The Way I Act

A companion to Cain’s award-winning The Way I Feel, The Way I Act uses detailed illustrations, type faces and vivid color to complement the simple verses that explain character traits like compassion and bravery. With verses created by Metzger, The Way I Act follows the pattern established by The Way I Feel, introducing a wide variety of character traits, including some not usually attributed to young children. Metzger’s carefully crafted text is sensitive and free of bias and slang. Together with Cain’s sometimes zany characters, The Way I Act shows scenes that kids can identify with—peering at bugs with a magnifying glass, finishing a puzzle, sweeping up a mess. The text also cites examples that define words such as curious, responsible, persistent, and capable. As Metzger points out, the scenarios on each two-page spread let kids imagine how they might act in all these situations. Chicago-based Cain made her debut with The Way I Feel, now available in Spanish as Asi me siento yo, and as a board book. In print: almost 1.5 million copies. Metzger, an executive with Scholastic Inc., has written more than 60 books for preschoolers, most published by Scholastic.

Because she's a mom, Janan Cain knew she had a marketable concept for her first book. But it was her responsibilities for two young children that dictated how The Way I Feel was created.Drawing with children An illustrator and graphic designer since 1982, Cain has worked with many different techniques, including pen and ink, gouache, acrylics, airbrush, colored pencil, scratchboard and computer illustration. But she chose pastels for the vivid illustrations in The Way I Feel because she was so frequently interrupted by her young daughters. "With pastels, I could stop in the middle of a drawing to make lunch, bandage a knee, help find a lost toy—or even take an ice cream break," points out Cain. Cain earned an Associate of Arts degree in visual communications at the Art Institute of Colorado in Denver. She worked in package design, graphic design and illustration, both in Colorado Springs and the Chicago area, until beginning a free-lance design and illustration practice in Riverside, Ill. in 1993. Now the author of more than 60 books for preschoolers, Steve Metzger started his career with many assignments that had nothing to do with children's books or publishing. After graduation from Baruch College, he drove cabs, washed dishes, worked as a hotel clerk and handled a variety of other positions. He eventually found his way to the Bank Street College of Education, where he earned a master's degree in education in 1981. That led to a decade of work as a preschool teacher, and then, in 1992, to publishing giant Scholastic, which issues and retails books, CDs and DVDs for preschool-grade 12 students and their teachers. Since 2004, he has been vice president and editorial director of all Scholastic book clubs, managing a program which today reaches 10 million students in 500,000 schools. Today Metzger lives near Central Park in a household focused on writing. Wife Nancy Novick writes on health and medicine, and daughter Julia has been the inspiration for some of Metzger's stories, most of which have been published as 32-page Scholastic paperbacks. You'll see many of them described at www.stevemetzgerbooks.com.