I’m excited to announce the release of my new picture book, How Do You Spell That Sound?—a playful celebration of language, imagination, and all the wonderfully strange sounds that don’t always fit neatly into words.
Have you ever heard a sound and thought, “How do you even spell that?”
A sneeze. A crash. A buzzing bee. The sound of something squishing, popping, rattling, or roaring. We have plenty of words for sounds, but sometimes the best way to capture a sound is to invent one of our own.
That’s the idea behind How Do You Spell That Sound? The book invites children to listen closely to the world around them and think about how they might turn the sounds they hear into words. It’s a simple concept, but one that opens the door to creativity, wordplay, and the joy of discovering that language doesn’t always have to follow the rules.
The book began with a poem, and creating the finished picture book gave me the opportunity to pair those playful words with watercolor illustrations. I wanted the art to have the same sense of curiosity and movement as the language—to make the sounds feel like something children could see as well as hear.
One of my favorite things about writing for children is that kids are naturally willing to experiment with language. They don’t necessarily need a word to already exist before they use it. If a sound needs a new word, they’ll make one. And honestly, that’s one of the things I love most about writing: sometimes the right word is the one you have to invent.
How Do You Spell That Sound? is now available, and I hope it gives young readers—and the adults reading along with them—a reason to listen a little more closely to the sounds all around them.
Maybe it will even inspire a few new words of their own.
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Now available in print and on Kindle!
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Book Summary
When Jack Utley loses his daughter just as his business is about to soar, it seems he’s traded financial gain for Callie’s life. After an encounter with a mysterious woman on the eve of Callie’s funeral, Jack wakes up to find that time has somehow rewound to the morning of Callie’s accident. Jack gets an opportunity that most grieving parents can only dream of – he saves his daughter’s life.
Now that Jack has been forced to reflect on everything he has to lose, he resolves to do better. He’s determined to spend more time at home with his family and repair the relationships that have suffered over the years while he’s been so focused on work. But as Callie’s behavior becomes increasingly bizarre, Jack realizes he has a lot more room to improve than he realized – and it might be too late to save his daughter after all.
For fans of We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Push, and Baby Teeth.
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