Sup With Me? Why Zompoemz and Catherine Johnson, Of Course.

Everyone welcome Catherine Johnson, the kid’s poet extraordinaire. YEAH! WAHOO! Look at you! There she is. Wave to her everyone. She's pretty inside and out. :-)

Catherine has published THREE books of poetry for children. The latest is the wacky, wonderful Zompoemz. I highly recommend it, y’all. Have kidlets? Grandkidlets? Then you need these books. I will give links at the end of this post for you. Here she is. Isn't she pretty? And her personality matches her pretty. :-) Here's Zompoemz. It's pretty too. Check it out! :-) BTW, Zompoemz is FREE for Kindle until Halloween night. So go snag it. And tell your friends and even strangers to buy Zompoemz. 

       My review:
      We have Catherine's first two children's poetry books in our LIBRARY so it just stands to reason that we should have Zompoemz too. We LOVE, LOVE, LOVE her poetry. I think Catherine did a service to kids everywhere. She is getting them interested in poetry. What a great thing! Kids who normally wouldn't touch a poetry book are interested in more poetry after having read these books of hers. This is not your ordinary zombie poetry book (is there even one of those?). This is a funny and wacky and kooky and deliciously wonderful read. It starts out with a drawing of a zombied out Bruce the Moose. It says: Bruce the Moose can really dance. But not when he's in a zombie trance. Kids LOVE that stuff. The art is so kid-friendly. Just look at the cover, and you can see that. There's zombies playing baseball, and the head comes off and so they play catch the head instead. It's a tickle your funny bone book that all kids should have access to. It's a sweet, short (for those reluctant readers that you know), and too fun to put down book. I'm going to buy a copy for our library. I hope a lot of people do that. The kids are going to love you for it.

        So Catherine, tell us where you got the idea for Zompoemz.

It was probably a mix of my kids talking about them and being a regular reader of Jack Flacco’s blog. He writes zombie books for adults. They are also a lot easier to draw than normal human faces. ;-)

        Didn’t you use the new Kindle Kids' Book Creator Tool when you published Zompoemz? Was it hard to figure out?

             Nope. It was dead easy or should I say undead easy bwa ha ha! There is a fab new thing you can do where you type the text of the page into a box and it automatically shows the enlarged text on whatever device you are reading off. I only used it for pages with tiny text but next time I might do it all. You don’t have to worry about pixels or anything as long as your photos are of a decent quality you are sorted. I couldn’t believe how easy it was.

       What influenced your decision to pursue publication on your own, rather than submitting your poetry books for acquisition by traditional publishing houses using standard 'advance against royalty' contracts? (Although you’re lucky because you can illustrate.)

             For Weirdo Zoo a long time ago I did submit them to a couple of good publishers that I had researched to see if they would be interested. It is super difficult to get a whole book traditionally published if you are not an established poet. Out of a whole book full of publishers poetry really narrowed the field down. I have several poems traditionally published through the Poetry Institute of Canada’s yearly competition but I feel that for my quirky style I’ll have to stick to self-published. I realize many people look down on you for it and I probably used to be like that, but since I’m always wanting to be on with the next thing, I think it will suit me in the long run. I was also about to be sent out to get a proper job if I’d have still been just submitting poems. I don’t know how I would have fit in the blogging if I worked as well. Yikes! The pressure lol.

       What are the advantages of self-publishing in an economic and a creative sense?

             I think I need to get better at getting my work and my blog out there before I can make any money doing this. I don’t really know yet of I’ve broken even. Better get my accounts in order ;) I’m in awe at my friend Nata and her book launch she really nailed it. I hammered it lol.

          What new book idea do you have up that sleeve of yours? (Dare I ask?) *wink*

          Yes, you dare Robyn. I’m sketching some kids lighthouses and in November I’ll be taking Renee’s wonderful poetry course to try and write poems to go with the pictures. The next book will be more girly but hopefully still be fun for boys.

         It was so nice to have you here, my friend. I hope Zompoemz is a BEST SELLER! 

         Thanks so much Robyn. You are the best!

         When we moved from New Zealand to Canada, we initially didn’t know which part

we were moving to so we were very lucky to get to see Vancouver and climb Grouse mountain in a gondola. It was the first time Matthew had set foot in snow, and it was the first time we saw zombies.An innocent drive turned interesting when we took a wrong turn and encountered a scene from Shaun of the Dead. Let’s get out of here! There were zombies everywhere. Not costumes. Not cartoon zombies. Real ones.There was a little old lady hunched over looking in a window carrying a basket. Men hunched over sat on the sidewalk. At first I thought they were poor beggars. And then…. A zombie crossed the road right in front of our car and stopped in the middle and just shouted. Not at us. Oh no. At nobody, himself, who knows. We held our breath, hoping he would move on. He did, phew. Not because we were terrified, because I was creased up laughing. He could have gotten real angry. Tears streamed down my face. We’d only watched Shaun of the Dead a few weeks previous.

So please take a map everywhere. Be especially careful in Vancouver, and believe me… 

zombies are real.

Linkage, y'all. 

Zompoemz Kindle Free until Halloween night

Catherine's Zombie house

Catherine's Goodreads

Zompoemz in paperback

Alibris