ETC:   Who is this hilarious new author Andrea Perry, and where did she come from?

Andrea Perry:   I came from a large family of eight children; five girls and three boys. That is more than likely where the hilarious part came from! And though I was born in Cincinnati, I have lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania most of my life. I'm still not really sure where the author part came from! My educational background is in counseling and social work, but in addition to that I have also worked in a donut shop, drugstore, mental health center, nursing home, children's hospital, museum, library, and now currently in a middle school computer lab. I never thought I'd grow up to be a writer, but here I am.

ETC:   So when do you think this poetry writer was born?

Andrea Perry:   My mother raised us on a steady diet of Dr. Seuss, and that surely accounts for my love of all things rhymed. I always thought that stories in rhyme were the best kind. So on occasion when I had a friend or relative getting married, or moving away, or having a baby, or getting a new job, my gift of choice for them was to write some sort of humorous rhymed story about them and the event. This always went over very well! Years later I entered a few local writing contests and won first prize in each one. Fast forward to 1991- I had two toddlers at home and was not working at the time, and at my mother's urging decided to take a children's writing course. The rest is history. I got hooked up with the local chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, joined a writing critique group, and never stopped until I got published.

ETC:   Have you published anything else besides Here's What You Do When You Can't Find Your Shoe?

Andrea Perry:   Yes, I've published quite a few poems in parent's magazines, children's magazines, including Nick Jr. and Ladybug, teaching journals, Sunday School weeklies, and had a poem included in a wonderful poetry anthology called I Invited a Dragon to Dinner last year.

ETC:   Some of the poems in Here's What You Do... are rather unusual: A store that sells only bouncing items, a pet that lives in your bed and eats crumbs, a spray to keep parents from buying vegetables in the market...Where do these ideas come from?

Andrea Perry:   A lot of people assume that my crazier ideas must come from my own children, but that is not always true. I can't blame them when the fault is my own! I love to take an ordinary idea and turn it upside down and see what happens. Why write a poem about snow when you can write a poem about snow that bounces once it hits the ground? It just makes life all the more interesting.

ETC:   Has anyone ever not accepted something that you've submitted for publication?

Andrea Perry:   I have quite a collection of rejection letters and like to flash them around when I do school visits to show students that ALL of us have rewriting to do. Of course there is also my favorite editorial category, "This manuscript does not suit our needs at this time". I must have 40 or 50 of those alone! At the very beginning of my writing career I sent out a total of 58 poems before someone broke down and actually wanted to publish one.

ETC:   Can you tell us about that first poem?

Andrea Perry:  It was called The Mommymobile and described in great detail what the inside of your car looks like when you are driving around with two small children.I don't think I got paid more than $2 or $3 for it, but I was absolutely thrilled. I could finally say I was a published author!

ETC:   What authors do you like to read?

Andrea Perry:   Besides Dr. Seuss, I love Doug Florian, Jack Prelutsky, Calef Brown, Ogden Nash, and Joan Bransfield Graham's shape poetry is a particular favorite of mine.

ETC:   You've said that you work full-time. When do you find the time to write?

Andrea Perry:  Whenever an idea strikes me, I have to write it down. I carry a small notebook around with me wherever I go because you just never know when that light bulb will come on over your head! Once I had what I thought was a brilliant idea about a poem about a dripping icicle, but I was in my car at a stop light and couldn't find a pencil in my car so I wrote some notes down in my notebook with lipstick! Once I got home I could not read what I had written but luckily I did remember most of it. Since I work full time I can't write but in the evenings and not every day like I hear true writers should! But pretty regularly on weekends and in the summer I write for a few hours every morning.

ETC:   What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Andrea Perry:   Be patient and don't quit your day job! But most importantly, join a critique group - they are invaluable. Join SCBWI, read what's out there to see what's being published, as well as what's not being published, and let me say it again, be patient!

ETC:  Alan Snow's illustrations for Here's What You Do... are just delightful. Did you have any input regarding the final renderings?

Andrea Perry:   Absolutely none. But I could not be more pleased with our final product. Don't you just love his blueprint endpapers-brilliant! His visual interpretations of my poems are fascinating to me since they brought them to life and made them better; funnier, and sillier. Just what I would have wanted. I have my editor, Caitlyn Dlouhy to thank for that - she had Alan in mind from the very beginning.

ETC:   So what's next for Andrea Perry?

Andrea Perry:   I have a contract for another poetry collection tentatively called "VILLAINS!" which is to be illustrated by Alan Snow, also with Atheneum, and I am also working on a couple of stories told in rhyme, and launching my new website. Other than that I don't really know - I' m just going to keep driving around with my notebook and my lipstick and see what happens!