Q: How did the story of Snickeyfritz come to be?
A: The story of Snickeyfritz, which is a word invented by my Grampa, was originally created for my high school English class at the East Grand Forks Senior High in 1995. In 1998 I turned the story into a two-act play, performed by the local community at the East Grand Forks Performing Arts Center, and now, ten years later, the story once again takes on new form as a children’s picture book. I always knew I wanted the final form of the story to exist as a children’s picture book and over the last few years was working to find the best images to fit the story.

Q: How did you decide to use masking tape to create the dolls?
A: One day while I was playing with my daughter, I started to use masking tape to create doll clothing. The ease and adaptability of the tape gave me the idea to use masking tape to create life-size dolls to be used as the characters for my book. Over a year later, and after many rolls of masking tape, I had a finished book and my daughter had a number of new friends.

Q: Why did you decide to make the dolls life-size opposed to miniatures?
A: My artwork has always been big, so working on that scale seemed to suit me better. Also, I thought it would be very interesting to set scenes for the photographs. It tapped into some of my old days of working in the theater and was also a flashback to Snickeyfritz’s previous form of a two-act play.

Q: Where are the scenes of the story set?
A: All the photos are taken within our home in Washington Heights. We live in a 1918 Bungalow and have a great affinity for the Arts and Crafts movement and style, so it seemed appropriate for these characters to exist in that setting.

Q: How long did the book take to create?
A: While creating Snickeyfritz I have also been at home full-time with my daughter, so that probably caused the creation time to be a little longer, but it was also a lot more enjoyable getting to have her around me while I worked. Also being able to work with my husband on this company and project has been a blessing. I would say it took me about a year to create the characters and then we shot all the photography in about three months. Shooting the scenes was probably the most strenuous because we shot at night after my daughter went to sleep. We would be up until 2am or 3am shooting, and then finally get to sleep only to be woken up by our human alarm clock a few hours later. Designing the book and going through the printing process took an additional three months, so, all in all, about a year and a half.

Q: Where did you find all the unusual phrases and words you use in the book?
A: I have been keeping a journal of funny sayings for the last five years, with the intention of using them in this book. Some sayings are fairly common, others are pretty obscure, and a few were from the days of my youth, which may only be recognized by fellow classmates from my days back in East Grand Forks.

Q: What age of child is this book appropriate for?
A: The great thing about Snickeyfritz is its broad appeal. It is highly entertaining in terms of visuals for kids as young as pre-school, and its sophisticated language and ability to function as a learning tool for figures of speech and idioms makes it appropriate for children all the way up to middle school. Also, as a parent, I know how necessary it is to make the story entertaining to read, so I was very careful to use language that is fun for children, parents, and grandparents.