Tish Rabe — 200+ Children’s Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More (#854)

Tish Rabe (@tishrabebooks) is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 200 children’s books, with more than 11 million copies sold. She has written for Sesame Street, Disney, PBS Kids, Curious George, Clifford, and many more. In 1991, following the death of Dr. Seuss, she was asked by Random House to write The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library, a series of science books for early readers that were the brainchild of Dr. Seuss, who died before he could finish the first one. Tish has written more than 50 Cat in the Hat books as well as books for the Grinch and the Lorax. 

Trained as a professional singer, she began her career as the music production assistant for Sesame Street in its first seasons and was hired by Jim Henson to sing for the Muppets. She has written more than 300 children’s songs for broadcast television, is an animation head writer and scriptwriter, was a creative consultant for the Cartoon Network, Scholastic, and HBO Family and now heads her own children’s book publishing company, Tish Rabe Books.

Please enjoy!

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Transcripts

• This episode
• All episodes

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

• Connect with Tish Rabe:

Website | Instagram | Threads | Facebook | YouTube

Products

• Sometimes Apart Always in My Heart Gift Set (Book + 10″ Alaska Dog Plush)

Books

• Bert and the Broken Teapot by Tish Rabe (as Tish Sommers) and Diane Dawson Hearn (Out of print.)
• The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
• Central Park You Can See is the Best Place to Be by Tish Rabe and Andrea Boatta (Not yet published, but raising funds for the underserved.)
• Days Can Be Sunny for Bunnies and Money by Tish Rabe and Steve Brown
• Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book by Dr. Seuss
• Fine Feathered Friends: All About Birds by Tish Rabe, Aristides Ruiz, and Dr. Seuss
• Horton Hears a Who! by Dr. Seuss
• Huff and Puff series by Tish Rabe and Gill Guile
• I Believe Bunny series by Tish Rabe and Frank Endersby
• If I Ran the Circus by Dr. Seuss
• If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss
• Is a Camel a Mammal?: All About Mammals by Tish Rabe, Jim Durk, and Dr. Seuss
• Kindness is Caring, Friendship is Sharing by Tish Rabe and Moka Celess
• Love You, Hug You, Read to You! by Tish Rabe and Frank Endersby
• Mystic by the Sea is the Best Place to Be by Tish Rabe and Andrea Boatta
• Oh, Baby, the Places You’ll Go! by Tish Rabe and Dr. Seuss
• Oh, the Pets You Can Get!: All About Our Animal Friends by Tish Rabe, Aristides Ruiz, Joe Mathieu, and Dr. Seuss
• Oh, the Things You Can Do That Are Good for You! All About Staying Healthy by Tish Rabe, Aristides Ruiz, and Dr. Seuss
• Sometimes Apart, Always in My Heart by Tish Rabe and Gill Guile
• Sweet Dreams Ahead Time for Bed by Tish Rabe and Gill Guile
• There’s No Place Like Space!: All About Our Solar System by Tish Rabe, Aristides Ruiz, and Dr. Seuss
• Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose by Dr. Seuss
• Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss

Companies & Organizations

• Tish Rabe Books
• Beyond Bedtime
• DonorsChoose
• Girls Write Now
• Greater Mystic Chamber of Commerce
• HarperCollins
• Houghton Mifflin
• Nickelodeon
• Penguin Random House
• Rotary International
• Scholastic
• Sesame Workshop
• United Through Reading

Songs

• Kermit the Frog:”Bein’ Green” by Joe Raposo | Sesame Street
• “Cord of Wood” by Tish Rabe | 3-2-1 Contact
• Oscar the Grouch: “I Hate Christmas” | Sesame Street
• Big Bird: “I Just Adore Four” by Joe Bailey | Sesame Street
• Oscar the Grouch:”I Love Trash” by Jeff Moss| Sesame Street
• “I’m Waiting For My Baby” by Tish Rabe | 3-2-1 Contact
• “Monkey King Song” (sung by Tish Rabe) | Big Bird in China
• “Moonlight in Vermont” by Karl Suessdorf and John Blackburn
• “Oklahoma” by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
• Sesame Street Theme (“Sunny Day”) by Joe Raposo | Sesame Street
• “Tammy” by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans | Tammy and the Bachelor

Movies & TV Shows

• Aladdin
• Big Bird in China
• The Muppet Show
• Sesame Street
• 3-2-1 Contact

People

• Abbott and Costello
• Lee Allen
• Joe Bailey
• Joan Ganz Cooney
• Audrey Geisel
• Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel)
• Gill Guile
• Jim Henson
• Elan Lee
• Marx Brothers
• Michelle Obama
• Jennifer Perry
• John Rabe
• Joe Raposo
• Caroll Spinney
• Jon Stone
• Robin Williams

Relevant Resources

• The Puppets and Muppets of Jim Henson | Smithsonian Institution
• Oscar the Grouch through the Years | Muppet Wiki
• A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes | Macintosh Repository
• Why Is Pluto No Longer a Planet? | Library of Congress
• Keep Your Brain Young with Music | Johns Hopkins Medicine
• Reading to Young Kids Improves Their Social Skills — And a New Study Shows It Doesn’t Matter Whether Parents Stop to Ask Questions | The Conversation
• Promoting Young Children’s Early Language and Prereading Skills with Dialogic Reading | Nebraska Extension Publications

Locations

• Great Wall of China
• Ithaca College
• Mystic Seaport Village
• Naval Submarine Base New London (Groton)
• Needham High School
• New York City Central Park
• Sesame Workshop

Timestamps

• [00:00:00] Who is Tish Rabe?
• [00:00:24] How an opera major became a bestselling children’s author and songwriter.
• [00:03:12] Tish’s trashy debut on television treasure Sesame Street.
• [00:03:36] Pitching a childhood memory to dead silence — and landing book number one.
• [00:07:27] The value of writing a story’s ending first.
• [00:09:42] Jim Henson: The kind, gentle giant with a mind of steel.
• [00:10:58] Keeping kids and their parents entertained with double-level humor.
• [00:11:38] How Tish put her music training to work with Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch.
• [00:18:56] From nine-note auditions to signing on with Sesame Street‘s mission to level the kindergarten playing field.
• [00:22:48] Churning out children’s books and writing bangers about animal gestation periods and lumber measurement for 3-2-1 Contact.
• [00:26:56] The zero-rhyming genius of Joe Raposo’s “Bein’ Green” and why it works.
• [00:29:59] Curriculum is king: Focus groups, orange Oscar, and making sure the kids aren’t lost.
• [00:32:16] Random House rejected her book, but the late Dr. Seuss took a second look.
• [00:37:17] Accepting the Widow Seuss’s challenge to write a book for babies in utero and ending up with a  bestseller.
• [00:40:39] The secret to perfect rhyme in Dr. Seuss’s paradigm.
• [00:44:14] Is rhyming a part of Tish’s DNA, or did she learn it along the way?
• [00:48:12] The time Tish transformed a planet from pizza into nickels to make her deadline.
• [00:49:45] Has music as a mission preserved Tish’s cognition?
• [00:55:10] What does Tish aim to do with the company she started in her 70s?
• [01:01:18] Sometimes Apart, Always in My Heart: A military kid’s book born from a POW father’s legacy and a high-five traced on paper.
• [01:05:30] Alaska the stuffed dog, financial literacy bunnies, hallucinated seagulls, and 843 acres of Central Park in 24 pages.
• [01:12:54] Tish’s campaign to get free books to kids in underserved neighborhoods.
• [01:14:02] Advice for aspiring children’s book authors.
• [01:15:42] Tish doesn’t get derailed by writer’s block — she prepares for it.
• [01:17:24] When Michelle Obama added 16 pages to a book Tish thought would be boring.
• [01:19:37] Big Bird in China, 1982: One hand-painted costume, 13 days of rain, zero coffee, and a five-year-old who memorized the wrong script.
• [01:23:41] Tish’s billboard.
• [01:24:38] Kindness is Caring, Friendship is Sharing and other parting thoughts.

TISH RABE QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“Tish Rabe’s a mom who thinks that it’s cool to be home rhyming rhymes while her kids are at school.” — Tish Rabe

“You do not have to have kids to write for kids.” — Tish Rabe

“My first job was hiring the jingle singers in Manhattan to sing with Jim Henson’s Muppets. So I sang all day. I sang when I typed, and I sang when I filed, and I sang when I answered the phone. ‘Sesame Street, may I help you?’ Well, after a year, everybody was so tired of listening to me sing all the time that they said, ‘Would you like to sing on Sesame Street with the Muppets?’” — Tish Rabe

“There is nothing like giving a book to a child who doesn’t have a book. I am on this lifetime mission of trying to get free books to kids who don’t have any.” — Tish Rabe

“Remember: the children are our most precious gift. I get concerned about the way the world is going. I just want everybody to remember that they are the most precious part of our world. Because they are the future, they are the dreams of the future, and we must take good care of them. And read, read, read.” — Tish Rabe

“I really encourage everybody. Everybody’s always, ‘Yeah, but you’ve got this beautiful voice, and you sing all the time, and I can’t sing.’ And I just try to say to everybody—and I mean this from the bottom of my heart—you can sing. It doesn’t matter if it’s croaky, it doesn’t matter what it sounds like, the only voice your child wants to hear is yours.” — Tish Rabe

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Want to hear another episode with someone who knows how to make people of all ages light up? Listen to my first conversation with Elan Lee, co-creator of Exploding Kittens and the mutual friend who introduced me to Tish, in which we discussed how to raise millions on Kickstarter, deconstructing mega-successes, secrets of game design, the power of positive constraints, the delights of craftsmanship, turning fans into superfans, and much more.