Kate says:

I can’t remember my parents actually reading to me when I was a child, but I know they did. I know this because I distinctly recall the dreadful day when my father informed me that I was old enough to read by myself. I had learned to read a few years earlier, but for a delightful period of time, I had the best of both words. I read books by myself, truth be told I mostly read "Charlotte’s Web" over and over again, and my parents read to me. Then, on a balmy summer day, I brought home a copy of "Stuart Little" from the library and asked my father to read it to me.

After he said no, I walked from room to room listening to the floorboards creak as I contemplated my future. Surely getting older wasn’t going to be much fun if no one was going to read to me. Eventually, I sat down and read Stuart Little on my own. Some time later, after discovering Judy Blume’s books, I happily came to terms with my fate.

Flash forward several decades. Now I have my own child to read to. While I hope she’ll indulge me and let me continue reading to her until she’s in her 50’s, I’m a tad doubtful.

The truth is, there’s nothing quite like the experience of reading to a child. While adults chuckle at the funny lines in a book, children howl. Their arms flail about and sometimes they even need to take a jog around their room or a dramatic dive off the bed onto the floor. When they really connect to a story, they beg to have it read to them “just one more time.”

After my first book, Double Pink, was published in 2005, I met parents who told me they read it to their children night after night. I smiled politely, thanked them, and generally managed to make my way home before jumping up and down yelling, “Yes!”

As satisfying as it is to hear that a child connects with a piece of writing, I must say that an unexpected and truly hilarious delight has been hearing the reactions of grown women when I tell them the title of my next picture book is My Mom is Trying to Ruin My Life. (The illustrations by Diane Goode are pitch perfect.)

The Problem with The Puddles is my first novel for children. I wanted to write a story that worked when read aloud and that would also be accessible and fun for children reading on their own. I decided to keep the chapters short. I wanted to write a story with humor about the universal theme of separation. I also tried to do something different by asking the reader to get involved. Even though this is a chapter book, I didn’t want to stray too far from one of my favorite aspects of picture books, which is illustration. The marriage between the text and Tricia Tusa’s delightful drawings is an integral part of this story.

My desire to write what I like to think of as an illustrated chapter book derived from another experience of loss and betrayal during my childhood reading adventures. I never understood why they took the pictures out of the books.

-Kate Feiffer