GENRE: Humor, STEM/STEAM, Interactive
WORDS: 230
Query:
Dear PB Party People,
Thanks for chewing over A TERMITE ATE MY HOMEWORK, my humorous, interactive, and STEM-ish picture book story:
A flustered kid is fighting an epic battle with a tiny enemy, namely, a very hungry termite who’s wreaking havoc on his writing assignments. In a plea to his teacher, he explains how his cheeky nemesis munches letters (thus changing words), with results that range from embarrassing to ridiculous. After several of our hero’s termite-fighting tactics fail, he hits on a solution that works perfectly—almost.
This insect saga invites children 6 to 9 to follow an intriguing, fill-in-the-blanks trail of easily decodable (and amusing) words. In the process, it sneaks in astronomy and biology factoids that will also appeal to teachers and librarians. The story speaks to fans of wacky-foe tales like Aaron Reynolds’ Creepy Crayons and shares the alphabetic mix-ups of Josh Funk’s My Pet Feet.
I’m a former advertising copywriter, a language nerd, and an active member of SCBWI and Inked Voices. I wrote Moving Words About a Flower, a Charlesbridge picture book illustrated by Barbara Chotiner. In addition, I created the structural concept for several Chronicle board books. My background also includes writing and designing humorous greeting cards for national publishers.
Please note that in my story text, I have inserted hyphens in place of the spaces that should be there; this was simply to avoid Word Count mistaking an “eaten” word for two words (and pushing me over the 70-word limit).
Thanks again for your consideration.
Excerpt:
Dear Teacher,
I am sorry but something ate my homew-rk.
It was not my dog.
It was not my baby b–other.
It was a very h-ngry termite.
He only came out after I we-t to bed
so he was hard to cat—.
At first he only ate one or two lett–rs
so I didn’t car-.
But then he started eating -hole words, like
“Two wrongs —— make a right.”
What inspired you to write this story & what do you have in common with it:
I have a weakness for puns, puzzles, and wordplay; when all that collided with my love of storytelling, my termite tale was hatched. As a very young school kid, I felt that there was something slippery about the words and lexical concepts I was supposed to grasp (“Is ‘read’ present or past tense? Why is ‘enough’ pronounced ‘enuf’?”); I think my story is a projection of my troubled relationship with English in those early years.
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