Joanne Oppenheim

Growing up in the little town of Monticello, New York, I never dreamed of becoming a writer. At 7, I was sure I would be a dancing movie star. I took, tap, ballet and tumbling until World War II began and the dance teacher went off to war and ended my dancing career.  At 12, I planned on being an Olympic swimmer, but my sinuses failed me. At 14, I dreamed of being an actress and studied with Frances Robinson Duff, the famous drama coach of Katherine Hepburn and Clark Gable. But in college I discovered, I didn’t always get the lead and unlike Jiminy Cricket, I decided that “hey, diddly dee,” an actor’s life was not for me. I rejected a lifetime of dealing with rejections—something I seemed to forget when I took up writing.

I had two little boys when I returned to college for a teaching degree. My teacher, Evelyn Beyer, at Sarah Lawrence College, read a children’s book at the end of every class, inspiring me to write my main paper on children’s lit. It was perfect. I read my homework to my boys, wrote the paper, and discovered a language I could speak. Evie suggested I join the Bank Street College Writer’s Workshop, which she and Margaret Wise Brown (Goodnight Moon) had attended. That was the ticket! Before long, I was writing stories for the ground-breaking Bank Street Readers, the first multi-racial urban reading series for schools. One of my assignments was to write a story about a city tree. Instead I wrote a poem about trees that was rejected for the readers. A few months later, I sold that poem to Young Scott Books. Have You Seen Trees? was the first of a series of Have You Seen books; several have been in print since 1969.

As my family grew up, I continued to write and taught 1st and 2nd graders in Monticello. I wrote a picture book each summer and dreamed of becoming a full-time author. In 1979, my eldest son graduated from law school, my youngest child graduated from high school, I graduated with an MS from Bank Street College and was offered a job in their publications department, where I wrote books for parents, teachers, and children. At last I was not only a full time writer—I became a New Yorker!