Note: Highland Park students' questions appear in red:

What inspired you to write books?

It was basically the love of nature and trying to portray that to young children through literature.

How many books have you written and illustrated? Which one is your favorite?

I don't know the exact number, but I've written and illustrated about 25 of my own (counting the board books) and illustrated about 10 of other authors'. My favorite has to be Have You Seen My Duckling? The reason is the first book I was able to do in full color without any line or color overlays. When I first started doing children's books, everything had to be pre-separated, every color had to be indicated on overlays. For instance, if I wanted to do orange, I had to put red and yellow to get the orange on overlays. So it was very tedious and took a long time. Since Have You Seen My Duckling? I've done all my books in full-color. Meaning they are like little paintings children do all over the country with their colored pencils, watercolor, and black pencil line or ink line.

Do you like writing or illustrating better?

Writing goes faster, but the illustration is my first love.

Hi from Austin, Texas, kindergartners! Do you still live near the pond, and are there still ducks there? Did one of them sneak away when you and your husband were watching them, like in Have You Seen My Duckling?

Yes! Yes! and Yes! I still live in the same house, we still have the pond, and ducks come in the fall and the spring. Not only the ducklings, but the Canada geese goslings also visit the pond. Also deer, raccoons, herons, frogs, and turtles.

Did you go to school to learn how to be an illustrator?

Yes, I did. I went to the School of Visual Arts in New York City. The thing that attracted me about this art school was that they had a special course in children's book illustrating.

Do you have to spend a long time studying animals before you draw them? Which animal was the hardest to illustrate? Do you have a favorite animal to draw? Or a favorite animal in real life?

I do a certain amount of research; whether it is through my own photographs or photographs I get from libraries or research houses. I use those for a guide, but then I always put the animal's personality in the drawings. I just finished doing a book called You're Special, Little One, and I found that the father lion was difficult because he had so much hair. My favorite animal to draw? I think I really love to draw rabbits and cats. In real life, I've just started to learn all about cats, since one found us last Thanksgiving and ever since then she's taken our hearts. Before that I was always a dog person, but now I love both of them.

Do you write and illustrate your books in your house? What kind of room is it? And since you love animals, do you have pets at home?

My husband and I have a studio that used to be the farmer's old chicken shed and we built a room off of that, and that's where my studio is. It's about 12 by 15 with windows on three sides and a great big bird feeder right in front of my drawing board. Many types of birds come there all year long. In my house I have Celeste, our 2-year-old chubby cat along with two chubby goldfish, Romeo and Juliet.

Do you spend a lot of time observing nature?

Since nature is all around me, cause we live in the country, I do appreciate it and notice all the different changes during the year.

Hello from St. Joe Grade School, South Bend, IN. Are you planning on writing and illustrating a chapter book?

Now that my daughter is 13, I sometimes think about writing about her trials and tribulations, but haven't put anything really down on paper yet, since illustrating does really take up a great deal of my time.

How old were you when you first started writing?

In 1977 I illustrated my first children's book, but I didn't start to write my own [books] and become published &emdash; under my own name &emdash; until 1983. I was in my early 30s.

What was the title of your first published book?

My Hand's Can by Jean Holzenthaler, and my first book of my own was All Year Long.

Horatio's kindergarten class would like to know where you get your ideas and how you come up with the colors for your pages.

A lot of my ideas generates from the world around me. Bunny and Bird came from telling my young daughter a story in our backyard. The story started by asking her, "what do you think would live in an old apple tree?" She responded, "a bunny would live in the bottom and a bird could live in the top." That's how Will You Be My Friend? started forming. Each book has its own special way of coming together. With Silly Little Goose I wanted to do a story about a windy day, but it just wasn't working until I thought of putting a goose in the story that wanted to find a nice, quiet place to have her goslings. The hat and the windy day all put together made Silly Little Goose work.

How many Bunny and Bird stories are there? Are you planning to write any more?

There are two Bunny and Bird stories: Will You Be My Friend? and Where Did Bunny Go? And I have an idea for the third one, and the title is tentatively would be Are You Still My Friend?

How long does it take you to write a book, and do you do the pictures or the story first? What will you write next? We hope you'll write about a Texas animal, like a longhorn or an armadillo, or our school mascot - a Scottie dog!

It generally takes me about six months to do a book and that's with the writing and the illustrating. The fewer words there are in the book [means] I generally have to show more sketches so the editor and the art director can see what's in my mind. Generally, because I use pictures more than words to tell my stories. I love Scottie dogs. In the book that will be coming out in the fall of 2003, You're Special, Little One, I will have a prairie dog in that book and I would love to do a story about a little Scottie dog. Is your Scottie black or white?

At Highland Park Elementary in Austin Texas, our Scottie dog is black. Do you ever travel on book tours? You could come see us!

I've never gone on a tour, but I do get asked to go to conventions along with schools around the country.

Horatio kindergarten would like to know if you write about your own experiences.

Have You Seen My Duckling? was something from my own experience. In Counting to Christmas I pictured my young daughter doing all the activities she loves to do during Christmas.

Why did you choose the career of an artist and writer? Did someone inspire you, and if so who?

I think the thing that inspired me the most was the love of animals, and enjoying sketching them when I was younger. I discovered that children's literature seemed to be the answer of combining stories and animals together for the rest of my life.

Does anyone else in your family write or draw? If so, have they received any special recognition?

My husband Thomas Tafuri is a graphic designer and has done many covers during his 40 years of cover design. Some of them being for Sue Grafton's Q Is for Quarry, John Altmans' Deception, and John Sandford's Mortal Prey. For special recognition, my daughter Christina is a dancer; she was Clara in the Nutcracker last year, for her ballet company.

What was the last book you published?

The Donkey's Christmas Song.

How did you decide that in The Donkey's Christmas Song, the donkey should be the main animal character?

This book took me the longest to do. I had all the sketches completed and approved, but the donkey was just one of the animals greeting the baby. It just seemed as if he was pushing himself up to the front to be noticed more. And why not, he took the baby to the stable to be born. So the donkey, along with the baby, became the star of the book. I redid and moved around the sketches for the shy little donkey.

Why did you decide to write The Donkey's Christmas Song when you already have a Christmas book called Counting to Christmas?

I always wanted to do a lullaby for the new baby. ten years ago, I wrote the story and filed it away until I showed it to Lauren Thompson, my editor now at Scholastic. She felt that it was so different from Counting to Christmas and it could reach a younger audience.

You seem to pay a lot of attention to rhythm in your writing. Do you have any poetry background?

Not really, but by reading to children when I do presentations, I feel that rhythm and a good beat keeps hold of their attention. So I try to incorporate that in my books.

I read that you won a Caldecott for Have You Seen My Duckling? Was that your favorite book to illustrate, or do you have another favorite?

Yes, it was my favorite, but I try to put so much of myself into each of my books that they all become very important to me.

How do you decide which illustrations should go on the covers of your books?

I generally have a feeling of how I want the cover to look and I put that down in sketch form &emdash; pencil and vellum (tissue paper) and present it to David Saylor, the art director at Scholastic, and my editor, Lauren Thompson, so we can agree upon a strong jacket.

What other hobbies and interests do you have? What do you do when you are taking a break from writing and illustrating?

I love to go antiquing with Christina and Tom, my husband; gardening and taking day trips around New England.

Who are your favorite illustrators and authors?

I adore Beatrix Potter's work. After visiting her home in the Lake District two years ago, I was just so taken back, not only by where she lived, but where she worked, in a small area on a desk, by a little window on the second floor of her home. The Lake District is in England. To see all these places that appeared in her books, that was also a thrill.

Do you have a Web site?

No, I don't.

Thank you for taking your time to come online and chat with us. Where can students write later if they have other questions?

Send it to me: Nancy Tafuri c/o Lauren Thompson 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012. It might take me a while to respond, but I answer all my letters.

Anything you'd like to add?

I really appreciate that the students took the time out to ask me questions about my work. The questions were very thoughtful. I can tell that they took a lot of time to propose them. I hope my books help them, not only with their reading, but their artwork. Both of those subjects were very important to me when I was a young child.