Children’s Author Natasha Wing Visits Race Brook School

Like many kids, Natasha Wing loved to read. She loved to do the things most kids do: write, play and use her imagination.

It was her imagination that led her to become a well-known children’s author of 20 books and she recently shared her own story with students in first through third grade at Race Brook School.

Looking out into a group of about 200 young children, she explained that no matter what their chosen path may be, there are many different ways to find what makes us happy.  

Wing grew up in Orange and has since lived in Arizona and California. She now lives in Colorado with her husband where she writes children’s books from an office in her home.

She told the children she didn’t know she wanted to be an author until she was all grown up. “I wanted to be a teacher. I knew that was the hardest and most rewarding job,” she said. She told students about playing school, lining up her stuffed animals and ‘teaching’ them when she was a child.

She also thought she might like to be a professional tennis player, since she did play on the Paugusset Club’s tennis team. “But,” she admits, “then I discovered that a lot of people used to beat me, and that wouldn’t work if I wanted to make money playing.”

It was her love for the written word that helped her become an author.

“I wrote in journals and diaries when I was young. I’d write about many different things, like the first time I kissed a boy!” she told the kids, eliciting many giggles and squeals from the crowd.

It was her love for one man in particular—Santa Claus—that was the basis for one of her best-selling books, ‘The Night Before Christmas,’ part of the ‘Night Before’ paperback series about families celebrating holidays and other big events in kids’ lives such as the first day of school and losing a tooth. Her titles include ‘The Night Before Easter,’ the original book in the series which was published in 1999, and ‘The Night Before Kindergarten,’ the highest-selling title which has regularly been on bestseller lists since its publication in 2001. Almost two million copies of books in this series have been sold in the United States and Canada.

Most of her books are based on childhood memories, and she told students the story of going to visit an artist who lived nearby her childhood home. An Eye for Color: The Story of Josef Albers is about a Birchwood Road neighbor.

Albers, the artist of the "Homage to the Square" series, studied color for 25 years and has changed how teachers taught color.

Wing’s multicultural book, ‘Jalapeño Bagels,’ was based on two memories: local bagel maven Marvin Lender and a real bakery in Arcata, California.

Her book ‘How to Raise a Dinosaur’ was based on her childhood impressions from New Haven’s Peabody Museum. The book is her first lift-the-flap book and is a tongue-in-cheek guide for caring for a pet dinosaur.

After reading ‘The Night Before Saint Patrick’s Day,’ to the students, she invited questions from students. One wanted to know how long it takes her to write a book.

“You may wonder what could possibly take between six months and five years to finish a book,” she said. “It’s never perfect the first time. There are always words to say what you want to say better.”

Another student wanted to know how many books she had written, to which Wing answered: “What a good question. That is much different from how many books I have. I’ve written over 100 stories, but found that after I wrote them, they were too much alike other books out there, or for other reasons, they didn’t become books.”

She typically has three stories in the works and is currently working on a children’s book about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ quest to save Grand Central Station, a topic that has always interested her.

“Never, ever stop being interested in the world around you,” she told the students, “You never know where it might lead.”

She wrote about her visit in her blog at: http://natashawing.blogspot.com/