Help get Cyclops and Eugene to all 50 states!
Teachers and librarians, parents and kids: I’d love to hear from students about where this book travels (and therefore, Cyclops and Eugene). What did Eugene like? What made Cyclops afraid?
Post a pic of the book in your state and I’ll mail a personal note to your class! Order info below.
Out Feb. 11th.
Signed copy from One More Page
Find a book store through Indie Bound.
Order from Amazon
Order from Barnes and Noble
I moved from Queens, N.Y. to Radford, Va. when I was 3. One of my earliest memories is of a cow that broke loose from a nearby farm and walked onto our carport. My next door neighbor at the time was named Jill. She pronounced it with an accent — Jail — so I pronounced it that way, too, leaving my very New York aunt to continually question my parents about their life choices. When I was in first grade, my family moved to Blacksburg, to a house near a creek full of crawfish. I had become (and I remain) a country girl. Still, I wanted to explore my New York roots.
We returned to New York at least three times a year. My relatives had moved to the suburbs, so any part of New York City that I saw was through a car window from the highway. Up close I saw:
My aunt and uncle’s house on Long Island.
My aunt and uncle’s house in Rockland County.
A pizza place around the corner.
What I did not see:
A Broadway show.
The Statue of Liberty.
Coney Island.
Times Square.
Central Park.
I begged my parents for an excursion into the city. For a day? For an hour? But my dad was anxious about a lot of things, including driving. He was worse about parking. Would the tires be slashed? Or stolen? The subway wasn’t an option, Too dirty and we’d probably be mugged. New York was too expensive. Too much. Besides, my aunt had deli and HBO. Why go anywhere?
My frustration grew. In eighth grade I asked a Virginia boy I had a crush on to bring me back a post card of the Statue of Liberty. I kept it on a bulletin board in my bedroom. The New York Skyline was framed over my bed. Meanwhile, my dad waxed nostalgic about a city that seemed to only exist in his imagination. And mine.
Fast forward. I grew to have my own issues with anxiety. I understand better now. Rewind. I did not understand at all.
I visited New York City a lot after college, especially once my brother moved back there. With him, and with my friends, husband and kids, I explored (as long as someone else was doing the driving) all of the places I’d missed.
A couple of years ago, after reading the Odyssey, I began thinking about my own version of a cyclops, and using him as a way to explore anxiety: my father’s, which seemed to ebb in later life, and my own, which had become, at times, suffocating. Cyclops worried about the sharpness of the grass and took excellent care of his sheep. One day when I was doing research for something else, I came across a New York Times story from 1857 about a mysterious cave that had been discovered in Central Park.
At last, I had a place for Cyclops to live — a cave he never wanted to leave, so close to so many Big Things. The rest of the story unfolded as he was drawn out by Eugene, a joyful, confident sheep.
My hope was for Cyclops and Eugene to navigate the world, including Virginia. But first, he had to get out of his cave and see the places I was never able to see growing up. I can’t wait for you to meet him when the book comes out in February. And I can’t wait for you to see the way Victoria Tentler-Krylov, an architect and artist, owned these characters. She added so, so much and I can’t imagine having done this book with anybody else. Before you see the story we created, though, I wanted you to see where it started: with a teen-age me looking out a car window. With a whole world that’s out there, waiting to be explored.
Preorders make all of the difference. Call your local indie bookstore or follow a link below!
Me at the Gapstow Bridge
This photo seemed like a good transition photo, so sharing here. Hoping to get a better one but this bird is not cooperating.
SO excited to show you the new cover for Cyclops of Central Park, coming out in February from GP Putnam’s Sons. The illustrator is Victoria Tentler-Krylov and I love her work and this cover more than I can say. (Are you listening, New Yorker???) The book can be preordered right now, either online or through your favorite local indy. Links below!
Click to preorder from:
Or call your local independent bookstore!
My mother always called it “the credenza,” a fancy name for a small cabinet holding a few liquor bottles (for my parents’ few parties) and blackberry Manischewitz (for shabbat). On top sat whatever family photos were in rotation and a bronze statue of Moses holding the ten commandments.
I didn’t always know it was Moses. At first I thought he was a mythological creature, and given my views on religion sometimes, that wasn’t far off. Plus the statue, a replica of the one made by Michelangelo, had horns. As a kid growing up in the south where some people believed Jews had horns, I didn’t think Moses was doing a good job bucking stereotypes. But he was there through my childhood and teenhood, watching with steely eyes when I stole a taste of rum and refilled the bottle with tap water. Consider him a biblical precursor to Elf on the Shelf. One day, after college graduation, after my parents divorced and remarried other people, Moses was replaced by a crystal bowl.
This February, I traveled to Israel with a group of 17 other children’s writers, a trip that was sponsored by the PJ Library. The goal was to make connections, with Israel and with each other. I’d been in a stuck place in my writing for many months, and I thought what I needed was desert air and a brand new landscape. But in many ways, Israel felt like a return to a place I’d never been. That feeling was confirmed when we visited Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev and the last home of David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel.
There on a shelf was the statue of Moses I knew from my childhood, watching over Ben-Gurion just as he’d watched over me.
