Write Now With Jeanne Walker Harvey
Today’s Write Now interview features Jeanne Walker Harvey, author of THE GLASS PYRAMID.
Who are you?
My name is Jeanne Walker Harvey and I have the dream job — writing books for children! Except for a brief childhood stint in Illinois, I’ve always lived in California, beginning with Southern California and now Northern California in Sonoma.
What do you write?
My focus is picture book biographies of creative people, particularly artists and architects who may not be as well-known as some of the bigger names. I absolutely love what I’m doing. I’ve had a variety of jobs — an amusement park roller coaster operator, a software licensing attorney a long-time school group docent at the San Franciso Museum of Modern Art, and a credentialed middle school Language Arts teacher. But I always tell children that no matter what job I had, in my own time I was writing stories. It just took a really long time to get published. So I feel like I’ve won the literary lottery with nine published children’s books.
Where do you write?
I have a delightful quiet writing loft filled with children’s books and my children’s artwork. I had carpal tunnel surgery a few years back, so I’ve learned that I need to protect my wrists and hands. I now work with a flat keyboard, an adjustable desk and a desktop computer. I try to stay off my laptop which I once took to coffee houses and libraries. I always write and take notes with Word, and my chief “helper” is my cat who has a propensity to sit on my keyboard. I have many photos of my cat “helping” me, and she’s quite the star of school presentations.
When do you write?
I try to sit down to work after I have coffee and do a morning online Zumba or other dance class. But I’ve learned that the classes need to be live scheduled ones so I can’t procrastinate. I try to put in a good couple of hours researching or writing before lunch. Sometimes I do more work in the afternoon, but I often instead review other writers’ books or read novels for my own pleasure.
Why do you write?
I tell children at school visits that my story began at the library where I checked out a big pile of books every week. I desperately wanted my name on the cover of a children’s book. And now the audience for my books, children, is what motivates me. I’m always asking myself how I can tell a story about a person whom I find captivating in a way that will hopefully engage a child. I hope to empower children with inspiring stories of people, such as I.M Pei who overcame prejudice and challenges leading up to the completion of his now iconic design of the pyramid at the Louvre.
How do you overcome writer’s block?
I don’t have traditional writer’s block because I always have something I can put down on paper. As a nonfiction writer, I count “writing” as the in-depth research and note-taking I do for each book. Of course, note-taking is easier than composing, so sometimes I need to tell myself to stop researching. I need to set aside the facts and just see where I connect to the emotion of the person’s story. But I do agonize about how to tell the story, hopefully in an engaging narrative way. That’s when I take lots of long walks and see if anything pops up. I was excited when I hit upon the beginning of The Glass Pyramid: “I.M. Pei is on a secret mission…I.M. worries that if word gets out that he, a foreigner, is working on a plan to change the beloved Louvre, the project will be blocked. So he tells no one.” I was then able to follow that throughline through the story to the last page when he’s applauded by a crowd outside the completed Louvre pyramid.
Bonus: What do you enjoy doing when not writing?
Spending time with my partner, family and friends. We often wander the beautiful local countryside. I’m always up for a visit to San Francisco museums and dance productions. And I find gardening a terrific break from writing as it’s so tangible — a pile of trimmed branches or weeds or a freshly picked bouquet always feels satisfying.
My thanks to Jeanne Walker Harvey for today’s interview.
A TRUE TALE WITH
A CHERRY ON TOP
Roaring Brook Press
(Mac Kids)
Pub. 3.18.2025
40 pages
Ages 4 - 8
Author: Sara Andrea Fajardo
Illustrator: Juana Martinez-Neal
Character: Alberto Salas
Overview:
" High up in the Andes mountains of Peru, agricultural scientist Alberto Salas is on a quest. A quest... for potatoes.
Up and down the Andes mountains he goes, playing an epic game of paka paka con la papa, potato hide and seek. These potatoes are special: they have the power to feed the world.
Alberto doesn't have a second to waste. The climate is changing and Alberto must find each and every one to save them before they go extinct."
Tantalizing taste of Alberto Salas Plays Paka Paka con la Papa:
"When Alberto first started collecting potatoes,
he had no maps to guide his way. So he
created his own, drawing ...
fields of prickly cacti,
risky roaring rivers,
bone-breaking cliffs.
He drew until he memorized the potato constellation.
How can anyone get lost when the world is so beautiful? thought Aberto."
And something more: In the Author's Note, Sara Andrea Fajardo explains: "I first met Alberto while working for the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru...his eyes twinkled as he told me about this adventures over the past 50 years - how he'd broken bones, been robbed, barely escaped death - all in the name of conserving the world's potato varieties. I asked him why he was so successful at potato collection, and he gave me the most wonderful answer: 'It's because I've never stopped playing.'"
In the Illustrator's Note, Juana Martinez-Neal shares: "To learn more about Alberto, I traveled to Peru to meet him and see the fields of potatoes where he does his work... Alberto's size, gaze, speech cadence, and posture all felt very familiar, like my dad was in the room too... I wanted the reader to feel the grit of dirt in the illustrations... I ended up incorporating paper collage into my mixed-media technique for this. To draw Alberto, I channeled my dad and him, and in that mixture, I found the character you meet in the book.
It is my hope that I have honored Alberto, and all who observe and care for the land. In doing so, they preserve our natural resources, carry knowledge from generation to generation, and keep culture alive."
The Glass Pyramid:
A Story of the Louvre Museum and Architect I.M. Pei
Jeanne Walker Harvey, illus. by Khoa Le. Atheneum, $19.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-6659-5333-7
Architect I.M. Pei (1917–2019) believed that “success is a collection of problems solved,” and designing the Louvre’s now-iconic glass pyramid entrance put that philosophy to the ultimate test.
In spare, rhythmic prose and digital illustrations that combine architectural elements with vector-like precision, Walker Harvey and Le weave together Pei’s biography and the pyramid’s creation story.
When approaching the project—designed to solve a serious number of visitor flow issues—Pei understands that a purely utilitarian solution won’t suffice. The architect finds inspiration in the rock gardens of his family’s retreat in China as well as the geometric Gardens of Versailles, but the pyramid’s design proves only half the challenge.
Pei also faces fierce opposition that he approaches via patience and a partnership with Paris’s mayor, a tack that shows how enduring solutions often emerge from a confluence of expertise, imagination, and persuasion.
Back matter offers more context. Ages 4–8.
