“I have a sense the people who work with that collection created an atmosphere in which children’s literature was respected and appreciated,” she said.
Permission to start As much as she clearly loves writing, Bauer hasn’t lost sight of the art-commerce balance that’s sustained her over the years. “The process of writing serves my soul and it supports me,” she said. “Selling books is important for buying groceries.” So why did she choose the extremely competitive genre of children’s literature? “I think I’m like an awful lot of children’s writers, who were outsiders and isolated in their own childhoods,” Bauer said. “I think there’s a need to ‘fix it’ in a story and make things come out differently than they did in life.” She remembers a college fiction-writing class in which she penned a description of being 3 years old, standing on a hot, sunny sidewalk and stepping onto the “cool tickle” of the grass. “There was something about that description,” she said. “I knew it had touched someplace important in me. The experience of that one brief moment in a child’s life, not even an important one, guided me to understand what I would do when I finally gave myself permission to start.”
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Critical acclaim Bauer is especially excited about the publication of her 104th book, The Stuff of Stars, a 40-page picture book — 431 words long — about the Big Bang and the creation of the universe, including Earth. “It’s also about the creation of the child to whom the story is being read,” Bauer said. Released in September, the book has received positive reviews. Publisher’s Weekly said, “Bauer suggests that, just possibly, the power of creation and the power of love are not so different.” MN Zoo GA 1218 H4.indd 1
11/9/182018 11:26/AM Minnesota Good Age / December 27