Drafting, Focus Groups, and Curriculum Constraints

Tish Rabe (@tishrabebooks) is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 200 children's books with more than 11 million copies sold. She has written for Sesame Street, Disney, PBS Kids, Curious George, Clifford, and many more. She now heads her own children's book publishing company, Tish Rabe Books.

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Timestamps

• [00:00:00] Who is Tish Rabe?
• [00:00:24] How an opera major became a bestselling children’s author and songwriter.
• [00:03:12] Tish’s trashy debut on television treasure Sesame Street.
• [00:03:36] Pitching a childhood memory to dead silence — and landing book number one.
• [00:07:27] The value of writing a story’s ending first.
• [00:09:42] Jim Henson: The kind, gentle giant with a mind of steel.
• [00:10:58] Keeping kids and their parents entertained with double-level humor.
• [00:11:38] How Tish put her music training to work with Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch.
• [00:18:56] From nine-note auditions to signing on with Sesame Street‘s mission to level the kindergarten playing field.
• [00:22:48] Churning out children’s books and writing bangers about animal gestation periods and lumber measurement for 3-2-1 Contact.
• [00:26:56] The zero-rhyming genius of Joe Raposo’s “Bein’ Green” and why it works.
• [00:29:59] Curriculum is king: Focus groups, orange Oscar, and making sure the kids aren’t lost.
• [00:32:16] Random House rejected her book, but the late Dr. Seuss took a second look.
• [00:37:17] Accepting the Widow Seuss’s challenge to write a book for babies in utero and ending up with a bestseller.
• [00:40:39] The secret to perfect rhyme in Dr. Seuss’s paradigm.
• [00:44:14] Is rhyming a part of Tish’s DNA, or did she learn it along the way?
• [00:48:12] The time Tish transformed a planet from pizza into nickels to make her deadline.
• [00:49:45] Has music as a mission preserved Tish’s cognition?
• [00:55:10] What does Tish aim to do with the company she started in her 70s?
• [01:01:18] Sometimes Apart, Always in My Heart: A military kid’s book born from a POW father’s legacy and a high-five traced on paper.
• [01:05:30] Alaska the stuffed dog, financial literacy bunnies, hallucinated seagulls, and 843 acres of Central Park in 24 pages.
• [01:12:54] Tish’s campaign to get free books to kids in underserved neighborhoods.
• [01:14:02] Advice for aspiring children’s book authors.
• [01:15:42] Tish doesn’t get derailed by writer’s block — she prepares for it.
• [01:17:24] When Michelle Obama added 16 pages to a book Tish thought would be boring.
• [01:19:37] Big Bird in China, 1982: One hand-painted costume, 13 days of rain, zero coffee, and a five-year-old who memorized the wrong script.
• [01:23:41] Tish’s billboard.
• [01:24:38] Kindness is Caring, Friendship is Sharing and other parting thoughts.

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