#854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More

“I came to New York, and I was auditioning everywhere. And my high school music teacher got a job as assistant music director on Sesame Street season two. And I went to meet him and told him I was auditioning, and he asked me if I could type. And I said, Yes, I can sing and I can type. So I got a job as music production assistant at Sesame Street. And all I wanted to do was sing with Jim Henson's Muppets.”

“But the big thing I learned from the Sesame Street writers and it has saved me many, many, many times is that they wrote the endings first. So they used to look at Abbott and Costello movies and Marx Brothers movies, and they looked at everything. And they used to tell me, okay, Abbott and Costello are pushing a piano across a bridge in the jungle with a gorilla coming across the bridge at them. How did they get there? So as an children's book author, I always write my last page first.”

“The Christmas special, full orchestra. I mean, violins and Carol Spinney was trying to sing I hate Christmas. So he's behind this microphone, and he's going, I hate it. I hate it, Chris. I hate it. Finally, they said, let's take a break. Everybody, all the whole orchestra, let's take ten minutes. And I was standing next to him when he moved over and opened the case and took Oscar out of the case. So everybody comes back all these violins and cellos and clarinets. And they started it again. And Carol moved over. And Oscar sang, I hate Christmas. Perfect.”

“Audrey Geisel called me and said, Could I read all 41 of Ted Geisel's Doctor. Seuss books and write a book with, you know, references to all of them? And she wanted it called, Oh, baby, the places she'll go to be read in utero. I'm sitting there going, Oh, okay. Sure. So I went and read all of them. Orton, here's the who if I ran the zoo, if I ran the circus, the whole, you know, Yertle the Turtle, Fit with the Moose, I read them all.”

“I write this mnemonic. You've seen all the planets now here is a trick to remember their names and remember them quick. And I write the whole thing. Mallory, Valerie, Emily, Meetsas just served up nine ninety nine pizzas. So, so far so good. Except pizza stood for Pluto. So I get a call from Random House, Pluto has been demoted. And I'm like, what? So I'm like, okay, so I changed it to Mallory, Valerie, Emily Mickels just showed us 999 nickels. And all the art guy had to do was change the pizza boxes to nickels saved.”

“Something Ted did and I did as well is if he was in trouble for a rhyme, he made up a word. So you know, in the sleep book, one of my favorites is have you met the Van Vleck's or something like that? When they sleep, they yawn so wide, you can see down their necks. You know, so he made up the Vleck's. So in my book, Oh, the pets you can get takes place in Gurpets, where they know quite a bit about caring for pets. So I made up her plats to to homage to Ted because when you're in trouble, it'll make something that's what he did.”

“And the first thing I did was I interviewed service members, spouses, partners and kids. It took me months. I have notebooks full of this stuff about what it's like to walk away from your three year old and hope you'll be back to see her someday to serve our country and keep us safe. And one of my favorites was early interviews. She said, when my husband leaves, he traces his hand on paper and I put it up next to the door so the kids can give him a high five every time they leave.”

“We're in a coffee shop at Mystic Seaport coffee shop. I'm looking right at her beautiful, beautiful young woman. Right? And she says, can you get it done that fast? And I thought I and all of a sudden, I saw four seagulls fly over her head, right in the middle of a coffee shop. Obviously, they weren't real seagulls. But in my head, I saw four seagulls. And I got to my car. And I said, I've got it. It's a family of seagulls who fly all over Mystic.”

“We were the first crew allowed into China. The first film crew, a couple of news guys have been in, but it was the first time anybody walked into China with a six foot yellow bird. And they literally said to us, you cannot shoot this bird in the rain. They're hand painted, they're hand dyed feathers. So I thought I really knew what I was doing. I scheduled thirteen rain days. We were there a month in China. It poured the first thirteen days. We would literally push him out and have him do one line. Boom. Pull him back in.”