No Walls For The Small

Welcome to the No Walls For The Small blog!  For those of you who know us...you know this book has been in the works for a long time.  Sevenish years.  You may ask yourself, how the heck does it take 7 years to write a kids book?

I thought I would share the story of how this book came to be as our first post.  Ryan and I met in Asheville, NC.  We ran with the same crew of motley artists and became fast friends.  He moved to Brooklyn to pursue a career as a fine artist, and I moved to Florida to care for my grandmother and write a book.  

In Florida I began to write poetry.  I happened upon a book of Shel Silverstine's poems in my granny's library.  As a child his writing really resonated with me, and in becoming reacquainted with his work as an adult it inspired me to try my hand at writing poetry for kids.  The first poem I wrote was titled Hocus Locusts.  It was about a cat with a hankering for locusts.  I had the words, but needed illustrations.

I immediately gave my pal Ryan a call.  Of all the artists I know and love, his work seemed to be the best match.  He was excited about the prospect, and our collaboration began in 2004. I would email him a poem and he would snail mail me the illustrations.  Every time one of his packages arrived on my doorstep it felt like Christmas.

We completed our book of poetry in 2007, and after numerous rejections we had the revelation that publishers don't print collections of kid's poetry by no-name authors.  So we took the poem with the strongest narrative, No Walls For The Small and turned it into a 24 page kids book...and tried again, but to no avail.  Our story was just too cool. 

In 2011 we decided to self publish.  We believe in our story.  We believe in independent media.  And here we are today awaiting our book to hit the virtual shelves of Amazon. 

December 3 is our launch date for Amazon.com, and we will keep you posted as the day comes. Wish us luck!