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MEET ERICA SILVERMAN
by Ann Stalcup

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

Erica Silverman

As an only child, I spent a lot of time alone, daydreaming and playing pretend games. I remember jumping around my bedroom pretending to be characters in the stories I loved when I was supposed to be sleeping.

What books influenced you most when you were growing up?

MOTHER GOOSE. I remember reciting nursery rhymes into a big reel-to-reel tape recorder with my parents when I was very, very young. MADELINE. CURIOUS GEORGE. ANGUS. BABAR. Fairy tales – I especially loved the old Russian turnip story, THE THREE BILLY GOATS GRUFF and THUMBELINA. Later on, I became addicted to Nancy Drew. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE was my first favorite grown up book. I also had an anthology of poetry and I loved reading the old English poems best. In high school, I discovered the work of Denise Levertov and she became my favorite poet for a long time.

Did you write stories when you were growing up? at school? Or at home as a hobby? As a young child, or asa teenager, or both?

Yes. I had a writing assignment, I think it was in third or fourth grade. We were told to imagine we had lost one of our five senses and write about it. I went with hearing. Before I wrote, I imagined going a day without hearing and then I wrote my story. It was a powerful experience for me. I wrote through all my school years, mostly poetry. I kept a diary off and on, too.

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?

It’s all I ever wanted to be, but I never thought it was a real possibility. It seemed most writers I read were long dead. Those that weren’t dead seemed like gods to me - otherworldly in their talent and unreachable. It took me years to think that I could write and get published and be a “real” writer. When I was growing up, we didn’t have writers coming to our schools and libraries as we do today.

When you went to college, were you already pursuing a writing career?

Not at all. I took lots of English classes, including creative writing. All I wanted to do was write, but that didn’t seem like a career path so much as a romantic and foolish dream. I thought I was supposed to grow up and get over it.

What was your first job when you graduated from college?

It took me a long time to finish college. I dropped out a couple of times. And I had lots of jobs. I was a waitress. I taught at an Open School and at a nursery school. I did health counseling at a women’s clinic. I sold tickets to a sailboat. I taught at a Yiddishkeit (Yiddish culture) Sunday school. After I finally finished college, I taught English as a Second Language to adults for fourteen years. It was during that time that I started writing seriously.

What are the topics are some of your books?

My books are very diverse in topic. I am very drawn to the folk tale voice and I think books like DON’T FIDGET A FEATHER and ON THE MORN OF MAYFEST reflect that. I love poetry and occasionally write in rhyme, as I did in Follow the Leader. I have two Halloween books – BIG PUMPKIN and HALLOWEEN HOUSE. I love Halloween because it is one of our few holidays that celebrates imagination. Jewish history and culture are important to me – I tried to share something of that in RAISEL’S RIDDLE, GITTEL’S HANDS, and my two Sholom Aleichem books, SHOLOM’S TREASURE and WHEN THE CHICKEN’S WENT ON STRIKE. I love animals and I think that shows, too. Animals are central to many of my books, most recently COWGIRL KATE AND COCOA.

Do you do other types of writing - for example, educational, nonfiction, magazine work?

Yes, I have done some educational and magazine writing. I recently finished graduate school in Library andInformation Science for which I wrote lots and lots of papers. Even that wasn’t so bad. Writing is hard andstressful, whatever the genre, but it is also interesting and challenging.

Have any of your books earned special recognition?

DON’T FIDGET A FEATHER won the California Young Reader Medal. SHOLOM’S TREASURE: HOW SHOLOM ALEICHEM BECAME A WRITER received the Sydney Taylor Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries and was a runner up for the National Jewish Book Award. COWGIRL KATE AND COCOA received the ALA’s Theodore Suess Geisel Honor and is in the 2007 Elementary California Collection.

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

I love researching. It’s an occupational hazard, actually! I sometimes get lost in the research. It’s a great way to procrastinate getting to the harder process of writing that awful first draft.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on the next Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa book.

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

I used to write daily, except for those days when I did school and library visits. Once I started working on my MLIS, I couldn’t keep that up, and now that I’m working as a librarian, I have to fit writing in where I can.

When is your next book going to be in bookstores?

COWGIRL KATE AND COCOA, SCHOOL DAYS is due out this spring. I have a picture book biography of EmmaLazarus which I think is scheduled for 2008.

When you do school visits, what question do children ask you most?

How old are you? How much do you make? I once had a child ask if I ever felt like giving up. That was my favorite question, because it’s something I struggle with. Children need to hear that we all feel discouraged sometimes and we have to, we can, keep going.

What do you most want the students to get out of your school visits?

I want them to know that reading is not a chore, but a pleasure, one of life’s gifts. And as if the sheer fun of it isn’t enough, reading is also good for the brain, building dendrites, etc. I also hope they will understand that it takes hard work and persistence to make a dream come true, but that it’s worth it.