I did! It took about 6 months to assemble them all and design the pages. I showed him some of my drawing lessons things I did on a chalkboard at work to entertain my colleagues and Nick said I should put them into a book. My husband Nick Sunday and I had stopped in the museum cafe in between galleries. Q: What inspired you to write your first book, How to Draw a Radish? How long did it take to complete it?Ī: One evening I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Every month or so I would send Nana and Grampa an edition of 'The Daily Dribble,' with a bouncing basketball as it's logo. At some point I started a newsletter and had my brothers and sisters contribute to it. These were my Mom's parents I think she inherited her creativity and good humor from them they were absolutely heavenly in our eyes, warm happy people who loved us and encouraged our creativity and play.

Q: When did you first get interested/started in writing and art?Ī: When I was 5 or 6 years old, my much-loved grandparents moved to Florida and we children couldn't visit them as much as we once did. In fact, Mom would unroll white shelf paper along the table and give us a big box of crayons, and we could play for hours. There were six children, and Mom went to school as a commercial artist, so she passed that interest along to us.

Q: Have you always been aware of your creativity, or was it something you discovered later on in life?Ī: I've never questioned my creativity from our earliest days my mother gave us pencils and paper to keep us busy.

Later in life, I picked apples in an orchard. Meanwhile, out in the back, big pots of metal boiled. I sharpened pencils and played on the typewriter. Q: In Squeaky Chalk you write: 'I worked in my father's factory at an early age.

Squeaky Chalk by Joy Sikorski