Interview With Children's Book Poet Nels Hanson

 

1. What inspired you to write this book?

Two things: For four years, I taught children and adults with reading problems, at a private learning clinic. I wrote 30 animal poems for my students, to enhance decoding skills and to stimulate the imagination and a love of reading. Each animal has special experiences and challenges, and a gentle lesson to impart -- in rhymed, metered lines with repeating words and variations of sounds, which a beginning reader can begin to anticipate, as reading becomes easier and more fluid, a little like learning a nursery rhyme.

 

Mandana Talieh, an artist and my partner, had already developed two illustrated characters for

video, Wise Dog and his younger friend, Jimmi, two Zen-like canines on a journey for needed

wisdom and understanding. Mandana and I combined her dogs and four of my poems, so that

Mandana’s dogs meet a Lizard, Turtle, Hen, and Gopher with important messages even Wise Dog can’t provide for Jimmi.

 

2. What exactly is it about — and who is it written for?

“What the Lizard Said” tells the story of Wise Dog and Jimmi, who begin a pilgrimage for needed insight and knowledge, after the younger dog is nearly hit in traffic. Wise Dog leads Jimmi from one animal to another – each has endured adversity and preserved a sense of dignity and purpose in a hostile world, and has an important lesson for Jimmi.

The book is for children and adults to read together and discuss, as the beginning of an ongoing dialogue.

 

3. What do you hope readers will get out of reading your book?

I hope readers feel a sense of wonder, of hope, of affection -- that they like the messages and the sounds and whimsicality of the poems, and become immersed in the vivid, colorful and energetic art work, which I find movie-like.

 

4. How did you decide on your book's title and cover design?

The cover was chosen from one of the book’s interior illustrations, which captures Wise Dog and Jimmi and some of the animals they meet on their journey.

 

5. What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers – other than run!?

If you’re meant to express yourself in words, at your deepest heart, nothing can stop you, not even yourself, even if at times you might dearly want to.

 

6. What trends in the book world do you see -- and where do you think the book publishing industry is heading? 

I really don’t know. I do think the present general media atmosphere is in dire need of a little spirit and equilibrium and I hope our book in some small way might add to that.

 

7. Were there experiences in your personal life or career that came in handy when writing this book? 

I grew up on a farm among animals of all kinds, wild and domestic, and had many different pets. And poetry made an impression on me as a small child. I remember being ill and my mother reading aloud Robet Louis Stevenson’s “The Land of Counterpane,” about a sick child in bed. And Aesop, Babar, and lost lines of some poem, about a mother bluebird telling her too-eager child,

 

“Wait a little longer, Until your little wings are stronger, Then, then you can fly away.” Those things stick with you.

 

8. How would you describe your writing style? Which writers or books is your writing similar to?

The poetry in “What the Lizard Said” is influenced by 18 th and 19 th century English poets, especially those who wrote in couplets. In free moments at the learning clinic I’d pour over a Norton Anthology, Dryden, Pope, Keats, and Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear etc. There’s something in the repeating rhyme that enchants the ear and lodges in memory: Read sky at morning/ Sailor take warning . . .

 

9. What challenges did you overcome in the writing of this book?

Our main problem was time – we we’re both immersed in demanding, pressing lives. “What the Lizard Said” is only the first in a series of five or six projected books. And we have a book-length prose fairy tale, “Julia and the Sea Bear” which only needs a couple of illustration for completion. We hope to have much more time to devote to our books and different projects in the coming year.

 

10. If people can buy or read one book this week or month, why should it be yours?

“What the Lizard Said” offers gentle hope in a difficult time. It expresses sympathy and

understanding for all living things, a non-sectarian lesson that can’t hurt right now.

 

Nels Hanson Biography: I grew up on a small family farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and have worked as a farmer, teacher, and writer/editor. I graduated in Literature/Creative Writing (Honors) from UC Santa Cruz, and from the MFA program in fiction writing at U of Montana. My fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award, four Pushcart Nominations, and my poetry Sharkpack Review’s Prospero Prize. I have over 500 publications in print and online literary magazines and anthologies and my books can be found on Amazon. For more info, please see:  https://whatthelizardsaid.com/

 

 

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About Brian Feinblum

This award-winning blog has generated over four million pageviews. With 5,000+ posts over the past dozen years, it was named one of the best book marketing blogs by BookBaby  http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs  and recognized by Feedspot in 2021 and 2018 as one of the top book marketing blogs. It was also named by www.WinningWriters.com as a "best resource.”  Copyright 2025.

 

For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully).

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, Morgan James Publishing, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

 

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

 

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum