ReviMo Rev it up! Tara Lazar - Why I Love Being A Picture Book Author

Wednesday, January 8, 2014


I love being able to work in my pajamas all day. I even take my girls to school and pick them up wearing my jammies. I don't care about the stares. I know the other parents think I don't have a job anyway.

I love being able to work in bed all day. I have a breakfast tray/desk and two husbands that make it possible. (Wait...TWO HUSBANDS? Yes. First is Mr. Lazar, Alan, who works in our home office so I have to grab whatever space I can. The second is my stuffed husband that supports my back.) Jammies + bed = comfort = excellent writing vibes.

Finally, what I love most about being a picture book author is THE READERS--the kids. I love creating new places for them to visit, new characters to love, and new stories to expand and inspire their imagination. My goal has always been to write some child's most favoritest book. Bringing joy to a child's life is the biggest and best reason to love being a picture book author.

Those are EXCELLENT reasons, particularly the jammies writing a picture book a child will love! :D Thank you Tara!






Tara Lazar is a children’s book author, mother, foodie and boogeyman assassin (currently booked at 3am nightly). Her debut picture book, THE MONSTORE, is available now from Aladdin/Simon & Schuster. I THOUGHT THIS WAS A BEAR BOOK follows from Aladdin in September 2014, with LITTLE RED GLIDING HOOD skating your way via Random House Children’s in October 2015.

Tara created PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month) as the picture book writer’s answer to NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). PiBoIdMo is held on this blog every November. In 2013, PiBoIdMo featured 1,150 participants and over 100,000 web hits.

18 comments :

Teresa Robeson said...

Tara is hilarious! May I ask Santa to make me just like her when I grow up? ;) I would love for my job to be children's book author - for more reasons than those even - but it really seems like an impossible dream right now (and I dream about being able to fly, so that's saying something!). :)

Stacy S. Jensen said...

Thanks Tara! I love this line: I love creating new places for them to visit, new characters to love, and new stories to expand and inspire their imagination. As a parent reader, I love it when authors do this too.

Vivian Kirkfield said...

Gotta love the jammies! And your words, "write some child's favoritest book" is my goal as well.:) Thank you, Tara, for all that you do to help us...PiBoIdMo is an event that is helping to create the classic picture books of tomorrow!

Joanne Sher said...

I WISH I were brave enough to do the jammies in the car thing! LOVE this post - and so VERY thankful for you!

moonduster said...

Those are wonderful reasons for writing picture books! :)

MegMillerWrites said...

I agree! :D

MegMillerWrites said...

Tara is awesome, as is PiBoIdMo! :D

MegMillerWrites said...

I agree with you Vivian! Love PiBoIdMo! :D

MegMillerWrites said...

Well said, Stacy! I agree. :)

MegMillerWrites said...

Genius! I'm so starting my wishlist now! :D

Pamela Courtney said...

Expanding imagination, now that's the ticket! I love it when I read a book to my early learners at school and I watch them as they repeat a favorite line or act out a particular scene during their playful work engagement. I think to myself, Yes! That book did it's job

MegMillerWrites said...

So far what I love about writing for kids, is my passion for it. It's so much fun to come up with ideas and flesh them out into stories. I've never been so motivated or excited about something. Of course that feeling ebbs and flows, but overall - LOVE! Can't wait to be published and see what the other side is like. Thanks again Tara for joining us! :D

MegMillerWrites said...

YES! Too true Pamela! My daughter and I read Chicken of the Family and at the end she cheered and I thought, I would LOVE for a book of mine to inspire a kid to cheer, how amazing! :)

Deirdre Sheridan Englehart said...

I love writing for children because I hope to take them places with my words... I love books and stories, so it makes sense!!

Pat Miller said...

Recently I got to ride a springy purple dinosaur at a California park. I loved it! No one looked askance at me because my twin grandkids rode with me. That's a joy similar to writing for kids. Part of what I love is getting to lug home dozens of kid books from the library. Of course, I delight in reading them because I'm honing my writing skills. *wink*

pennyklostermann said...

And I can tell you love being a kid's writer. The Monstore is so adorable that kids do love it. I know! I read it to a class of kindergartners and they wanted to hear it again! I'm so looking forward to your future books!!!
Meg, thanks for having Tara. We love her!

Juliana Lee said...

I love the two husbands! I think I need to get another one for the bed, maybe I should rephrase that! The fact that you love your job is evident… you didn't even need to write an article about that!

Damon Dean said...

What I love about writing children's books is seeing an idea explode that was just a spark of a pun, a play on words, a random rhyme, a funny thought, or a brief peek inside of a child's imagination...and POOF it becomes a story.
Well, after a few poofs maybe, or maybe seven or eight, and after a while, and over time, and...well.
It's a slow explosion...but fantastic, in the end.