Pete’s adventures range from curing hiccups (Mom knows best!) to sleepover friends who won’t sleep, to shopping in the grocery store and scuba diving.īeing an artist was not Dean’s plan. While Litwin and Dean split in 2011, Dean and his wife Kimberly have written more than 60 Pete adventures, with more on the way. I have to admit, these early volumes are my favorites, and I cannot help but read Pete stories as if he’s a surfer dude. Litwin wrote four of Pete’s adventures ( Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons, Rockin in my School Shoes, I Love My White Shoes, and Pete the Cat Saves Christmas). Pete is the creation of James Dean, whose early illustrations wound up as musically or rhythmically-oriented stories by storyteller/musician Eric Litwin. Pete is the kind of story you want your child to like, because you want to read more of his stories. His stories are mostly easy-readers that play to the 2-7 year old crowd, but he is infinitely more interesting than that. He has a host of friends (Grumpy Toad, Gus the Platypus, Callie, Squirrel, etc) and he loves bananas and surfing. If you haven’t read him, Pete the Cat is a groovy large-eyed, laid-back blue/black cat who lives with his mom and dad and his tuxedo-patterned brother Bob. And in this case, the really good is Pete the Cat. So when a children’s book is self-published, sells 7,000 copies in its first ten months and is then signed on by major publisher Harper Collins, you know there’s something really good there. Scholastic, the one who haunts school kids with that monthly flier, publishes just 600 books a year, from board books through High School.
More than 21,000 children’s titles are published every year in the US, by a number of publishers, which is only a dent in the number of actual submissions. Everyone has an idea for a children’s book, and almost all of them will never see a contract. Children’s books are notoriously hard to get published.