James Carville to Publish Children's Book With Simon & Schuster

Posted on January 30, 2004

Anne Schwartz Books/Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, has announced plans to publish political consultant and New York Times bestselling author James Carville's first picture book, written with award-winning children's book author Patricia C. McKissack. Lu and the Swamp Ghost, scheduled for publication in September 2004, is a story inspired by an episode in the life of Carville's mother, Lucille (known as "Miss Nippy"), who grew up in rural southern Louisiana during the Great Depression. The book will be illustrated in full color by award-winning children's book illustrator, David Catrow.

"What guy is lucky enough to write a book about his mother's childhood?" asked James Carville. "She was a strong little girl, and now that I have two little girls of my own, I want to share one of my mama's stories with them and with other children across America."

James Carville is a political consultant and the author of the current New York Times bestseller Had Enough? (Simon & Schuster). James Carville is also an author, speaker, restaurateur, and talk show host. With his wife Mary Matalin, who was Assistant to President Bush and Counselor to Vice-President Cheney, Carville co-wrote All's Fair: Love, War, and Running for President, which spent eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Carville plans to executive produce the forthcoming remake of the 1949 classic film All the King's Men, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren. James Carville resides in Virginia with his wife and two daughters.

Patricia C. McKissack has written many award-winning books for children, including Goin' Someplace Special (Coretta Scott King Award); The Honest-to-Goodness Truth; Let My People Go: Bible Stories Told By a Freeman of Color (an NAACP Image Award winner); The Dark Thirty (a Newbery Honor Book and Coretta Scott King Award winner); and Mirandy and Brother Wind (Caldecott Honor Book and Coretta Scott King Honor Award winner). She lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

David Catrow is the illustrator of numerous books for children, including two American Booksellers Association Book Sense Book of the Year nominees: Take Me Out of the Bathtub and Other Silly Dilly Songs and I'm Still Here in the Bathtub: Brand New Silly Dilly Songs, written by Alan Katz. Mr. Catrow also is a nationally syndicated editorial cartoonist whose work appears in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Sun-Times, as well as in nine hundred other newspapers. He lives in Springfield, Ohio.