Oh Boy! What joy for children and parents alike: An interactive children’s picture book that will teach, entertain, and have the little ones make their own tails as they learn in verse about animals and why they have tails! I Wish I Had a Tail! is now available on Amazon.com.

Many know Rust by her award-winning best-selling book The King of Skittledeedoo which was her first children’s picture book after writing for Disney both in film and television. She also wrote original children’s stories for the Los Angeles Times Children’s Reading Room for many years.

I Wish I Had a Tail! came from her experience at the Honolulu Zoo where she saw an errant peacock feather on the ground and picked it up and squeaked with her unmistakable fairy princess voice, “I wish I had a tail! Why if I had a tail I would polish my glasses then shoes and twirl it around until it was time for a snooze!” She spent years researching animals to see which ones had decorative tails and others, functional ones, and turned her insights into thoughtful verse that kids love.

As we go along learning about how monkeys learn to use their tails to climb trees, the readers, or those being read to, get to explore their own ideas on tails and follow dotted lines to draw tails to match animals or animals to match tails, and even get to make their own tails! When reading the book to children, she unfurled her own tail to the children’s audience of the Los Angeles Zoo, who went wild with laughter and joy!

Her artist, Aiden Khuiphum, did the colorful and whimsical illustrations for this and her last book, Step Away from the Phone, and has such a skill for bringing her refreshing way of writing to life.

Her mentor, Jules Engel, worked for Walt Disney and worked on masterpieces such as Fantasia, Bambi, and had his own fine arts career. They met while Rust was creating a children’s television show with singer Waylon Jennings and director Steve Binder. Rust’s UCLA education took her from journalism to broadcasting to screenwriting specializing in comedy so she has a unique voice in the genre. She has more children’s picture books coming out as well as two young adult novels.