Newsletter – August 28, 2026
I’m excited to share some of the pages of my upcoming book of children’s poetry. It’s called Verses Versus Curses, which is also the name of the first poem in the book.
I call it a book of poems for the young and for the young at heart.
I like to imagine a parent or grandparent reading with a child, enjoying the poems together and laughing over some play on words or talking about the characters in the illustrations.
My favorite comment about my middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles, was when a parent told me that her daughter asked how soon they would visit Grandma so she could read “the museum book” to her again. Warms my heart.
I’m thinking her Grandma is a good at reading out loud, too!
This book will be aimed at a younger audience than my middle grade novel, perhaps late elementary school age if the child is reading for themselves. Younger if an adult is reading to them.
I discovered the illustrator, Andrea Benko, when I created my web page on WordPress and decided to follow other creative types on the platform. Her illustrations were as playful as my verses and had a variety of characters, mostly animals, but sometimes something unexpected. She recently used a watermelon slice as a character, complete with a classically shaped mustache.
Not only that, she knows how to use the technology to lay everything out in Canva, asking for my input for her ideas. Most of the time my comments are along the lines of “keep up the good work” but once in a while we go back and forth with ideas until we’ve got it right. I love the collaboration!
We talk by email and through the comments section in Canva which is a good thing because she’s in Europe and there’s a six hour time lag between us. Modern technology has its benefits!
Here’s another short poem she illustrated:
It was Andrea’s idea to separate the four lines of the poem into four squares. I’d never thought of that and I immediately applauded her choice.
We’re aiming for a completion date of about September 1st in order to submit it to the publisher to get it printed for the holidays. If you’re looking for a unique gift for someone you know, add this book to your list of possibilities. It is a gift that’ll keep on giving when it’s read, re-read, and read again.
I know. I had a book of funny poems that I got in elementary school and I wore out the pages by going through it time and time again.
TTFN
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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles
Eric Margerum 