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JUDITH VIORST is an author of books for both children and adults. Born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1931, she is a graduate of Rutgers University and the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. Her first published children's book came after she had established herself as a poet. Her children's books include Sunday Morning (1968); The Tenth Good Thing about Barney (1971); Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (1972); Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday (1978); If I Were in Charge of the World and Other Worries: Poems for Children and Their Parents (1981); The Alphabet from Z to A (1994); Alexander, Who's Not (Do You Hear Me? I Mean It!) Going to Move (1995); and her most recent release, Super-Completely and Totally the Messiest (2000). She has also written adult fiction (Murdering Mr. Monti), nonfiction (including Imperfect Control and Grown-Up Marriage), and poetry. She collaborated with Shelly Markham in turning Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day into a musical for the Kennedy Center and is presently turning Alexander, Who's Not (Do You Hear Me? I Mean It!) Going to Move into a Kennedy Center musical to be presented between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2003.
Sally Beach Why did you start writing for children?
Judith Viorst I have always loved children's literature. Long before I had children, I tried to get children's books published but was unsuccessful. During my first editing job as a children'sbook editor, which I thought was the most wonderful job in the world, I also wrote children's books that were consistently turned down. I continued to love children's books. It was when 1 finally had children of my own and actually started picking up on what I was experiencing, or what became issues in my own life as a mother, that I started getting things published. Actually, Harper & Row asked me if I was interested in writing a children's book for them, and I said, "You bet!" That's how I got started.
SB The subjects that you write about, then, are based upon your own experience?
JV Yes. I can take you through a few of them. The first book I wrote was called Sunday Morning. It was based on two brothers getting...