Calvin Trillin, a staff writer at The New Yorker and a poet, has signed a deal with the Scholastic imprint, Orchard Books. He plans to create his first book of poetry for children which will be called No Fair! No Fair! And Other Jolly Poems of Childhood.
Roz Chast, the graphic novelist behind Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, has been brought on to draw the illustrations. The publisher has set the release date for October 2016.
Trillin gave this statement in the press release: “My father, who had a restaurant in Kansas City for a while, used to put a rhyming couplet on the menu at lunch every day, mostly about pie. (His shortest was ‘Don’t sigh/Eat pie.’) So you might say that I’m a second generation poet, since I’ve published verse about the events of the day for twenty-five years. When I acquired enough grandchildren to describe myself as ‘a grandfather who writes on the side,’ it was inevitable that I’d turn my hand to writing verse for children—thus No Fair! No Fair!”