Mel is Mel Boring, moderator of this interview with Phyllis Reynolds Naylor and Web Editor of the ICL Web Site.

Interviews are held every other Thursday evening for two hours, beginning at 9 CANADA/
Atlantic Time, 8 Eastern Time, 7 Central Time, 6 Mountain Time, and 5 Pacific Time. 

Mel: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor is a children's author's name that is most familiar to us. In 1992, Phyllis won the Newbery Medal with her deeply touching story of Shiloh, the beagle Marty Preston sets out to save from its abusive owner. Phyllis followed that with Shiloh Season in 1996 and Saving Shiloh in 1997. But the Shiloh books are only the tip of the iceberg of the writing of Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. During the past 40 years she has written and published about 2000 stories and articles, as well as more than 115 books. Phyllis is a good friend of Lois Lowry, who recommended Phyllis as a chat guest when Lois was here last January—and I'm so glad she did. Phyllis, your coming tonight has already generated many volts of excitement. Thank you so much for being here, and we WELCOME you to the ICL Chat Room this evening!

Phyllis: Hello, everyone!

Mel: Phyllis, in your growing up, were your parents writers, and/or how did they influence YOU as a writer?

Phyllis: Mostly by reading aloud to us every night almost until we were in our teens. No, none were writers.

Mel: AH, as with so MANY children's writers, they were READ TO as children! How did you first get into writing?

Phyllis: I wrote little books as a hobby, but had my first story published by a Sunday school teacher and she paid me four dollars and sixty seven cents.

Mel: WOW!

Phyllis: I was thrilled.

Mel: Were YOU a voracious reader in grade school?

Phyllis: Not particularly. I loved reading, but loved hearing stories read even more.

Mel: What did you study in college?

Phyllis: Psychology. I wanted to be a clinical psychologist and work with children.

Mel: It sounds like you were headed for a career in psychology—what happened that you got "derailed" to writing for children?

Phyllis: I found I was able to pay my college tuition and buy my books by selling short stories, and by the time I graduated (this was 10 years after I graduated from high school), I decided that writing was really my first love, and gave up plans for graduate school.

Mel: I'm glad you did, children are the RICHER for it, Phyllis! How many books do you work on at one time?

Phyllis: I WISH it was only one, but I usually travel with one manuscript, usually something in a series, where I know the characters and setting well, and save the more difficult books—and those requiring research—for writing at home.

Mel: Can you describe any typical writing day, if there is any typical day, what with all your travels?

Phyllis: I usually wake up around 5:30, answer e-mails for a while, then go to an aquatics center and do water jogging for an hour. Then I come home, eat breakfast, write till noon, talk with my husband, read the comics, write some more, go for a walk, do the laundry. And sometimes, after dinner, I'll work a little more on a manuscript, if I'm not watching videos of the Sopranos.

Mel: You must be one HEALTHY writer!

Phyllis: I wish.

Mel: Tell us about your husband, a speech pathologist, I believe? And about your two children—and could you brag about those grandchildren of yours?

Phyllis: My husband is retired, but right this minute is sitting upstairs reading the next Alice manuscript. Two sons, two daughters-in-law, three grandkids who get more books dedicated to them than any single child should. I love 'em all.

Mel: Ha, your husband sounds like your BEST reader!

Phyllis: He's excellent. Has a bachelor's in journalism, worked for United Press for a while before graduate school.

Mel: I was going to ask if you let ANYone read your manuscripts before you submit them. Anyone besides your husband?

Phyllis: I also belong to a critique group. We've been meeting for 24 years, all published authors.

Mel: That is a STRONG critique group—24 years!

Phyllis: They're very good. Their criticism sometimes brings tears to the eyes, but it's helpful.

Mel: Could you tell us where you've traveled recently, where you've spoken with kids?

Phyllis: Oh, gosh, South Carolina—I'm a blank. I 'd have to go back and look at the calendar. No, maybe it was North Carolina.

Mel: Phyllis, you've written EVERYthing, I think, from board books to picture books to middle-grades to YAs to adult books. Is there ANY genre you haven't tried writing?

Phyllis: Sports.

Mel: I'd bet you have SOME sort of sports book in mind, am I right?

Phyllis: No. I recently wrote one chapter on a baseball game, and had to have help from two of the men I swim with.

Mel: If you could only write one type of book for the rest of your life, what kind would it be?

Phyllis: Probably humor. It keeps me sane.

Phyllis: Yes. Always. I read them aloud to myself, and read them aloud to the critique group.

Phyllis: Yes. But mostly I did a huge amount of reading on my own, psychology, sociology, anthropology.

Phyllis: That keeps me sane too. I refuse to read the front page during breakfast or lunch.

Mel: Phyllis, tell us in general about your Alice series, why it's been banned in some places.

Phyllis: It's always sex. Some parents seem to feel that their kids would never have even thought of such things if I hadn't written about them. They automatically assume that a mention of anything means I condone it, not only condone it, but encourage, advocate, celebrate it. Sex is always lumped with drugs and drinking, somehow, always considered evil. Kids tune that kind of message out.

Mel: Your Alice books that I've read seem just so true to life; it's hard to see how people could be that closed-minded. Why do you think that happens in this day when there seems to be so much freedom in what is said, and advertised, and printed?

Phyllis: Probably because the Alice books are so true to life that a kid thinking about sex could be their child, and that seems unacceptable. But you have to remember that we also have a huge number of parents and librarians supporting me, not to mention my editors.

Mel: It's GREAT that you have so many librarians supporting you, not to mention the editors! Do you think that the objecting parents just don't REMEMBER themselves as teens, or what THEY did?

Phyllis: Maybe that's the problem. They DO remember and regret it.

Mel: And try to hide it from their children.

Phyllis: Frankly, I can remember myself very well at every age, and I also read articles and books about what girls that age are doing. And believe me, oral sex is big at this age. In fact, it's not even considered sex. But in the Alice book just out, we think about that—parents will go bananas.

Mel: Yes, are there any subjects you would NOT explore, even in a YA book?

Phyllis: I can't think of a one. And it's not the subject that matters, it's how it is treated. And that's got to be done with sensitivity.

Mel: For SURE! Does the fact that your books have been challenged affect the way you write?

Phyllis: No, not at all. I get a zillion e-mails a day on the Alice website and kids are so grateful. Just that we can talk about subjects they can't even MENTION at home.

Mel: CHEERS for those kids! A slightly technical question: What is the middle-grade age today in writing, and where does the YA begin--and end?

Phyllis: Oh, that's so hard to say. Middle grades are usually 6, 7, 8. YA is on up, but you have such a huge difference in ages and what the kids are reading.

Mel: You have 10,337 rejection slips--maybe more now. How did you rack up so many?

Phyllis: It's now 10,443. Actually, when I first started writing for the church magazines one editor told me that since Methodists don't read Baptist stuff and Baptists don't read Catholic stuff, etc. etc., I could write "Simultaneous Submission at the top of the first page and send it out to a million church magazines at once. So I did. I almost never wrote anything religious, usually stuff about prejudice and social problems. I might send it to 30 different magazines, and fifteen would accept it, fifteen reject it. So I racked up a lot of rejections, but also a lot of acceptances. It's not that I wrote 10,443 new stories

Mel: Do rejections ever get you down, Phyllis?

Phyllis: Naw. I love to write too much.

Phyllis: I don't usually use what the teenage magazines use as teen language. It's so fake.

Phyllis: They might, but because you have a clear evil, nobody would accuse you of promoting it. Though if you have a father doing it parents would get antsy.

Phyllis: I don't write for them any longer. Not because they stopped me, on the contrary. But once I started writing books that was the end of short stories, and I've never looked back.

Mel: And what is the process, I think we want to know, too, Phyllis.

Phyllis: Because it has the word "hell" in it, or "damn," or "sexual intercourse," or any number of other buzz words. A book is banned if a parent objects and then a committee studies it and agrees with the parent. Usually, I think, they don't study it.

Mel: Tonight here in Iowa, there are raging thunderstorms, so in case you lose me, that’s the reason. It MIGHT be that things will transfer more slowly, like your questions. So there may be more pause than usual.

Phyllis: Clear weather here!

Mel: You’re lucky! But someone just sent me a lightning rod—THANKS, caq!

Mel: Here's a GOOD perspective from red2 about the book-banning problem:

Phyllis: I agree. Why not encourage them to think about these things AHEAD of time?

Phyllis: No. Shiloh has been challenged a lot because Judd Travers says "hell" and "dammit." But that's Judd Travers. I had to think of how he would walk, talk, smell, think. We have to actually BECOME our characters when we write about them.

Mel: EXCELLENT advice!

Phyllis: Yes, I actually came across the little dog in Shiloh, West Virginia, who became the subject of my three books. Since then, she was adopted by friends of ours in West Virginia and led a very happy life until she died about 12 years later.

Phyllis: About 25 years.

Phyllis: They ALL published it! That's what simultaneous submission is all about in church magazines!

Mel: AMEN, if you'll pardon the expression!

Phyllis: Nineteen or twenty, I'm not sure.

Mel: Did you write the prequels in the Alice series, such as Starting With Alice, after the series was started (with The Agony of Alice)?

Phyllis: Yes. We discovered that so many younger girls were reading the books, books dealing with subjects they were really too young for that I decided to head them off by writing three for their ages.

Mel: Did you have a series about Alice in mind before you submitted the first Alice book, or did that idea come about later?

Phyllis: No. When I wrote the first Alice book, I just wanted to write about a young girl, whose mother is dead, looking for a role model. She finds it not in the most beautiful teacher at school, the one she most wanted to get, but the ugliest. And she falls in love with her, and Mrs. Plotkin becomes her role model. Then the reviews started coming out, saying things like, "Alice's many fans will await her further adventures." And I said, WHAT? and started a series. But I insisted that Alice get older in each book, so the series would not read like a sitcom.

Mel: What were the signs, to you and/or your editor(s), that the Alice books had such good series potential? Was it just those reviews?

Phyllis: Those, and a ton of fan mail.

Mel: How old is Alice in the first prequel, and how old is she in the book that will come out about her this month, Phyllis?

Phyllis: She is 8, and in third grade, in Starting With Alice, and 16, entering her junior year in high school, in Alice On Her Way. I get three books out of every year of her life, approximately.

Mel: So you've really written for a wide age of audiences in those books.

Phyllis: Yes. I have 65-year-old women writing to me. And even guys. Some take the Alice books to college with them.

Mel: Since the Alice series covers, what—20 years?—what kinds of differences in the plots of her stories have there been during that time?

Phyllis: Just the usual growing up things. But I'll tell you a secret. I've been so worried that I might get run over by a bread truck or something, and the girls will never know the final book—which takes Alice from 18 to 60, the highlights of her life—that I've already written it, and it sits in a fireproof box in my office with instructions to my sons to send it to my publisher should I check out early.

Mel: WOW, we'll be ready for it, but I don't think that'll be for a LONG time! There is something so non-sensational, yet so natural about the Alice books, I think. Even as a male reading them, I can say, YUP, it happens that way!

Phyllis: Yeah, I have a devoted male readership.

Mel: Did your enthusiastic readers of the Alice series by any chance ask for the prequels, Phyllis?

Phyllis: A few, yes.

Mel: Can you tell us, please, about other series that you have written.

Phyllis: There are the four books of the Cat Pack series, cats who discuss the meaning of life, and the Bernie Magruder mystery books, the three Shiloh books, six witch books (boy, were they ever challenged!), and the boys-versus-girls books, The Boys Start the War, etc.

Mel: Here's perhaps the toughest question: What is it about your mind or your brain or your personality, that moves so dynamically in so many directions--mysteries, growing-up stories, animal stories, and so much more?

Phyllis: I really think that's because my parents read so many different types of stuff to us. Dad read all the Mark Twain books aloud to us. Mother read the Bible Story Book about six or seven times, Uncle Wiggly books, Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, The Bobbsey twins, Missionary stories for little folks, Mother Westwind's Children, etc. etc.

Mel: Phyllis, you won the Newbery Medal in 1992, putting you among fewer than 100 writers who have won it. Can you describe the first 48 hours after winning that Newbery. What was it like?

Phyllis: Oh, God. It helps, I guess, if you learn that you are on the short list or something, but I had no idea. My husband was out jogging and I was eating my shredded wheat when the call came. Then the Today Show called and said we should get to New York that evening, so we were trying to pack, to answer phone calls, flowers were being delivered, a photographer was on his way over. And the next morning we were ushered into the Today Show during a commercial break, David Wiesner (the winner of the Caldecott Medal that year) and I.

Mel: That is my FAVORITE Newbery story of all times! J A Newbery Medal must change your whole life! Did you find that it made you write any differently?

Phyllis: Maybe more carefully. You get scared to death that they are going to compare every book from then on to the Newbery, and of course books are so different. I didn't WANT to write the Newbery all over again!

Mel: Here are two similar questions from chatsters:

Phyllis: Shiloh, I think. Alice, second. And though they are very different, I loved writing them both.

Phyllis: I haven't kept up with witch books, but I suppose there are those kids who take them seriously. I didn't worry too much about that when I wrote my series because I made all the stuff up.

Mel: Even in your book about a witch?

Phyllis: Which one? There are six. I think I described plants that don't even exist, for example.

Mel: I meant Witch’s Sister, but now I find out that’s a series, too. You have written so WIDELY, Phyllis! How do you answer parents who write to you, criticizing your books?

Phyllis: If they write a courteous letter, I answer the same. I try to take their worry seriously. I'm a parent too. But I do have to point out when I see flaws in their reasoning. For example, a mother recently took me to task because in Lovingly Alice, Alice is in fifth grade, and she and her friends wonder about how babies are made. And Alice finds out. This mother went bananas, because she didn't want her 10-year-old daughter to find out about intercourse until she was eleven. And so she said, I had ruined it for her. I had to tell her that if her daughter is of reasonable intelligence, she has certainly observed pregnant women and wondered how that baby got in there.

Mel: There must be more kids writing you than parents, am I right? How many letters might you get in a week or a month, Phyllis? And do you answer every one of them?

Phyllis: I probably get twenty or thirty a day on my Alice website, and I answer all those personally. I don't put them all on the screen. Some I answer directly by e-mail. I don't know how many come by regular mail. My secretary answers most of those.

Mel: That in itself sounds like a full-time job for you!

Phyllis: Yeah, it's about an hour a day. Too much.

Phyllis: I think I would let my writing speak for itself. I've never met with an agent ahead of time, so I don't know about how to make a pitch. The agent wants to know that you are serious, that you don't just have one or two books under your belt and that's it. Most agents want to think about a whole career for a writer, not just getting a book or two published for him or her.

Phyllis: I have one now, but didn't for a long time. I certainly never had one when I was writing short stories. In fact, I never had an agent until I started writing adult books.

Phyllis: A fourth book? There are 12 books in all. I just turned in the very last one, called Who Won The War? It will be published next year.

Mel: YIKES, you are a prolific writer, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor! I'm curious about your books for adults, having not been able to find them on the Web. Do you use a different pen name for those? Can you tell us about those books, please?

Phyllis: No, I use Phyllis Naylor. The latest, After, is probably still in print, but the others are out of print.

Mel: I will look up After, after, thank you!

Phyllis: Three of those books are novels. One of them, Unexpected Pleasures, is my most favorite book. There is also a novel called Revelations. Then a book of short stories about family life, In Small Doses, an autobiography: Crazy Love: an autobiographical account of marriage and madness,

Mel: I am amazed, Phyllis, that you have written as many books as most writers couldn't write in TEN lifetimes!

Phyllis: I wish I could, but I don't read books about writing usually. Though I think my book, How I Came to Be a Writer, would be helpful. Because I give examples of stories I wrote when I was starting out and what was wrong with them.

Mel: How do you stay in touch with teen readers and their lives today?

Phyllis: Mostly by the Alice website. Books about teens (nonfiction); articles in the newspaper, and I listen in on conversations at the aquatics center, on the train, the bus, etc., etc.

Phyllis: Well, I have to be motivated to do the laundry, but not to write, so I guess that's a blessing. I just simply made time, when the kids were napping, when they were in school. It's a fact, of course, that it sure helps to have things accepted in order to motivate you; it's discouraging if all you get are rejections.

Phyllis: Oh, I guess I do about three a year. A series book, because I know the characters and setting so well, takes about four or so months to write. The last adult novel I wrote, After, took 19 years from start to finish!!! But of course I wasn't working on it the whole time, I was writing other books during the pauses.

Mel: How well do you take criticism from your editors, Phyllis?

Phyllis: I take it well. For the first day, I think, "I cannot do this! She's asking too much!" But by the second or third day I can see how it all makes sense. I don't always do what she wants, or I do it in a different way. But a criticism means that there is something that jars, something that is not quite right. And whether it seems right or not to you, it's not getting across to someone else. So you need to rethink it, even if you don't agree in the end.

Mel: You must have had LOTS of editors over the years. How do you deal with the changes from one editor to another?

Phyllis: I've had a lot of different editors for short stories, but remarkably few for my children's books. Jean Karl, a terrific editor, was probably the editor I had longest, until her death. But I have several other very wonderful and capable editors right now.

Mel: How satisfied were you with the movie version of Shiloh, and when was it shot?

Phyllis: I can't remember exactly when that came out. They also made a movie of the second Shiloh book, Shiloh Season, and are shooting the third movie this summer. The producers are wonderful, and let me read the screenplay in advance and make suggestions. But you have to look at a movie as a separate entity. The time span is usually reduced, and there has to be more action. You can't have a boy sitting on a log for fifteen minutes, even though it worked well in the book.

Mel: Can you describe a day on a movie set for us? Was it very arduous for you, both in physical work and the emotion of seeing YOUR story filmed?

Phyllis: Not physical. All I did was sit and eat and play with the dog. I think if I were a movie actress, I would be bored out of my skull because they do the same scene over and over and over, and there's no real audience. No continuity (all the dinner scenes may be shot at once, etc.) and the technicians who are watching are probably wishing you'd hurry and get it right so they can eat. But the food is great! They treat the author with great respect, a director's chair with her name on it, the works. They ask your opinion—and then they go and do exactly what they wanted in the first place. But I enjoyed being invited, loved the actors, and bit my tongue when they changed things around.

Mel: You mentioned your Alice website earlier. What kind of questions do you get on that Alice Web Site, set up by your publisher?

Phyllis: Gosh, you should check it out after we're done. The questions are often VERY explicit—kids terrified they are pregnant, parents having affairs. But we also discuss prejudice, the election, religion, anything goes. They are free to ask or talk about whatever they like.

Mel: It must take as much skill and care to respond to those questions as to write books!

Phyllis: Well, I do it in a hurry, I'm afraid, and I usually answer in only a paragraph, though I often answer personally in an e-mail that I never put on the screen. But I learn so much from the readers. They point out mistakes in my books, suggest scenes, they're great.

Mel: You must be a great mother, and grandmother, and "mother" to kids who write you on the Web!

Phyllis: Oh, I don't know. But it did please me that several wished me a happy Mother's Day!

Phyllis: I don't keep up with magazines, so I have no idea. But my editors give me free reign to do whatever I want if it's done well.

Phyllis: Well, nobody's kicked me off yet. Every so often I have to say, I AM NOT A DOCTOR!

Mel: HA, we won’t call you Dr. Reynolds-Naylor then! By the by, the thunderboomers have mainly passed on here in Iowa, so things are calmer! Here's another question about banned books.

Phyllis: Yes, every time a new book of mine is challenged, it seems the sales go up.

Mel: It’s easy to see you've written many series. How many series do you keep going at one time?

Phyllis: I'm trying to drop them, one by one, till only Alice is left. There are too many single books I want to do!

Mel: For most of us writers, writing is a real chore at best, and sometimes not a happy one. Why is it, do you think, that YOU feel unhappy UNLESS you're writing? Any secret you can share with us, please?

Phyllis: I wish I knew. Writing is almost a physical necessity with me. Stories, or scenes, haunt me until I get them down on paper. Until a plot is worked out in my head, it's like a checkbook that never balances.

Mel: A GREAT analogy!

Phyllis: Not really, because by the time my husband gets through with it, then the critique group, then the editor, then the copy editor, we've gone over every word, and they catch me before I do something really stupid.

Phyllis: My husband does. My editor did ask a lawyer once to look it over and he gave his OK. I keep reminding the kids that I am answering only as a friend, an enlightened grandmother. Nothing more.

Mel: How do you work your family into your busy writing life? Though it sounds like your husband works himSELF in as an editor of yours!

Phyllis: Well, both our sons are married and live in other states, so it's mostly making sure my husband gets the proper attention, and I'm not always so good at that. But he's also a chess player, and so he is used to entertaining himself, and we make a nice team.

Mel: I admire you both! Where is your favorite PLACE to write, Phyllis?

Phyllis: Amtrak, especially when I'm speaking on the West Coast and have an excuse for a cross-country trip!

Mel: What part of the writing life do you dislike the most?

Phyllis: Reading galleys. I hate, hate, hate, hate having to be so precise!

Mel: What is the best part of being an author?

Phyllis: When a character or a place comes alive on paper, and I think, "I've got it!" There are no bands playing, no audience is applauding, but it's the part I like best.

Mel: Do you enjoy the much public speaking that you do? And about how many speeches do you make a week or a month?

Phyllis: I've cut way back on speaking, because one year I was gone five months out of the year. But I do enjoy speaking, I just resent that it takes time away from writing. But I've learned to make a writer's retreat out of Amtrak, and this makes it fun and rewarding. Also, I love meeting teachers, librarians, they are such a DEDICATED bunch. I'm in awe of them, so there's a lot of give and take.

Mel: Do you take Amtrak mostly, instead of flying?

Phyllis: Yes, I hate flying, and love the train. I especially love meeting new people in the dining car. We are seated four people to a table, and you never know who your companions will be. So often I've thought, "If I could just meet a rancher for this next scene I'm writing, or if I could just meet a geologist. And guess who is sitting beside me at breakfast or lunch? I've had incredible luck.

Mel: Maybe you need TWO lives--one for speaking and the other for writing! Is there any special way you keep track of ideas for several books, all wanting to be written at the same time?

Phyllis: Yes, I have about ten 3-ring notebooks on the shelf beside my writing chair at home. Each has a title of a book-to-be on it on masking tape, and each notebook has pockets. I fill those pockets with maps or pages out of phone directories, photos, and the notebook papers with character sketches, scenes, a summary of the plot, etc. And whenever I get a new idea about that book, I just open the notebook and write it down so I don't have to keep it all in my head. This was my husband's idea, because I was going a little bit nuts.

Mel: A good catch-up question omalizzie has asked:

Phyllis: the final stage of the book is a set of papers called galleys. The printer has printed out your book on cheap sheets of paper that come to you for correction, go to the copy editor for correction, so that you can see how the words will appear in your book and make changes. Your last chance.

Phyllis: A lot of it, yes, but all mixed up with imaginings, with things the kids on the website tell me, things I read, etc.

Phyllis: No, because I had been writing a long time first. I didn't try to get an agent until I wrote my first adult book, Crazy Love. Because it was so very personal I felt I would feel that a part of my body were being rejected if it came back to me and that it would be easier if an agent handled it. After the agent handled a few adult things for me I asked him to take over my children's books as well, and he's done so ever since.

Mel: What a GREAT way to describe rejection, as if a part of your body were being rejected!

Phyllis: I don't know in what way. Frankly, I think my books are pretty moral.

Phyllis: Easy. I think it's because parents feel so helpless. They can't regulate what their kids hear on the playground, can't stop them from what they see on a neighbor's TV, but they can sure go to a grade school and raise a ruckus with a librarian, and get their 15 minutes of fame.

Mel: What advice do you give to young writers, Phyllis?

Phyllis: I tell them to think of the time they were most angry, most embarrassed, most sad, most frightened and write a few sentences about it. Then turn it over to their imaginations and give it wings. Take a very personal event that affected them deeply and learn to use it in a story.

Mel: How would I apply for the Working Writer's Fellowship, which you established with PEN?

Mel: Since the next Alice book comes out this month, what book are you working on now?

Phyllis: Cricket Man. But I don't want to talk about it.

Mel: Phyllis, it's a long way from where we are in submitting or publishing, to where you have gone in your children's writing career; but you have made it shorter for us by your sharing and suggestions. THANK YOU so MUCH for sharing yourself and your writing with us here in the ICL Chat Room. From publishing to censoring, and more, you have given us such a better understanding of the business of writing children's books. Thanks for taking the time from your busy schedule to be with us tonight. We'll be looking for Alice on Her Way this very month of May! And I hope you will be willing to come back again someday, Phyllis, to chat with us further.

Phyllis: Thank you all!

Mel: On the last Thursday of May, May 26, we will welcome Toni Buzzeo to our ICL Chat Room once again. Toni is a children's picture book author whose career burgeoned quickly just a few years ago, so that last year Toni had to retire from her school media director position to devote full time to children's writing. Toni Buzzeo is the author of The Sea Chest, the story of remarkable lighthouse happenings. Toni has also published Dawdle Duckling, and Little Loon and Papa. Just this past January Toni published a sequel to Dawdle Duckling, Ready or Not, Dawdle Duckling. We will catch up with Toni in her busy schedule of writing and visiting schools on May 26. Can you come then, chatsters?

Mel: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, WARM THANKS to you again for chatting with us tonight! It's been such a RICH experience for us to sit and chat with you here this evening. All that we write for children, from picture books to young adult novels, will be the better for your having been our guest tonight. We wish you well in your continuing writing for children, and we'll be looking for more of Alice, and books in all the genres you write so successfully in, in the future!

Phyllis: I'm so pleased.

Mel: GOODNIGHT, EVERYchildren'sWRITER!