Where all this book love began

with Grandma Marvel, and a shack in the woods

Jun 03, 2024

My earliest memories of my Grandma Marvel are the way she read picture books with me. We’d pick up A Snowy Day or Winnie-the-Pooh, and I could feel her delight in the book as much as my own…it was like she was greeting an old friend. Her enthusiasm was infectious, so much so that it’s stayed with me ever since.

In addition to reading books together, she shared stories of her childhood — in the years of the Great Depression, her dad died when she was 6, and they were evicted — a family of eight children aged 14 to 3 months, and newly single Mom made a home in an abandoned shack deep in the woods. Her stories of living without toys or basic comforts, making up their own games to make things fun, and growing and hunting their food, these mesmerized me. I imagined myself in her shoes; play-acted her stories with my siblings and cousins.

These were the first seeds that were planted and eventually grew into a vocation as an illustrator and writer of children’s books. Infected with Grandma’s love of books and with her family story still humming in my bones, in 2012 I began the process of trying to make it into its own picture book. Most of the time that I worked on it, it felt like an un-solvable puzzle. It took me seven years — a lot of starts and stops and nearly giving up (if not for the tenacious belief of my editor, Nancy Paulsen). But, eventually, it really happened. HOME IN THE WOODS was published by Penguin Random House Books, the largest publisher in the country (world?), and has even reached readers in places such as Australia, Japan, and Croatia.

It’s hard to find words for what it has meant to me to have captured her story in this magical format. To hear from complete strangers who have connected with it, and kids who continue to play-act it, has been an utter joy. Their messages, letters, and photos made Marvel shake her head and laugh in disbelief.

On a recent visit to her, my mom walked in to find her sleeping with the book open on her lap, and she snapped this photo. The joy of her story, shared with her family, then with the world, came back around to her.