Tag: verses

Margerumalia – Proof Copy

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – October 16, 2026

I got the proof copy of Verses Versus Curses last week and carried it on my morning walk every day for five days so I could show it to friends and acquaintances. One or two were complete strangers but were very happy that I showed it to them. A couple even had suggestions about promoting it with school librarians, parent groups, and venues.

You know what 80 to 90 percent said?

“Where can I buy a copy?”

One even said, “Now I know what I’m giving my grandchildren for Christmas!”

That was the plan! I had asked the folks at BookBaby what kind of target date I should have for getting it published in time for the holidays and they suggested October 1st. Andrea knew that wasn’t a hard-and-fast deadline but made her best effort to meet that date.

The final order was placed October 9th so that was pretty darn close. Especially considering the six hour time difference between us. (She lives in Denmark.)

Showing the book to so many people, I saw how they responded first to the illustrations—as expected—and then took the time to read a poem or two…or three. One 20-something read the whole thing from start to finish. I’ve not studied marketing but I know that Andrea’s artwork is going to spark the interest that makes a person pick up the book and look inside. 

Andrea is also going to provide me with line drawings from the book that I’ll use to create coloring pages as giveaways.

A proof copy is a chance to hold and examine the book as it would be produced in a full run. So I sat down with the book in hand and even though I had seen the entire layout several times on the Canva app, I found two mistakes.

The mistakes were mine. 

One line of poetry that should’ve been separated at the comma, continued for three more words before taking a new line. And on another page, a single word from a line of poetry got dropped down to the line below—sitting there sighing with all alone.

I checked the online version and it was exactly the same. How could I have missed it? I saw what I thought I was seeing rather than what was actually there. Who does that?

Everyone, apparently! [Insert political comment here.]

Fortunately, years of grading student papers honed my skills for catching typos.

I had Andrea run a corrected copy of the file before I submitted the full order. It should be available in stores by early November. Perfect timing.

My publisher also informed me that the ebook will only be available on Kindle and Apple Books because those are the two platforms that do picture book formats.

Watch this space for a release date.

TTFN

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I celebrated my 67th birthday this week and was amused to see this Family Circus comic in the newspaper. (A Boomer who gets a newspaper! Kinda on the nose, isn’t it?)

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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

Margerumalia – A Sneak Peek

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – August 28, 2026

Screenshot

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

Margerumalia – Books of Verses

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – January 2, 2026

I hope you enjoyed my verses last week. I’ve been thinking of writing enough of them to make a children’s book of poetry. How many would make for a modern day “A Child’s Garden of Verses,” I wonder. That book saw it’s 140th birthday last year. That’s quite a publishing run!

Many of my verses make use of idioms and wordplay. In fact, I was originally thinking that I should call it “Verses for the Complete Idiom,” playing off of the “Complete Idiot” how-to series, but I doubted children would get the connection. Also, the number of idioms in the English language is legion! When would such a project even end?

In my days working at Crown Books I was delighted to discover children’s books by Shel Silverstein. His skewed view of the world was nothing short of genius, and his illustrations were of minimalist perfection. Oh, how I wish I could draw! If you don’t recognize the name, seek out “Where The Sidewalk Ends” or “Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book” to get started.

I’m no Silverstein, but his work has inspired me and I thought I might use my poem “Verses Versus Curses” as the title of my book. I think it sets the mood, gives a nod to Stevenson’s “Child’s Garden of Verses” and could be the first poem in the book.

Speaking of idioms, here’s another poem I wrote recently based on the weather “raining cats and dogs.”

Cats and Dogs 

It never did rain cats and dogs 

When I played in a puddle.

It may have showered toads and frogs,

But not one you could cuddle.

A street could flood with pigs and hogs, 

Creating quite a mud-dle.

And clouds that hail down sticks and logs

Will make the children huddle.

But “sticks and stones may break my bones”

Is not a sound rebuttal.

I’m aware that “rebuttal” is not on a child’s standard vocabulary list, but there’s nothing more motivating for learning a word than hearing it used in an interesting way. I was three the first time our family took a sabbatical in Germany and I returned at age four with many new words in my own vocabulary, both German and English.

TTFN

P.S. This is not a New Year’s resolution, just an ambition. 

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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

Margerumalia – Some Holiday Fun

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – December 26, 2025

My brothers and I joke about our mother’s “last minute” gifts on Christmas Day. Younger brother Rich does the best imitation of her sudden squeal when she realized what she forgot to wrap.

Christmas morning always lasted for hours as we first ate Mom’s beloved cinnamon rolls, then opened all our stockings, and then distributed the gifts. The gift opening proceeded one person at a time, starting with the youngest. 

When Mom’s parents and sister were there, it took eight unwrappings to complete one circuit. You see, you can’t just open it and say thanks, you have to try it on, play with it, read the blurb, or play some of the music, and then exclaim how much you’re going to love it. 

Later we added spouses, then grandchildren and the morning extended right into lunchtime. Mom brought out plenty of food for people to graze on during the Christmas marathon.

Near the end of that gift extravaganza, Mom would suddenly utter her high pitched squeal and say “Hold on, one more gift!” We would share smiles that said “There it is!” because it happened every year, and then we waited for her to dig through dresser drawers for a gift she bought back in July which she presented to the lucky giftee with a story about its origins.

In the fond spirit of that squeal here are some last minute gifts for you. They’re a day late, but you’ll know I was thinking about you. 

Mom loved to laugh and I hope my gifts elicit a little chuckle for the holidays.

TTFN

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“There it is again! Did ya hear it that time?”

“Definitely. I definitely heard something that time.”

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Nothing Rhymes With Orange

Yellow is a mellow fellow and

Green is always keen,

Red is said to have some cred and

Blue is lovely, too

But

Nothing rhymes with orange.

Black is always coming back and

White is quite alright,

Gray can sometimes have its day and

Pink will never stink,

BUT

NOTHING RHYMES WITH ORANGE!

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“So, yeah, he told me what street the restaurant was on,

but I had no idea it was actually ON THE STREET!”

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Verses Versus Curses

I’ve often thought that curses were

A useful tool of language

Like mustard on the meat between 

The layers of a sandwedge.

But please be careful who you’re with 

And what they think of curses,

They may object, or take offense, 

Or maybe something worses.

Poetry instead can be

The mustard in your kitchen, 

When cursing isn’t pardoned much

And DRAT just isn’t bitchen.

[Photo Credits Above: AAA Magazine]

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