Thursday, August 11, 2005

Author: Doreen Cronin

Serendipity!

Great article about Doreen Cronin today. Cronin was a law student when she wrote Click Clack Moo.

It happened like this: 10 years ago, Cronin was unable to sleep one night after the death of her beloved father, a New York City police officer whom she describes as a "cross between John Wayne and Jackie Gleason."

Trying to distract herself from her grief, Cronin, an aspiring children's-book writer, sat down at her computer. "I sat down at my computer and 'Click, Clack, Moo' just came out of me. It was just 20 minutes at the computer. It was like I was channeling it," she recalled in a recent telephone interview from her New York City home.

"When I finished it and read it, I laughed for the first time since my father had died. I felt like my father was telling the story."

She talks about her collaborations with Betsy Lewin and Harry Bliss and the books to come.

2 comments:

Chris Barton said...

Another former lawyer? I'm endlessly amazed at the number of current or former lawyers who are now writing children's books. Maybe law schools should start working that into their recruiting pitch: "It's the gateway to an exciting career in children's writing!"

Anonymous said...

What a neat backstory, if not a little bittersweet. We love Click, Clack, Moo. It was the first book that my son picked out on his own to purchase with birthday money (after we wore out the smaller, flimsy paper version that came in a Cheerio's box.)