Author’s name: Brooke Hartman
Illustrator’s name: Anna Suessbauer
What is your upcoming book title? Help Me Find My Hamster!
Other book titles: The Littlest Airplane, Dream Flights on Arctic Nights, Lotte’s Magical Paper Puppets, Peta Sisters Go to Camp, Watch Out for the Lion (the prequel to Help Me Find My Hamster), Klyde the Kraken Wants a Friend, Little Narwhal Lost, Cute Animals That Could Kill You Dead.
Forthcoming in 2026: Exca-Gator!, More Cute Animals That Could Kill You Dead, Big Fat Bear Fight, and One Little Fishing Boat
Date of release: October 21
Preorder or Order link: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/help-me-find-my-hamster-brooke-hartman/1146656942?ean=9798890033109
Publisher: Page Street Kids
Agent: Sera Rivers
Agency: Speilberg Literary Agency
Hometown: Chugiak, Alaska
Social links: @brookesbooksak for Instagram and Facebook
1. What is the premise/pitch for your book?
Readers, your help is needed—something terrible has happened! The narrator is missing their pet hamster, and the snuggable, huggable pint-sized pet was spotted in this book.
Fuzzy floof ears, a nibble nubbin nose, precious peanut paws, and a bitty button tail seem to hint that it’s somewhere nearby.
But do itty bitty ears always belong to a hamster? When you spot a soft snoot or cute padded paws, will they be attached to a pocket pet, or something much wilder? Watch out! You never know what could be lurking around the corner. That tuft of a tail might just belong to a grizzly bear’s behind!
Prepare to laugh along as clues to the narrator’s missing furry friend reveal ever larger and wilder creatures in this surprising story that encourages readers to stretch their imagination, make predictions, and always expect the unexpected.
2. What are 5 things you want people to know about your book?
- Readers who loved Watch Out for the Lion will adore this fuzzy yet fur-ocious sequel.
- Loaded with huggable, snuggable hamster humor
- Interactive and great for read-alouds
- Need not own (or have owned) a hamster to enjoy this book
- *Hamster not included with book purchase
3. What helpful hints or tips can you offer fellow writers about writing, publishing, and promoting a book?
This is a loaded question–I feel like writing is such an individual journey! But I do know that, at least with picture books, it definitely helps to have more than one project up your sleeve. The market (and publishers and editors) are fickle; well, they’re all human beings, after all. So you never know which idea is going to land with which editor and when. Having several ideas and projects to sort through, work on, and ultimately submit will help eventually get the arrow to the publishing bullseye!
4. What are 5 fun/quirky facts about yourself as an adult or child?
- Until I was about ten, I secretly thought I was a unicorn and believed that one day I’d turn back into my true form and run away to live in the mountains behind our house.
- Growing up, my house was a zoo–literally. We had every type of pet imaginable from mice to geckos, rats to chameleons, dogs to guinea pigs. But alas, no hamsters!
- As a kid, I was a closet nerd; I secretly loved movies like Labyrinth and Dark Crystal, gorged myself on books like Dragon Riders of Pern and Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, and listened to every type of music from jazz to Pantera. Now as an adult I’ve learned to fully embrace my nerdy self!
- For my day job, I work for a behavioral health company that offers alternative treatments for depression, like TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) and Spravato, a nasal form of ketamine. While highly interesting and fulfilling, this job doesn’t leave a lot of room for creativity. Hence why I write kids’ books in my spare time!
- I always have at least three or four almost fully flushed out ideas for kids’ books floating around my head at any given time, just waiting for the spare moment when I can finally get them down on paper (or laptop).
5. What did you learn about yourself while on the journey to publishing this book?
Writing this book, it became even more clear how your writing partners can help you shape and polish a manuscript to perfection. For HELP ME FIND MY HAMSTER, I didn’t have a great idea for an ending. Enter the critique partners! We chop shopped this project, tossing out several ideas until finally a great out was formed. As authors, we often think writing is a solo endeavor, but it can be so much more enriching when done as a team!
BROOKE’S OTHER BOOKS:
