Writing for Children


Robin Williams will star in a movie based on The Krazees!

The Krazees

Jack and the Seven Deadly Giants "What if the seven deadly sins were actually seven marauding giants roaming an imaginary countryside? That's the premise of Jack and the Seven Deadly Giants, a freewheeling, irreverent story that can best be described as a slapstick fairy tale. Borrowing stock characters from traditional stories—a giant killer named Jack, a funny little man with magic beans, seven obsessed giants—Sam Swope...playfully reconfigures them to investigate the nature of fairy-tale vice." -- Elizabeth Spires, The New York Times Book Review Children's Book of the Month Club selection. Read a chapter here.

The Araboolies of Liberty Street "A very vivid and entertaining tale of fair play and poetic justice..." -- The New York Times Book Review

Gotta Go! Gotta Go! "... soars as a prose poem picture book..." -- The Horn Book

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I Am a Pencil
A Teacher, His Kids, and Their World of Stories
A teacher discovers how reading, writing, and imagining can help children grow, change, and even sometimes survive.

Excerpt
"The Blackbird Is Flying, the Children Must Be Writing"
Teaching Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" to fifth graders in Queens, NY.

Jack and the Seven Deadly Giants

The Araboolies of Liberty Street

Gotta Go! Gotta Go!

The Krazees

Essays, Articles & Reviews


"My Turn" column in Newsweek
Recounts the moment when an old teacher got in touch with me, which then inspired reflections on what students and teachers remember.


The Occidental Tourist
Sam went to Japan to promote I Am a Pencil's publication. Click here to read about this alternately hilarious and moving book tour, which included a side trip to a school in Hiroshima.

From Queens to Karachi
Part travelogue, part description of a conference for English teachers held in Pakistan.

Under African Skies
A description of a writing conference for teachers in Tanzania, with participants from East Africa, India, Pakistan, and the United States.