As you know, we LOVE Renata Liwska, our featured author/illustrator this month. But we also LOVE her partner in the LOUD and Quiet Books, Deborah Underwood! Deborah is a San Francisco author, who was kind enough to participate in our FIRST EVER Books Inc. Kids author interview! We asked the tough, topical questions of the day, as you will see below.
Books Inc Kids: Overall, were you a LOUD kid, or a Quiet kid?
Deborah Underwood: I was a quiet kid most of the time. On the first day at my very loud preschool, I walked in, heard all the screaming, and promptly hid under a table. After I spent three hours under the table crying, we all decided preschool was not the best plan. I'm still pretty introverted, but I don't hide under tables these days. Usually.
BIK: As a kid, what was something you wished grownups would understand?
DU: I remember one thing in particular that drove me nuts. I'd invented a getting-dressed machine: I would pull one string, and my dress would come sliding down a rope to my bed; I'd pull two others and my drawer would open and my socks and underwear would fly over to me. The point was to allow me to get dressed without having to leave my bed, which seemed very important at the time. My bedroom, as you can imagine, looked like a spiderweb, and each week the elderly couple who cleaned for us would take all the strings down. I remember being so annoyed-- couldn't they see these were intentional strings? And why couldn't my parents just tell them to leave the strings alone? (Probable because they felt making an elderly couple negotiate a maze of strings wouldn't be very polite. Hmph.)
BIK: As a grownup, what is something you wish you could tell all kids?
DU: I would tell them to do what they love to do and not to worry about fitting in. The people who were different as kids make the most interesting adults.
BIK: Tell us about a time when you were loud when you should have been quiet, or vice-versa!
DU: When I was two-- TWO!-- I was a flower girl in my uncle's wedding. My parents apparently expressed concern about this plan, but were overruled. I was promised a lollipop (we called them suckers) after the service was over. Well, naturally, I considered the service to be over as soon as I had discharged my duty. So after I deposited the basket of flowers on the correct step, I turned around and ran up the aisle yelling, "I want my sucker! I want my sucker!" The moral of this story: don't choose a two-year-old as your flower girl.
BIK: If you were an animal, you would be a...
DU: My cat Bella seems to have it pretty good, so I'll go with cat. Or maybe one of those great blue herons in Golden Gate Park.
Want to meet Deborah! Come out to Oh My Gosh, Stories! Storytime at Books Inc. Chestnut Street, Saturday, June 18th at 11am!