to do when you were a child?

Deborah Lee Rose

When I was growing up, I liked to read more than anything else in the world. I spent hours and hours in the library, I read three books at once (taking turns between chapters), I read during meals, I read at night until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, I read while I was brushing my teeth, getting dressed, and even walking to school!

When you were a child did you ever have moments when you decided that you were going to be a writer when you grew up?

As a child, it never occurred to me that I could be a writer of books, because all my favorite authors were dead—or so I thought! Authors didn’t visit schools then, the way I meet so many children today. So my first idea of a writing career was to become an editor, and editing led me into writing.

If you didn’t write as a child, then when did you start writing and what inspired you to start?

 I started writing in college, not only academic papers but newspaper feature stories. I started writing books right after my first child was born. I had found a story from India that I wanted to retell for children. That story became my first book, THE PEOPLE WHO HUGGED THE TREES : AN ENVIRONMENTAL FOLKTALE , which has been published in 11 languages.

 What gave you the idea for ONE NIGHTTIME SEA?

 I was doing a lot of ocean research for my book INTO THE A, B, SEA and thinking about how I could write a second sea book for Steve Jenkins to illustrate with his incredible torn paper collages. While visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I discovered that there was an amazing change that came over the ocean after dark, called “vertical migration”—where every night, billions of animals rise from the deep ocean up to the surface to feed, then return to the depths at sunrise. This got me wondering about all kinds of nocturnal animals in the ocean. Because INTO THE A, B, SEA was an alphabet book, it seemed very logical that ONE NIGHTTIME SEA should be a counting book. Since the book was all about night, I decided to use a rhythm for the verses that feels like a lullaby, or the lulling sound of the ocean’s waves. Choosing the different species for the book, like “raccoon” butterfly fish and “firefly” squid, let me draw connections to nocturnal land animals like raccoons and fireflies that children already recognize.

 Have any of your books earned special recognition?

THE TWELVE DAYS OF KINDERGARTEN and THE TWELVE DAYS OF WINTER have both won the NAPPA Gold Award, the highest honor given by the National Parenting Publications Awards. INTO THE A, B, SEA was chosen among the New York Public Library 100 Children’s Books to Read and Share and ONE NIGHTTIME SEA was selected for the 2007 Elementary California Collection.

 Do you enjoy researching or do you prefer working totally from your imagination?

 I love doing research! Research helps spark my imagination, and even my books that may seem as though they were written purely from imagination have research behind them. In BIRTHDAY ZOO , for example, though the animal characters do things that real animals can’t (like throwing a birthday party!), all the types of animals are real. My research also becomes important when I’m giving illustrators material to create pictures that must be scientifically or historically accurate.

Do you work on more than one book at a time?

I work on different stages of several books during the same time period. In one week, I could be researching or writing a manuscript for one book, reviewing an illustrator’s art for a second book, and editing jacket copy for a third book that is going to the printer.

 Which of your books did you most enjoy writing?

 Writing every single one of my books has been an incredible experience, but writing THE ROSE HORSE was possibly the most magical. While I was working on the book, I often felt like I was living in the book’s time and place (old-time Coney Island). Sometimes I would look up from my writing and be surprised to find myself in my own modern house!

Do you write every day and do you have set hours that you work?

 I write as often as I can, and work early in the morning before anyone else in my house is awake—when it’s incredibly quiet and other activities of the busy day have not yet begun. In that way, I’m like Charlotte in CHARLOTTE'S WEB , who spun the words in her web while the world was asleep, and showed her writing when the web “glistened in the light and made a pattern of loveliness and mystery…”