Sophia Gholz, "A History of Toilet Paper (and Other Potty Tools)" (Running Press Kids, 2022)

Since Sophia Gholz’s highly successful debut book, The Boy Who Grew a Forest: The True Story of Jadav Payeng, appeared four years ago, she has published with several exceptional picture books for children, notably her two recent books from 2022, Bug on the Rug (Sleeping Bear) and A History of Toilet Paper (and Other Potty Tools) (from Running Press Kids). In our interview we talk about her career, how she broke into the traditional publishing world, her insistence on writing both nonfiction and fiction ("it's the story that counts") and her advice for aspiring authors. Mel Rosenberg is a professor emeritus of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeritus) who fell in love with children's books as a small child and now writes his own. He is co-founder of Ourboox, a web platform with some 240,000 ebooks that allows anyone to create and share flipbooks comprising text, pictures and videos.