Cover Reveal: CRANKY HANK AND THE NOISY NEIGHBORS

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I always know it’s fall for two reasons…the glorious change of leaf color where I live in New England…AND the wave upon wave of brand new books! Celebrating new books can happen even before the books actually launch…and COVER REVEALS are one of my favorite ways to give all of you a sneak peek, sometimes many months before we can all get copies.

When a dear kid lit friend, Claire Blumenfeld reached out to let me know that her debut picture book, CRANKY HANK AND THE NOISY NEIGHBORS was ready to have a cover reveal, I knew I’d want to be the one who did it. And Claire has graciously agreed to stop by to answer a couple of questions. But first…let’s take a look at the cover!

Kids will totally LOVE this cover! And I think they will connect with it. Haven’t we all had moments of crankiness? Plus, the cartoon-like aspect of illustrator Gregory’s art is sure to strike a chord with young kids.

ME: Welcome, Claire! We are so happy to have you here at Picture Books Help Kid Soar!

CLAIRE: It’s a pleasure to be here, Vivian! I’m happy to share a bit about the book and the path to publicatin…as well as what inspired me to write it.
About the story

Cranky Hank And The Noisy Neighbors is an interfaith story about an older man who lives alone in his apartment and likes his life just the way it is: peaceful, predictable, and perfect for afternoon naps. But when a lively new family moves upstairs, Hank’s world is turned upside down by all the commotion. When the family, decked out with costumes and groggers, heads out to celebrate Purim, Hank’s longed-for peace and quiet finally arrives . . . along with some unexpected loneliness. And so, when the new neighbors invite him over for hamantaschen and celebrations, Hank realizes that he likes friendship even better than he likes silence.

What inspired me to write this story?

I was first inspired to write Cranky Hank in the early 2000’s when my two children were growing up. I read all the available Jewish picture books to them in support of their Jewish identity and to deepen my appreciation of Jewish culture. But although there were plenty of stories about Hanukkah and Passover, there were few on the topic of Purim. I researched the joyous holiday and began writing the early drafts of Cranky Hank. In 2009, I put the project aside to return to my career as a reading specialist. Then, after retiring and navigating Covid, with time freed up for writing I finished my story in 2022, and sold it to Kar-Ben in 2025. Now of course there are many wonderful books about Purim lining the shelves and I am honored that Cranky Hank will sit among them.

Humorous incidents along the path to publication

I found it particularly amusing that Purim was my husband’s favorite holiday growing up due to the fact he was allowed to make a lot of noise during the reading of the megillah (54 times!). I thought about who wouldn’t appreciate a lot of noise in order to create the lovable (albeit crusty, ill-tempered, and somewhat scary) main character, Hank, who desperately wants to take his afternoon nap. Purim is a Jewish holiday that honors unity, family, and community so it is especially fitting that Sari gives her gift basket to Hank and invites him to their festive family meal called the seudah.

Challenges

Originally I envisioned each spread as an upstairs/downstairs vertical structure so the readers could see the family’s noisy preparations while at the same time watch Hank’s escalating frustration. The early drafts contained many sidebars and artnotes that all became too messy. Fortunately the art director and the illustrator, Pauline Gregory, created just one spread that simultaneously shows the happenings both up and downstairs while the rest of the spreads have either a clever embedded illustration, or side-by-side illustration. The Purim Story and the Purim Mitzvot appear in the back matter.

ME: This is all wonderful, Claire! We all love to hear the story behind the story…I think hearing how things went for someone else helps us to understand that the journey is different for each one of us…yet we all face challenges, of one sort or another.

And now, dear friends, here is some info about the author and illustrator…as well as PRE-ORDER links so we can all order our very own copy!

Bios:
Claire Blumenfeld worked as an early childhood educator and reading interventionist for 25 years, sharing picture books to support developing readers. Now she writes humorous and heartfelt, language-rich picture books layered with themes of identity & belonging, family, and community. Her first book, Cranky Hank and the Noisy Neighbors (A Purim Story) releases January 5, 2027 (pre-order link). Claire lives in the Boston area and on Cape Cod with her husband. Visit her at www.claireblumenfeld.com, or follow on social media @ClaireBlumenfeld

Pauline is an award-winning children’s illustrator, graduating from Arts University Plymouth. Drawing is the quiet place she loves to be. With silliness and humour at her core, she loves to make the reader laugh. Living and working in north Cornwall, England, Pauline creates quirky illustrations with humour and charm using traditional materials. Some of Pauline’s clients include: Random House, Walker Books, Jellycat London, Disney, Faber & Faber, Simon & Schuster, Bloomsbury, Little Tiger, Wonderbly and more. https://paulinegregoryillustration.com/

PRE-ORDER LINKS:
AMAZON
BOOKSHOP.ORG

GOODREADS WANT TO READ SHELF

Thank you for spending your precious time with us. I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Perfect Picture Book Friday: IF MY SISTER WERE A WORM

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Happy Perfect Picture Book Friday, dear friends. Today’s featured book launched earlier this week….and I am thrilled to help author Julie Hauswirth celebrate. Julie and I are old friends…back in 2023, she was a winner of Sylvia Chen’s Book Boast Challenge…and I was the prize…a 30-minute Ask-Me-Anything Zoom Chat. I was impressed with Julie’s passion for writing and I know our conversation lasted way more than 30 minutes. And she has also participated in #50PreciousWords and was in the prize winner’s circle in 2024. When I heard her debut book was launching, I asked her if she’d share the story behind the story…so please make sure you scroll through the entire post because her words will inspire you!

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IF MY SISTER WERE A WORM

Written by Julie Hauswirth

Illustrated by Jessica Goecke

Published by Holiday House (October 20, 2026)

Ages: 4-8

Themes: Sibling rivalry, imagination, humor

ME: And here is Julie to tell us about the book and her path to publication. Welcome, dear Julie! I’m so happy you stopped by Picture Books Help Kids Soar.

JULIE: Thank you so much for inviting me, Vivian! It’s a joy to be here.

About the book:

If My Sister Were a Worm is based on a true story…
…Just kidding!

But sort of. It’s a story about Maggie, a younger sibling who grows tired of always feeling overshadowed by her big sister. What do you do when your sister steals your thunder? You turn her into a worm, of course. Worms don’t pop your birthday balloons. They don’t “help” you open your presents or prematurely blow out your candles. They don’t steal your favorite seat on the school bus!

On the other hand, worms can’t play with you before bath time. They can’t be your sidekick at family weddings, and they definitely can’t make s’mores with you at summer camp. Plus, they’re REALLY easy to lose.

If Maggie isn’t able to turn her sister back into a human, she’s in for a lifetime of parental blame and worm-hunting. There may be only one thing left to do… Are two worms better than one?

What inspired you to write this story:

The idea for this story came to me during Susanna Hill’s May Mini Mix n’ Match Challenge in 2023. One week, the challenge was to select a subject from column A (You, my sister, my grandpa, etc.) and pair it with a “condition” from column b (elastic, worm, movie star, etc.). Participants would then write a 100-word cause and effect story similar to If You Give a Mouse a Cookie or When Your Lion Needs a Bath. I chose sister and worm, and then had a blast writing from the perspective of child Julie living with a worm for a sister. Since the challenge was just meant to be creative and fun and there were no winners, I didn’t feel the pressure to churn out a “perfect” entry and was able to just have fun with it. I imagined a worm-sister at a birthday party or sharing a bedroom or avoiding the family parrot at dinner. When I ran out of space and needed to wrap it up, I ended with a short “I’ll turn her into a kitten instead” and planted the idea that the narrator used some sort of magic to turn her sister into a worm. After the challenge was over, I decided to expand on the original story and turn it into a full picture book manuscript.

As I added scenes and developed my characters, I began to draw a bit more from my relationship with my own sisters. I have two: Jaclyn, who is 3 ½ years younger than me, and Colleen, who is 11 years younger than me. My sister Jaclyn and I had more of a typical sibling relationship: we were different, we bickered, but we were also best friends and constant playmates. With each new scene or revision, the narrator became more and more like my sister Jaclyn, and the worm-sister became more and more like me. So while it’s not really based on a true story, the relationship between Maggie and her sister comes from a very real place.

And don’t worry, I didn’t leave out my sister Colleen. She’s featured in the book as Maggie’s “Aunt Colleen” in my favorite spread!

Any humorous moments and/or challenging incidents on the path to publication:

After gathering feedback from my critique partners, continuing to revise, and polishing the story to the point where I felt it was ready to query, I shared it with a well-known critique service to get some professional feedback and make sure I was on the right track. But the feedback I received from this service was not at all what I had been hoping to hear. The person who critiqued the story felt that the main character was not likeable, that the story relied heavily on telling rather than showing, and that it didn’t follow a traditional narrative arc. They encouraged me to keep revising. At first, I was sad to hear that my main character wasn’t likeable to this reader. But so much of what they suggested I change was intentional choices I had made about character development, pacing, and structure. I wasn’t sure their feedback was really in line with my vision for the story. I gave myself a day to feel upset, and then I sent it out anyway. I knew of an editor who was accepting unagented submissions, and I shared this manuscript and one other with them. Within a few days I had a response: the editor loved the story and was taking it to acquisitions!

While that editor didn’t end up acquiring my story, their interest in it led me to sign with my agent. We did a round of revisions together; she had one suggestion, completely different from what the critique service had recommended, and it made a huge difference while remaining true to the story I wanted to tell. We had an offer within just a few weeks of going on submission. I’m so glad that I trusted my gut about the feedback I had received. I love getting feedback and I’m not afraid to revise, but I also think it’s important to take the feedback that resonates with your vision for a story and leave what doesn’t behind.

ME: What a fabulous story, Julie! Definitely another case of DON’T GIVE UP! and HAVE FAITH IN YOUR STORY!

And here’s a little bit about the author and the illustrator and how you can get your own copy of this fabulous book…and how you can help the book become a success!

Author Bio: Julie Hauswirth is an educator and children’s author. She grew up in Connecticut with two sisters who probably wanted to turn her into a worm at one point or another. Julie now lives in Florida with her husband and two sons.

Illustrator Bio: Jessica Goecke (she/her) is a writer and illustrator of children’s books. Her debut pilryasibling rivlarysibling rivalrycture book is Billy and the Hole. She lives just outside Seattle with her husband, two kids and miniature schnauzer, Duke.

Ways to help get this book into the hands of kids:
Buy the book
Review the book
Put the book on your Goodreads Want To Read Shelf
Tell friends about the book
Ask your local library to purchase copies for their collection

Thank you for spending your precious time with us. I hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Happy Book Birthday: THE BOY BEHIND THE WARDROBE: How C.S. Lewis Grew Up to Create Narnia

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Hello dear friends. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…the new books are coming hot and heavy! And how THRILLED I am to help celebrate the launch of this particular book! I’ve mentioned that it is a special pleasure to welcome a book that I saw as an early draft…back in 2016, I gave author Suzanne some feedback. I am sure that the manuscript went through many more revisions after that…but now, 10 years later, IT IS A BOOK! Those 5 P’s are at work again…especially the Patience and the Perseverance.

So, please join me in an enthusiastic rendition of Happy Birthday to You!!
Suzanne is here…ready to blow out the candles and share a bit about the story and what inspired her to write it. Grab a big slice of cake, sit back…and enjoy!

Synopsis

Once a boy was born to make stories: C.S. Lewis, who insisted on being called “Jack.” Jack loved to write and draw animal tales with his older brother. But after his mother died, he was shipped to boarding school, where he longed for real friends. Words and stories were his refuge — and they would drive him toward his destiny as a world-renowned author.

With lyrical words and lush, fantastical art from Mira Miroslavova, this spellbinding biography invites young readers into the childhood of the creator of Narnia.

Thank you, Vivian, for helping me celebrate my book birthday! I’m excited to finally share this gorgeous picture book with the world.

What inspired me to write this story?

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe made a huge impression on me as a child. I still enjoy re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia as an adult. While moving around the world, I realized that many people assume C.S. Lewis was English because of his connection with Oxford University and J.R.R. Tolkien. He was, in fact, born in Belfast. I was inspired to write The Boy Behind the Wardrobe because I was born and raised in Northern Ireland and taught geography in Belfast, two miles from C.S. Lewis’s childhood home. My initial idea was to produce a beautifully illustrated picture book highlighting the landscapes, castles, and coastlines of Northern Ireland that inspired C.S. Lewis’s Narnia.

What was the biggest challenge I faced?

I started my research in October 2015. It was a full year before I had a finished manuscript to share with my critique group. C.S. Lewis was a larger-than-life character and there’s a lot of fantastic information on him. It’s almost overwhelming. One of my biggest challenges was synthesizing my 10,000 words of notes into a compelling story arc with an emotional narrative thread. I had to cut so much because it didn’t serve the story I was trying to tell.

And Vivian, you were one of those readers to see an early draft of this story. Your insightful feedback helped me focus on the themes and trim the word count before sending it to my agent.

My path to publication

The story went through several rounds of revisions over the next few months. Around this time, I took Kristen Fulton’s narrative nonfiction writing course and read widely in that genre. One of my go-to mentor texts was The Right Word: Roget and his Thesaurus written by Jen Bryant, illustrated by Melissa Sweet, and published by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. You could say I wrote The Boy Behind the Wardrobe with Eerdmans in mind. However, my agent already had another client’s story on submission with this publisher, so she made an initial list of five editors at other publishing houses.

Then in May 2016, while volunteering with SCBWI at the Texas Library Association convention, I connected with Kathleen Merz, the acquiring editor at Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. We started chatting about books. When I mentioned my C.S. Lewis story, Kathleen said she would love to read it.

It was several months before I heard back from Eerdmans. I’d moved to Seoul and was beginning to think that my story hadn’t resonated with them. Then, on December 1, 2017, I got exciting news from my agent — my manuscript had received unanimous enthusiasm from the acquisitions team at Eerdmans, and they wanted to publish my story!

I knew Eerdmans had the vision to publish a beautiful book, and I was delighted when Mira Miroslavova was brought on board in 2022. Her artwork had that lovely balance of imagination and groundedness needed for this story. At this point, the process became very collaborative — I was consulted from first sketches to final art. I also enjoyed digging up historical photos when Mira asked for clarification on a particular scene or when it was important for the images to feel historically accurate.

Mira worked on the illustrations for three years—a true labor of love. At 56 pages, The Boy Behind the Wardrobe is almost twice the length of a standard 32-page picture book and every single spread is gorgeous. The finished book was well worth the wait. And the timing is perfect for Greta Gerwig’s movie adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew, scheduled for a worldwide theatrical release in February 2027.

Thank you, Vivian, for helping me celebrate the publication of my debut picture book. I’m thrilled to share that THE BOY BEHIND THE WARDROBE is now part of the Incredible Lives for Young Readers Series, alongside The Right Word: Roget and his Thesaurus, the mentor text that helped shape my early manuscript.

Suzanne’s bio: Suzanne was born in Northern Ireland and taught geography two miles from C. S. Lewis’s childhood home in Belfast. After trading her classroom to travel the world as a U.S. Air Force spouse, she settled near Washington, DC, where she teaches elementary school reading. The Boy Behind the Wardrobe: How C. S. Lewis Grew Up to Create Narnia is Suzanne’s debut picture book and can be ordered through her website

Suzanne Poulter Harris Children’s Book Author or wherever books are sold. Follow her on Instagram @suzannepoulterharris and X @SuzannePoulterH.

Mira Miroslavova has created art for many picture books and novels, including Night of the Deer (Sleeping Bear), The Birds of Christmas (Eerdmans), and a cover for National Book Award Finalist The Ogress and the Orphans (Algonquin). Her work has been called “elegant” and “eye-catching” by Kirkus Reviews and has been selected for the Society of Illustrators “The Original Art” show.  Raised near Sofia, Bulgaria, Mira now lives in Manchester, England. Follow her on Instagram @miramiroslavova.

Thank you so much, Suzanne! You’ve taken us on your journey…one of hard work, patience, and perseverance. This is a very special book…and I hope my blog followers will
Buy a copy
Review the book
Tell friends about it
Ask local libraries to purchase copies
Put it on the Goodreads Want to Read Shelf

Thank you all for spending your precious time with us…and have a great week.