Three Little Tamales
“Run, or you’ll be eaten!” the tortillas warned the Three Little Tamales.
The three little tamales certainly didn’t want that to happen. So they ran off into the desert. Each tamale built a little casita to live in. The first little tamale built her casita from sagebrush. The second built his from cornstalks. The third built his from cactus. Will that be enough to save them when Señor Lobo, the wolf, shows up?
Eric spent a lot of time researching this southwest version of The Three Little Pigs, mostly eating tamales.
Stormy’s Hat
Stormy Kromer is a locomotive engineer on Illinois’ Red Stack Line. He has a big problem. He can’t find a hat that’s right for a railroad man. His friends have plenty of suggestions for hats that might do the job. Unfortunately, none of them work out. Some are downright disasters! In the end, Stormy does what he should have done at the beginning. He asks his wife Ida for ideas. She comes up with a hat that’s just right for a railroad man. So right, in fact, that railroad men and women are still wearing them.
The idea for this story came to Eric one hot August afternoon when he was looking for an old Chicago Cubs baseball cap and couldn’t find it. He thought it might be cool to get one of those caps that locomotive engineers wear. After all, his wife Doris’s Uncle Elvin was an engineer on the New York Central. A hat like that would run in the family. Then he began thinking. Where did those railroad hats come from? Who had the idea first? He started doing research and discovered Stormy Kromer’s story.
Andrea U’ren, who also lives in Portland, created the perfect pictures for the book. Eric liked them so much that he gave Andrea the engineer’s hat he wore when he wrote the story. Andrea didn’t have one and he thought she should. Andrea spent a lot of time researching the costumes and furnishings of the period. She even traveled to Pittsburgh to study a century-old steam locomotive, which is exactly the kind of locomotive Stormy would have driven while he was looking for the right kind of hat.
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A Picture For Marc
This book is based on actual episodes in the life of Marc Chagall, one
of the twentieth century’s greatest artists. What fascinated Eric about
his story is that Marc grew up never having seen anyone draw a picture.
Rip Van Winkle’s Return
Eric has always loved Washington Irving’s stories, especially the famous
tale of Rip Van Winkle. While hunting in the Catskill Mountains, Rip
encountered a party of strange little men. He helped himself to a drink
from a mysterious jug and fell asleep for twenty years. He returned to a
world that had changed completely, where hardly anyone remembered poor
Rip Van Winkle.
Eric’s spirited retelling is matched by Leonard Everett
Fisher’s vibrant illustrations. Creating this book was a labor of love
for both of them.
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The Fisherman and the Turtle
Eric believes that stories are universal. He often likes to move a story
from one setting to another just to see what might happen. In this
retelling, he takes the famous Grimm story of “The Fisherman and His
Wife” and moves it to Mexico during the time of the Aztecs.
Martha Aviles’ illustrations capture the humor as well as the mystery of the
story. The sea turtle grants the wife’s wish of becoming one of the
gods. However, what she gets is not at all what she expected. Be careful
what you wish for. You may get it.
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Great Texas Hamster Drive
Eric got the idea for this story from Sheila Gauntt, the librarian at
Cooper Elementary School in Georgetown, Texas. Sheila told Eric about
her neighbor who raised hamsters commercially. He had a barn with more
than 10,000 hamsters on his ranch. Just about everyone in the
neighborhood had worked on the Hamster Ranch at one time or another.
A lot goes into keeping that many hamsters healthy and happy. Sheila told
Eric all about it. The wheels started turning on his flight home to
Portland. Hamsters…Texas…cows…cattle drive…Pecos Bill. It’s a unique
tall tale, sort of like Lonesome Dove with rodents!
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McElderry Book of Greek Myths
This book was a labor of love. Eric was invited to create a book for the
renowned McElderry series. He had the opportunity to retell his favorite
Greek myths. Eric has loved these stories since he was nine years old,
when his Uncle Abe gave him a copy of Thomas Bulfinch’s classic
collection, The Age of Fable. Stunning illustrations by Pep Monserrat
make this book one of Eric’s best. He hopes it will become one of your
favorites, too.
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The Three Cabritos
Three musical goats-want to go to a fiesta in Mexico. To get there they have to cross the
bridge. Their mother doesn’t like that at all. Chupacabra, the Goat Sucker, lurks beneath that bridge. If Chupacabra catches them, he will suck them dry as a dead cactus. However, The Three Cabritos prove more than a match for Chupacabra, who discovers that he must
dance to their tune.
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The Lady in the Blue Cloak
Eric spends a great deal of time in Texas and has many friends there. Several of his books, such as The Runaway Tortilla, have Texas themes.
The Lady In The Blue Cloak is Eric’s latest Texas book. It is a collection of stories that date back to the first Spanish missions in Texas. Susan Guevara created luminous illustrations for the stories. They shine like stained glass windows.
The title story is one of Eric’s favorites. He first heard it from Belinda Sakowski, the children’s librarian at the Sherman Public Library in Sherman, Texas. His primary source
for the stories is Adina de Zavala’s classic collection History
and Legends of the Alamo and Other Missions in and around San Antonio.
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The Frog Princess
A young girl of Alaska’s Tlingit people
is old enough to be married. She doesn’t like the young men who
come to her village. She sees something wrong with each one. “Marry
you? I would sooner marry a frog from our lake!” she tells
one whose eyes bulge slightly.
That night a strange visitor comes to speak with her. “Did you mean what you said about marrying a frog?” he asks. He takes her below the waters of the lake, to the world of the frog people. She is happy, but her father wants her back.
Can his daughter ever return?
Eric first heard this haunting story in
Sitka, on his first visit to Alaska in 1995. Rosanne Litzinger’s
watercolors blend the stillness of Alaskan lakes and forests with
the eerie magic of the tale.
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Tuning Up
Tuning Up is the latest title in
Richard C. Owen’s acclaimed Meet the Author series. It’s a picture-filled book about Eric. Learn about where he lives, what he likes to do best, where his ideas come from, why he writes the
kind of stories he does.
All of Eric’s fans will want to have this book. It is available now at Amazon.com. Order it today and ask to have your copy autographed.
For more books in the series about outstanding authors and illustrators
visit the publisher’s site here,
then click on “Meet the Author Books” in the orange square.
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A Horn for Louis
A Horn for Louis is based on a story
that Louis Armstrong, the great jazz trumpeter, told about how he got his first horn. Louis grew up in New Orleans. His family was very poor. Louis had to find jobs to help out even when he was a very little boy. When he was seven years old he worked at the Karnofsky family’s junkyard. He would ride through the streets on the junk wagon, tooting a little tin horn. People loved to hear him make music. They would bring their junk to the wagon to hear him play.
Louis loved making people happy with music. However, he didn’t want to work on the junk wagon all his life. He wanted to be a real musician, like Joe Oliver, the king of New Orleans jazz. To do that, he needed a real horn. The Karnofskys wanted to help, but could they do it the right way?
A Horn for Louis is Eric’s first book in Random House’s Stepping Stone series for beginning readers. James Bernardin’s illustrations give readers a great sense of what New Orleans was like one hundred years ago. Eric grew up loving to listen to Louis Armstrong whenever he appeared on television or radio. Louis lived not too far away from where Eric grew up. Eric also loves New Orleans. He made several visits there to capture the flavor of the vibrant city where jazz was born.
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Cactus Soup
The people of San Miguel are not at all happy to see a troop of hungry soldiers riding into town.
They know how to get rid them. They’ll pretend to be hungry and poor. The soldiers will leave when they see they aren’t going to be fed.
But the soldiers have a secret. They know how to make soup from a cactus thorn-and perhaps a few other ingredients.
Eric’s editor, Margery Cuyler, suggested he try his hand at the old story of “Stone Soup.” Eric got the idea of setting it Mexico when he remembered an old friend of his, Mitch Kirschenbaum, who served with General Pershing’s expedition against Pancho Villa.
Phil Huling created exceptional pictures to go with the story. Can you find Frida Kahlo?
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Anansi’s Party Time
Anansi wants to get back at Turtle for a trick Turtle played on him. What better way to do it than to invite Turtle to a party and not let him through the door? But then it’s Turtle’s turn. Watch him play an even better trick on Anansi!
Eric and Janet have had lots of fun presenting this story around the country. Janet sketches pictures while Eric tells the story. The best part is having the audience suggest costumes for Turtle. Janet used several of their costume ideas in the illustrations.
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The Mysterious Guests
Three mysterious guests teach a lesson of generosity and kindness during the holiday of Sukkot. The guests are the three patriachs for the Bible, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. According to legend, they bestow blessings on those who welcome them.
Katya Krenina has illustrated several of Eric’s books. Her paintings for The Mysterious Guests are among her best. They capture the colors of autumn and the fading year.
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Little Britches and the Rattlers
Little Britches is on her way to the rodeo when she meets up with a nest of rattlesnakes. She’s left with nothing but her long johns and red bandana. Can she outwith those rattlers, get back her close, and make it to the rodeo on time?
Eric enjoyed the challenge of retelling the old story of Little Black Sambo with a Texas twist.
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