When my children were growing up we had evening visitors to our patio— sometimes raccoons, sometimes opossums, and sometimes a family of skunks. We would watch the baby skunks behind glass doors, fascinated by them.

During those years we had some smelly experiences with skunks. Our dear dog, Ali, was sprayed twice! My son tried using tomato juice to get the skunk smell out. It didn’t work very well.

Skunks were on my mind. So, I started working on an early reader about skunks.

The first title for this story was If Big Bear Comes, but my editor thought the title should have the word “skunk” in it, so she brainstormed with another editor and came up with four new titles. We all agreed we liked The Tail of Little Skunk best.