Jamie Lee Curtis Releases Her 13th Children’s Book
This may surprise you as much as it surprised me, but actor Jamie Lee Curtis is releasing her 13th children’s book called “Just One More Sleep: All Good Things Come to Those Who Wait … and Wait … and Wait.” Curtis has been writing books since 1993 when she released “When I Was Little: A Four-Year-Old’s Memoir of Her Youth.” Since then, she kept going with children’s books and even a graphic novel but admitted that she probably will never write a memoir about her career.
Curtis said that she is grateful that she doesn’t rely on books for a living because the ideas come up very randomly. For instance, her 1998 book called “Today I Feel Silly: And Other Moods That Make My Day” came from the idea of a swing and how when a child swings back and forth, their mood might change. As she was going over ideas, the book eventually came to her in rhyme and she went with it!
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Curtis explained further, “I never expected I would write books. It was an unexpected career I didn’t even think would be a career. The lucky thing for me is that it’s a career based on passion and only comes when the muse hits me. I am not required to churn out a book [after a specific] period of time. It turned out that I ended up being quite prolific, and I was able to make a book every two years for a long period, but I didn’t have to rely on it for my financial life. I felt no pressure whatsoever. If the book came, it came. It was always out of a situation with a child that the book was born.”
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Her latest book idea came from listening to her neighbors talk days before Christmas. She said, “I was out on the street getting my mail, and [my neighbor] Betty and her mom were taking a walk. I saw them, and I was like, ‘Hey, Betty! Santa’s on his way!’ And she went, ‘No, Jamie! One more sleep, then Santa.’ And in that second, I realized, ‘Oh, right! Children metabolize time through sleep.’ And the book wrote itself that day.”
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While Curtis loves writing, she doesn’t publish everything that she comes up with. She added, “I’ve written a screenplay that ultimately became a graphic novel, and I’ve written short stories that I’ll never publish. I have too much respect for great writing to ever publish anything [like that]. I will not write a memoir. I’m not going to do that. I don’t need to do that. I may write something — like, I may write an essay that’ll get published when I’m dead — just to be able to set some records straight so that I have that last word. But I won’t do it while I’m alive or while my family is alive because the problem I have with memoir is that it requires you to share intimate, very personal interactions with other people. I have had people that I was intimate with write books, and I was petrified as to what they would divulge. I really appreciate all of my friends who’ve written books. I feel like they’ve done so in a really beautiful, truth-telling way. And yet, I think there are moments where they’ve had to confront the fact that they’ve shared something very personal and private with strangers. And I’m not going to do so.”
Kid Stuff
June 2018
Unleash your inner child by reliving your favorite kids TV shows, cartoons, toys and more!
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