My first picture book, 
Watch Your Tongue, Cecily Beasley, came out in September 2012. My second, MONSTER TROUBLE, came out in late 2015. When I initially decided to write a rhyming picture book, I wasn’t sure how to go about it, or what the rules were. I joined a critique group and SCBWI (The Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators), took some poetry classes, went to workshops, and even got a degree in English along the way. A lot of people tried to discourage me from writing in rhyme. If you’re considering writing a rhyming picture book, some people will tell you that editors don’t like them, and that they are difficult or impossible to sell, and that agents won’t represent picture book authors. But mostly, people will tell you that you have to write “perfect” rhyme and meter to publish. I wasn’t sure what “perfect” rhyme and meter were when I first heard this. And there seemed to be a lot of conflicting opinions bouncing around about the elusive “perfect” rhyme and meter. It took a long time for me to realize that writing a picture book with rhyme and meter wasn’t impossible; there just wasn’t a really good resource that laid out all the details I needed to know in a way that was easy to understand.