LEONE STEWART talks to Phyllis Krasilovsky ‘It’s a crazy life’

Press, 6 May 1980, Page 14

LEONE STEWART talks to Phyllis Krasilovsky ‘It’s a crazy life’

“The Man Who didn’t wash his Dishes” got himself into just the sort of fix children love. New Zealand youngsters respond to his dilemma, just as much as the American children for whom Phyllis Krasilovsky writes. Her picture books are distributed through the Scholastic Book Services. They appear in many anthologies and are read around the world. The American Psychological Association and various other professional organisations recommend them. School teachers find them excellent teaching aids. Write-to-your-favour-ite-author is a popular assignment for American school children. Phyllis Krasilovsky gets a lot of letters.

She also gets lots of royalties from New Zealand. The children’s library here has eight of her books. But for her visit to New Zealand the New York author wore her other writer’s hat. She was on a Governmentsponsored to.ur of the South Island’s scenic attractions.

When she is not looking at the world with children’s eyes, she is writing about its tourist spots. A romantic, she seeks “poetic appeal” in places.

As a travel writer, she is always “on the. go.” Two weeks before coming to New Zealand she was in China, creating a crowd just by looking at her dN gital watch. When she began travel writing for a number of American newspapers five years ago, she planned a trip every six weeks. Often it does not work out that way. In between trips she gets into the kitchen of her seventeenth century Quaker home in a suburb of New York and bakes' like crazy.

“I spend a day pretending I’m a gourmet chef, cooking up masses of stuff to put jn the deep freeze. Next day I’m running a classy restaurant, serving up all this delicious food,” she says.

Then there is the garden. The day before she left for New Zealand the bulbs needed weeding; the lettuce had to be planted. “You see I live this crazy life, being all sorts of people. I’m terribly organised. That’s just luck, though. I just happen to be able to organise. But one day, boy, it’s all going to fall apart.”

Phyllis Krasilovsky can laugh, with just the slightest of nervous edges, at the prospect. A nativeborn New Yorker, she knows, how to live with some dire calamity around

the corner. It probably keeps her going. Her writing for children began when she was engaged, at the age of 19. Her fiance’s four-year-old cousin was dying of cancer. So she wrote him letters. From these grew the tale of the little man who lived alone with his cat and got up to his eyes in dirty dishes. He learnt his lesson well. She wrote that story “off the top of my head.” The little boy’s mother read it to him seven times a day. He was in much pain. It was the only thing

that could make him laugh. • Then Phyllis Krasilovsky’s husband graduated from law school and decided to “drag me off to Alaska to be a pioneer.” So she submitted the story to a publisher, hoping for an excuse to make trips back to New York. “I’ve always believed writers are directed bv fate,” she says. That first, whimsical story is on all the women’s liberation reading lists for children. Her fifteenth story has just been published. For some time now the family has lived at Hard-

scrabble Road, Chappaqua. The local historic association takes tours over their house. It is also the scene of some memorable evenings with the music world’s greats.

Phyllis Krasilovsky’s husband is, she says mat-ter-of-a-factly. the famous music copyright writer in the United States. His book on musjc copyright is used as “a bible” in America and Japan. “He represents everyone you can think of, from Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan, to Leonard Bernstein and the lyncwriter Jack Lawrence (‘Tenderly.’).” '■•i Phyllis Krasilovsky is not turned on by the rock scene and its idolotary. But the parade of music superstars through her house has been “mindboggling” for her four children, now adult. Ln her children’s writing, Phyllis Krasilovsky occasionally uses folk lore. Her tale of “The Cow Who Fell in the Canal” is a Dutch fantasy that has,/ been very successful. Usually, though, she taUs to children about everyday life“The Shy Little Girl” has done very well in New Zealand. It tells of the exclusivity of school. girls. In the end, the heroine finds a friend who thinks her special. With her friend’s encouragement she learns to speak up. ’ “One of my girls was just like that,” Phyllis Krasilovsky recalls. Left alone in the big, wide world, “Scaredy Cat” finds, it's not so bad after all./ “Benny’s Flag” tells the. true story of an orphaned ' Indian boy who designs the new flag for the state of Alaska. That story resulted _in oneof her most touching fan letters. “The New York teacher of a very shy little Puerto Rican boy, who was also an orphan, wrote to tell me this child identified with Benny. “That book started him reading. He became the best reader in class. I just loved that letter. Writing children’s books is an inspiration^and a craft.”