Georange Horange’s Storange follows a young orange and a toy doctor who go on a mission to get the doctor’s new invention’s name added to the dictionary. What was the inspiration for your story?

I was washing the dishes one night in the middle of the week and I heard a character on the T.V. say “Nothing rhymes with orange.” For some reason, it struck me as being sad because it felt like the word was kind of alone. Dale had just retired from Sunny View P.S. and I immediately thought “Just create a word that rhymes with orange and solve the problem.”

That’s what the Toy Doctor program works to do every day with our students. They have an issue that is making them unhappy and the program always looks to find a unique way to solve that problem. Once I pictured Dale walking through at recess, seeing a sad crying orange, I knew it would break her heart and she would be able to solve the problem by creating something that rhymes with orange and would also make Georange happy again.

The art in this book is fantastic. What was the art collaboration process like with the illustrator?

The work of the amazing hand-painted illustrations in the story are completely due to the work of my sister in-law Julie Tait. There had already been a few family gatherings where Julie had displayed her artistic qualities but one Halloween stands out in my mind. She freehand carved an owl out of a pumpkin after just looking at it. I knew when it came to drawing, my efforts would never have come close to the details that Julie was able to so incredibly convey about the school, its students, Dale and of course, Julie’s visual representation of Georange Horange, whose facial expressions throughout the book really make him a heartfelt character. I can’t thank her enough for all the work she put into this book.

What is one thing that you hope readers take away from Georange Horange’s Storange?

Impossible is two letters too long.

That is the last line of the book and Dale painted this phrase on the wall of our shop. It is the only thing painted on the wall and Dale worked every day to prove the phrase is true. Every child at our school has their own unique issues that they work through every day. They require equally unique creations to help support them with those everyday needs. I always look at it like an equation. You have (A) what the student is capable of and (C) the goal the parents or teachers want the child to achieve. So I have to solve for (B) and create something that will allow the student to successfully go from what they are capable of doing, to what they need to do successfully as they grow and learn. There has never been a time where a solution wasn’t possible and I truly do believe that impossible is two letters too long.

Is this the first book in the series? If so, when is the next book coming out, and what can your fans expect in the next story?

I am currently working on another story called A Fishless Tank and the Tale of Two Snails based on a true story. It describes the adventures of two snails that live in a tank at Sunny View. The two snail friends must help their aquatic ornament friends (Diver, Clam, Plants, and Ship) to overcome their own individual issues, by all working together to correct the problems in the tank. I’m hoping to get the text finalized this summer so that Julie can start to visualize the story and get a grasp on what she can create for the watercolor artwork. I’m making sure to include the students at Sunny View again in the background so that they can once again see themselves represented in a storybook.

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