Author’s name: Dee Leone
Illustrator’s name: Kelly Kennedy
Other book titles: Dough Knights and Dragons, Nature’s Lullaby Fills the Night, Bizz and Buzz Make Honey Buns, Tiny the Mustard Seed (coming in 2017), and a book TBA
What is your upcoming book title? Counting Creatures and Their Features
Date of release: July 14, 2026
Preorder or Order link: This has links to several vendors:
Publisher: Little Golden Books/Random House Children’s Books
Agent: I didn’t have one for this book. My agent only represents faith-based books.
Agency: N/A
Hometown: Boardman, Ohio
Social links:
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/author.dee.leone/
YouTube Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq3gw7L9AiI
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/dee.leone.986/
Website – DeeLeone.com
1. What is the premise/pitch for your book?
This book is a way for children to count their way through a world of imaginary creatures like monsters with spiky hair, dragons with shiny scales, and goblins with knobby knees.
With rhyming text, items to find and count, interactive opportunities, plus a surprise ending, it makes story time fun and can help increase both math skills and language arts concepts.
2. What are 5 things you want people to know about your book?
1. The main verses can be sung to the tune of “Six Little Ducks.”
2. There are no Halloween decorations in the illustrations because the book is meant to be used all year long. It can be used as the perfect treat, though, for special loved ones or for businesses and schools to gift children during that holiday.
3. Children can count on having fun finding the objects mentioned. Instruct children to look closely. You never know where a clever newt or owl might be hiding!
4. Encourage children to be actively involved in the reading by using their scariest voice to repeat the sounds the creatures make.
5. Instead of having the youngest children count all the patches, all the eyes. etc., they can just count those that are on one character.
3. What helpful hints or tips can you offer fellow writers about writing, publishing, and promoting a book?
Read lots of books in the genre you want to write and get plenty of feedback from critique partners, but always stay true to your own vision.
Keep your dream of publication alive, no matter how many rejections you receive, because it only takes one yes to become a published author. Set projects aside to simmer while you work on others. Then go back and revise if necessary when you look at it with fresh eyes.
As far as promotion, use a celebrity’s name as your pen name instead of your own, and you won’t need to do a thing. Just kidding! Be active as much as possible on social media and reach out to your community bookstores, libraries, schools, and publications.
4. What are 5 fun/quirky facts about yourself as an adult or child?
1. Though we went to the library often, our family didn’t have the finances to actually own many books except for a few Little Golden Book ones, which I completely memorized.
2. I used to trick-or-treat for UNICEF and decided I wanted to work for the United Nations. I was under the impression that I had to know every language to be an interpreter, so I taught myself to count in several languages, likely mispronouncing most of the numbers. In any case, math and languages were both a part of my background and are part of what motivated this picture book. It would be so fitting if it got translated into all those languages I once “learned.”
3. I ran a marathon before I ever participated in a 5K and trained for it in Alaska on snow and ice. The state was a wonderful place to live, and I had the rare opportunity (fearful occasion) to be extremely close to grizzly bears at Brooks Falls during a salmon run.
4. I shared a room with my little sister, and at night, when we were supposed to be sleeping, I made up tunes to teach her how to spell. The first word I taught her was hieroglyphics when she was about three. When she was older, she won the school spelling bee several years in a row.
5. Lest you think I was angelic for doing that, I also told my sister that I visited all kinds of magical places at night by touching various springs under the bed. She wasn’t allowed to travel with me because she wasn’t old enough. Funny how the age requirement just happened to change every year!
Needless to say, she never got to journey to lands where everything was made of candy, people could fly, or you could enter a small door and exit into the middle of a large prairie or the North Pole. However, my wild imagination proved useful decades later when I decided to write picture books.
5. What did you learn about yourself while on the journey to publishing this book?
I learned that I could adapt when a new publishing prospect arose, and that I could create a different version of a manuscript than what I’d originally planned.
This project began as a 32-page picture book with trick-or-treaters involved and the numbers 1-13 introduced in order. When an SCBWI opportunity came up to pitch a book to a Little Golden Book editor, I had to rethink the book length. Little Golden Books are only 24 pages, so I needed to shorten the book.
I also took out the trick-or-treaters and reconsidered the ending, which I’d never thought had quite enough punch. Somehow, I created a surprise ending that I thought was better than the original one.
Then, the editor and I tweaked the manuscript a little more to change it from a straight counting book to make it different from what was already on the market. The whole adaptation process turned out to be extremely fun, and I loved, loved, loved working with the Little Golden Books editor!
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