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CANSCAIP MembersRobert MunschAuthor/Performer
15 Sharon Place
Born: June 11, 1945. Pittsburgh, Pa. USA BiographyI was born on June 11, 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I grew up in a family of 9 kids. At least, that is where I lived when I was young. My mother says I never grew up and still act like I was 6 years old. She may be right, but I figure that I act like a very mature 6 year old. I almost flunked first grade and also the second, third, forth, and fifth; but my younger brother was in the grade behind me and he was a brain and nobody wanted to have me be in the same grade as him, so they kept passing me. I never learned how to spell, graduated from eighth grade counting on my fingers to do simple addition, and in general was not a resounding academic success. I did, however, all through elementary school, write poetry. Funny poems, silly poems, all sorts of poems. Nobody thought that was very important, including me. When I went to high school, I didn't get along with anybody, read lots of books and deciding to be a Catholic Priest. I studied for 7 years to be a Jesuit priest, only to find that I was lousy priest material. [While I was studying with the Jesuits, I got an undergraduate degree in History and a Master's degree in Anthropology. A Master's degree in Anthropology isn't worth much, but that's what they give you when you flunk your orals for your Ph.D] While I was studying to be a Jesuit priest, I worked part-time at an orphanage to escape from deadly classes in philosophy. So I knew I liked working with kids; and when I left the Jesuits I decided to work in daycare for a year till I figured out what I wanted to do; and what I figured out I wanted to do was: work in daycare. After I had been in daycare for awhile I decided to learn something about what I was supposed to be doing, so I went back to school for a year at the Elliot Pearson School of Child Studies at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. It was there that I made up my first story while on a student teaching placement at the Wellsley College Child Studies Preschool. I did it for a circle time. I did not know that it was going to be a book called Mortimer. It took it 12 years to get to be a book. Once when my wife [I met her over a diaper at Bromley Heath Infant Daycare in Jamaica Plain, Mass.] and I were both out of work because a daycare lost its' funding, we decided to try to look for work in Canada. We both ended up at a lab preschool at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario. The wife of my boss happened to be a children's librarian and she heard me telling stories. She told me to publish and I didn't listen, She told my boss to make me publish and my boss told me to publish and I listened. In fact, he gave me two months off to do it. So I had a great two months off and on the last day, I wrote down 10 stories and sent them off to 10 different publishers. Nine said, "No" and one said, "Yes" to a story called "Mud Puddle". So I became a writer. Mud Puddle sold 3000 copies the first year. Oh WOW! But Annick press kept putting out my books and they slowly sold better and better. [Mud Puddle had its' best year 10 years after it was published!]. Finally I quit my job at the University and started just writing and telling stories. About them I became a Canadian citizen and lost my American citizenship. It was nice to have only one country again. Along the way I became Canada's best selling author, but I was not selling much in the USA. Then Love You Forever came out as a Canadian book in 1986. I had written it as a memorial for two stillborn babies we had in 1979 and 1980. The story actually started out as a song. I really wanted this story to be a book and I had to change publishers since my regular publisher did not want to do it. I was really worried that it would not sell. It sold 30,000 in 1986 and was the bestselling kids book in Canada that year, 70,000 in 1987 and was the bestselling Canadian kids book that year to. It sold 1,000,000 in 1988 . It was the bestselling Canadian kids book that year too. The strange thing was that it was also the bestselling kids book in the USA, only nobody knew it, including me. It never occurred to me that it could be an invisible bestseller. Then, in 1994, the New York Times did an update of their list of bestselling children1s books that they had last done in 1978. They did not update the list often since it was very stable. Goodnight Moon had been #1 since forever! They found Love You Forever at the top of the list with 8,000,000 sold. {It1s at 18,000,000 as of 1999} This was very strange as they had never reviewed it, did not know it existed, and it was Canadian (foreign) title that did not even have a US publisher or distributor. Somebody from the Times called me up and wanted to know, "Who are You?". So I have kept on doing about 2 books a year and now I have 35 books published. Published Works50 Below Zero Available ForI just pick a few things and do them. Ask and see if I can do what you want. |
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