The first spark of Bogtown came 20 years ago at the Black Sheep Café in Amherst, Massachusetts. I was having coffee with David Hyde Costello, who is not only a picture book author and illustrator I admire, but also my college friend and brother-in-law. A two-year-old (mine!) was squirming in my arms so David sketched pictures while we talked. I don’t remember what we talked about – probably relationships or family or books, the things we always talked about. David’s drawings kept the two-year-old occupied. The sketches were all charming, but I remember interrupting our conversation when one picture captivated me: a distinguished frog, tall and elegant, with a crown on his head.

In the conversation that followed, we decided that Maestro Frog, as we called him, was the music teacher in a village called Bogtown. He lived in a castle at the edge of town and taught all the young frogs violin, viola, and cello.

That was the first of hundreds, maybe thousands of hours spent in Bogtown. We wrote several stories and created two picture book dummies. The stories were alive for us – Mirabelle and her big personality, Henry and his thoughtful steadiness. But the stories we made up for them strained at the word count of a picture book.

“Maybe the book should be longer,” David suggested in 2024, and I could imagine it – the story of Mirabelle and Henry and their classmates putting on a school play, told in chapters. I spent a year writing Mirabelle and Henry, the first of what I hope will be many stories that capture the warmth and beauty of Bogtown.

Many things have changed since that first glimpse of Bogtown two decades ago. For one thing, my youngest, who spent so many afternoons watching David sketch, is today an artist in their own right. Bogtown is a bigger place, with many more characters. Maestro Frog is just called Maestro, and I don’t know if he still wears a crown – only David can answer that one! But the world of Bogtown remains just as we imagined it two decades ago. It’s a place full of kindness and warmth, love and humor, where friendship is prized and caring is more important than getting everything right.

Our chapter book, Mirabelle and Henry, is now in the hands of Ginger Knowlton, agent extraordinaire at Curtis Brown, who will be sending it into the world in the coming weeks. Wish us luck!