The impetus to write While You're at School was born a few years after I was. When I returned home from kindergarten one day with the sudden awareness that I was no longer spending most of the day with my mother, I asked her what she did all day while I was in school. Her answer, repeated in reminiscences decades later, was the wellspring for this book of whimsical and realistic scenarios that I hope will help to ease childhood separation anxiety and stimulate readers' imaginations.