Interview about Janet’s Books for Children

Charlie Barshaw interviewed me about my kids’ books for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators of Michigan. The interview appears today in The Mitten at https://scbwimithemitten.blogspot.com/2025/09/writer-spotlight-janet-ruth-heller.html  Thank you to Charlie and the SCBWI-MI! #picturebook #middlegradebook #bullyingprevention #self-esteem #solarsystem #siblingrivalry

Photo of Janet Ruth Heller by Darren Goodman

Janet Ruth Heller

I am the past president of the Michigan College English Association. I have a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. I have published four poetry books: Nature's Olympics (Wipf and Stock, 2021), Exodus (WordTech Communications, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012) and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011). My scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama, was published in 1990 by the University of Missouri Press. My fiction picture book about bullying for children, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 7th edn. 2022), has won four national awards. My play The Cell Phone won fourth place in a national contest and was performed twice at the Fenton Village Players One-Act Play Festival on June 24-25, 2011 in Fenton, Michigan. Triton College produced another play, Pledging, as part of its Tritonysia Play Festival in May 2017. Choeofpleirn Press published Pledging in Rushing Through the Dark (2022).