Their rivalries and loving moments are taken directly from Kvasnosky’s childhood. I sat down and their it was, almost exactly as it was published!” Zelda is the bossy controlling sister, and Ivy, the eager-to-please little sister. Kvasnosky describes Zelda and Ivy (Candlewick, 1998) as a “gift book. In Kvasnosky’s first novel, One Lucky Summer (Dutton, 2002), an injured flying squirrel helps bring two enemies together. Even though flying squirrels weren’t her main focus, the idea stayed with her.
While Kvasnosky was researching puffins for There Once Was a Puffin (Dutton, 1995), she happened across a 1942 issue of National Geographic containing articles on puffins and flying squirrels. The ideas get acquainted in my notebook and somehow know they belong to the same piece.” She describes herself as a “pack rat of heightened experiences and overheard conversations.” According to Kvasnosky, “something in me recognizes that this belongs in a story. Kvasnosky’s story ideas come from the world around her. She now quips, “It was disappointing that didn’t buy my illustrations, but I would have sold a child to publish a book!” What Shall I Dream? was quickly followed by the sale of two board books that Kvasnosky wrote and illustrated: One, Two, Three, Play With Me!(Dutton, 1994) and Pink, Red, Blue, What are You? (Dutton, 1994). An editor at Dutton offered to buy the text of What Shall I Dream? (Dutton, 1996), but not Kvasnosky’s pictures. “It was not often pleasant, but it was how I learned to write.” As a 30-something adult, Kvasnosky left journalism because she always felt she could “make a better story unhampered by facts.” Kvasnosky remembers sitting with her father every Wednesday night while he edited her work.
“Campus Letter” was written first by Kvasnosky’s two older sisters, then Kvasnosky, and then her younger sister and brother. Then in high school, she moved onto the “Campus Letter,” a column published in her father’s newspaper. Laura McGee Kvasnosky recalls, “Since I was a little kid, I’ve thought of myself as a writer.” She started out as a journalist, first by sharpening pencils for her newspaper columnist father.
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