Sing, Write, Love: Sarah Weeks talks about her hilarious new picture book, 'Woof: A Love Story'

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Photograph by Matt Peyton/Getty Images for SLJ.

You started out as a singer-songwriter, right?

Yeah. I studied songwriting and composition at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. Then I came to New York, figuring if I was going to be a songwriter I had to be on one of the coasts. My being a children's author was a completely serendipitous thing.

What happened?

One of my sons had separation anxiety when he went to nursery school. So I had to stay out in the hallway, waiting for him to acclimate. There was one other mom who was doing that, and she turned out to be Laura Geringer, who eventually became my editor. We became friends before either of us knew what the other one did. When she found out that I wrote songs for kids—I was writing for Disney and Sesame Street at the time—she said, “Maybe some of your songs would make good picture books.”

How would you describe Woof?

The theme of Woof is that music is the universal language. It's a love story between a dog and a cat who don't speak the same language. When the dog digs up a trombone and plays his feelings into it, the cat can suddenly understand what he feels.

I heard that you wrote the story a long time ago.

I wrote Woof about 15 years ago. It was originally conceived as an orchestral piece, sort of like Peter and the Wolf. Although Laura loved the music, she said, “It's such a huge project to do with a full orchestra, let's do it as a stand-alone book first.” For some reason—I can't really explain why—it took 15 years to do. The music wouldn't fit the story now, because it's been edited. But it was pretty cool as an orchestral piece.

Woof points to the common misunderstandings between men and women. Did you have that in mind when you wrote it?

No, not really. I always marvel when people talk about my books. They find all this depth in there that I wasn't thinking about. I did have a really interesting experience with the story.

Tell us about it.

I always look online to see kids' and parents' reviews of my books. And a woman with a five-year-old son wrote, “I don't recommend this book. My son wasn't interested because it's about romantic love.” I stopped and thought, Wow! I never really thought about it being a romance. Obviously, the dog and the cat fall in love, but I didn't think about that being an adult theme.

How did her review make you feel?

I was kind of troubled by it. But I had given a copy of the book to my downstairs neighbor who's a kindergarten teacher. And that same day she came up and said, “I've got to tell you about what happened in my classroom. We read Woof today and it just took off. Kids talked about who they loved and the different kinds of love you can have for a friend or a parent or a pet.” So the next time I read the book at a school visit, I said to some kindergarteners, “Raise your hand if you love somebody.” All the hands went up, and we had a really interesting discussion. There was one little girl who professed her love for a boy sitting next to her—“I love George!”—who was, of course, just appalled.

What about your own love life?

I'm about to get married.

Congratulations! Can we tell our readers?

Absolutely. The man that I'm marrying is Jim Fyfe. He was an actor for many years. He's now an American history teacher and the assistant headmaster at a small private school.

Author Information

Rick Margolis is SLJ's executive editor. A starred review of Woof (HarperCollins) appeared on page 83 of our January issue.