Judith Viorst

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Judith Viorst was born and brought up in New Jersey, graduated from Rutgers University, moved to Greenwich Village, and has lived in Washington, DC, since 1960, when she married Milton Viorst, a political writer. They have three sons and seven grandchildren. Viorst writes in many different areas: science books, children’s picture books, adult fiction and nonfiction, poetry for children and adults, and musicals, which are still performed on stages around the country. She is best known for her beloved picture book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.



Author's Comment: Lulu arrived one rainy morning in Maine when I was desperately trying to entertain two of my grandsons with stories, and this ferocious, difficult girl captured my heart.

Yes, she is spoiled and stubborn, and she wants what she wants when she wants it. And, as her dog-walking partner Fleischman points out, she certainly isn't the nicest girl in the world (which is fine with Lulu, who thinks that nice is boring.) Anyway, just because she isn't all that easy to like doesn't mean, I hope, that kids won't learn to like her.  I certainly can't let go of her and have, as a matter of fact, just this minute finished writing a third Lulu book.

I would also like to talk worshipfully about Lane Smith, whose illustrations for the two Lulu books are beyond perfect. The girl leaps off the page in all her peevishness and outrageousness; the dinosaur is a model of elegant dignity; and the impossibly goody-good Fleischman and the three dogs in the second Lulu just crack me up.

Children’s book writers sometimes wish that they knew how to draw, so the pictures on the page could look exactly, exactly, how they wished they would look.  Lane's glorious drawings are beyond anything I was even capable of wishing for, and I am awash with gratitude.

Nationality: American