Russell School students interview Toni Buzzeo

Children were invited to ask questions of author Tony Buzzeo, who will soon visit their school. See related story, Maine author to vist Russell School

Mrs. Sylvester's class
Cullen Ronan and Zoe Adams ask:
"When did you start writing books?"


I started writing books for children eight and a half years ago, in 1995, and it took me five years to sell my first book, THE SEA CHEST. But I started writing long ago, long before 1995, when I was a teenager. The first writing I did was poetry, and if you look at my children's books, you'll see that I often still write poetry!






From Mrs. Ledoux's class:
Molly Stansfield and Drew Blanchard ask:

"Where did you get your idea for The Sea Chest?"


I was watching a video called LIGHT SPIRIT all about the sixty four lighthouses in Maine. On that video, I saw a little section about Hendricks Head Light and the story that is told there about a baby who washed ashore in a sea chest. I just knew that this story would make a beautiful children's book, but it took me a long time to figure out how to tell the story. It wasn't until I started to think about my experience growing up as a lonely, only child--and then remembered how joyful I was when I finally became an older sister to my foster sister Marianne--that I had the idea for a girl growing up on a lonely lighthouse island

From Mrs. Williams' class
Casey Myhaver and Anna Schaeffer ask:

Do you decide if your idea for a story will be a chapter book or a picture book or do you just write it and see how it ends up?


I always THINK that I know whether I will write a picture book or a chapter book, but sometimes I find out I am wrong! For instance, I thought that THE SEA CHEST was going to have to be a chapter book, but when I wrote it, I found it coming out as poetry that would make a lovely picture book. And when I first tried to write the story of a boy who time travels to the past, I thought it should be a picture book. But I soon found out that it had to be a chapter book--a very long chapter book 165 pages long! The book is called THE ROGUE PINE. I am hoping to sell it, but I haven't done that yet.

The Monument Newspaper asked:
How has your life changed since you've become a published author?

My life has changed a LOT since my first book was published. I am on the road much of the time, traveling to speak at schools, libraries, and conferences all over the country and visiting bookstores for signings. This school year, I will be in North Carolina, Missouri (twice), Kansas, Iowa, California, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and of course Maine, Maine, Maine! I meet so many wonderful people, and especially great kids. (I just love kids. They are my favorite people!) Because my son, Topher, is a senior in college, and my husband, Ken, is a very independent guy, it's not hard for me to be away from home doing all this speaking--and sometimes Ken comes with me! It is hard to keep things in balance with my library job. I share my job with another librarian so she's there when I'm not. That's a lucky thing.

It's a lot of work to do all this speaking, and that may be the hardest part of the job. Sometimes, though, when a book is giving me a really hard time, especially when I'm revising a book, then I think THAT is the hardest part of the job. The best parts of being an author are: selling a new book (which I just did last week; it's called A LEDGE LIGHT CHRISTMAS), hearing something wonderful about one of my books (that it's won an award or gotten a starred review or some other wonderful thing), and finally, hearing a reader tell me that they loved the book.