In this interview with third time author Cathy Stefanec Ogren, we celebrate the launch of her new picture book, Pew! The Stinky and Legen-Dairy Gift from Colonel Thomas S. Meacham (Sleeping Bear Press, 2023). Cathy talks about how her love for writing plays as a child led her down the path of becoming an educator and teacher. PEW is the unlikely tale of publicity-hungry Colonel Meachem who, almost 200 years ago, wanted to impress the US president with a special 600 kg gift of ripe cheese. In our conversation, Cathy stresses the importance of entering contests, writing through passion, and never ever giving up.

Mel Rosenberg is a professor emeritus of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeritus) who fell in love with children's books as a small child and now writes his own. He is co-founder of Ourboox, a web platform with some 240,000 ebooks that allows anyone to create and share flipbooks comprising text, pictures and videos.

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