Jamie talks with More Magazine!

You can also listen to the entire More Magazine interview here.



Jamie, your books address important life lessons in a simple and understandable manner. What are those lessons and how have your friends and family helped to inspire each book?

JLC: When I Was Little: A Four-Year-Old's Memoir of Her Youth is about getting bigger and understanding that who you are keeps changing as you keep growing. That book popped out of my mind when my then four-year-old daughter announced, boasting of her accomplishments, that she was no longer little. Hence the subtitle: A Four-Year-Old's Memoir of Her Youth. It still makes me laugh.

Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born is a celebration of adoption and belonging to a family. Both of my children are adopted, and Tell Me Again is about the experience of adoption from a child's point of view. The fact that the book has been so embraced by the adoption community has been a bonus that I did not expect.

Today I Feel Silly and Other Moods That Make My Day is really about how every day you feel different because you have a different mood - and that's okay. The book came to me when I told a friend I was working on this book called My Mood Swings, which was what Today I Feel Silly was originally called, and I said, "Well, you know, it really just needs to be this simple book, kind of like 'today I feel silly and'...Oh! I'll be right back!" And the whole book just spilled out of me.

Where Do Balloons Go? An Uplifting Mystery was born at a children's birthday party. We were outside and suddenly a storm began brewing. We all looked up at the gray clouds gathering, and at just that moment a child accidentally undid a batch of balloons and they all flew up to the sky. This little child asked her mommy, "Where do balloons go?" And there was that lightning moment where I knew I had a book. Where Do Balloons Go? is about what happens when you let go - not just to a balloon, as happens in the book - but to your imagination.

I'm Gonna Like Me: Letting Off a Little Self-Esteem, was inspired by my goddaughter. I sent her this fabulous dress for her birthday. She opened the present, and ran to the mirror. And as she held the dress up to herself, she twirled around and shouted out, "I'm gonna LIKE me!" As soon as I heard her say it, I knew exactly what that feeling was. For my goddaughter, at that moment, it was the missing piece to her self-esteem.
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