Meet-the-Author Recording with Kara LaReau

Baby Clown |

Kara LaReau introduces and shares some of the backstory for creating Baby Clown.

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Kara LaReau: Hi, my name is Kara LaReau and I'm the author of all kinds of books for all kinds of kids, including picture books like Baby Clown. This story, Baby Clown was a very personal story for me. I think it's an example of how, in life, I try to find humor in just about everything. That's kind of how I deal with things in life. When my husband and I had our son, and our son is almost seven now, but when he was first born, he cried all the time. He had colic and we could not get him to stop crying. And so literally for the first three months after he was born, he just did nothing but cry. And so it was very hard for all of us trying to navigate those three months.

And so after it happened, he ultimately stopped crying.
We never figured out what to do to get him to stop. He just stopped on his own. I was thinking about that and I was thinking "I think that could be a great premise for a picture book." That's how the idea came to me. And as I like to say, "My way of making lemonade out of colicky lemons."

I'm really interested in making sure that my stories are as fun to read aloud as they are to read on your own. So I tried to include a lot of really fun repetition and rhythms and fun voices. And of course there's baby clowns crying, which I encourage people to read as loudly as they possibly can throughout the story. I find it to be very therapeutic. So I hope that I've done a really good job in crafting this story as a good read aloud.

This Meet-the-Author Recording with Kara LaReau was exclusively created in April 2020 by TeachingBooks with thanks to Candlewick Press.