From opera singer to 200+ children's books: Tish Rabe on craft and creativity

Executive overview

Tish Rabe wanted to be a Broadway star. A chance connection landed her at Sesame Street, where she spent years singing with Muppets, producing specials, and absorbing a creative culture that shaped everything that followed. That immersion — in educational research, double-level humour, and disciplined rhyme — became the foundation for more than 200 children's books.

The core lesson: write the ending first, then build everything backward from what the child hears before the book closes.

Sesame Street as creative school

• The show was built around a thick curriculum notebook — topics to teach each season drove all content decisions
• Writers studied Abbott and Costello and the Marx Brothers, always working backward from the ending
• Double-level humour was intentional: parents laughing alongside kids improved learning outcomes
• Focus groups tested comprehension directly with children — did they actually absorb the alphabet, the number, the concept?
• "Being Green" broke every rule (no end rhymes) and became a mega-hit; Joe Raposo's willingness to experiment defined the culture
• Oscar was originally orange; focus groups changed it — iteration was built into the process

Writing in rhyme: rules and workarounds

• Dr. Seuss had two non-negotiables: perfect rhythm on every line, and pure end rhymes (not slant)
• When stuck on a rhyme, Seuss made up a word — Rabe adopted the same trick ("Gurplet's" in her pet book)
• Research comes first: pull every children's library book on the topic, write all the facts into a notebook, then find rhyme potential in the science
• Migration/vacation came from noticing "migrate" and "migration" on the page — the rhyme unlocked the concept
• Rhyme functions as a child's first mnemonic device; kids who'd never heard "migration" remembered it through the song

The Dr. Seuss series

• Rabe submitted a rhyming dinosaur manuscript to Random House and was told it couldn't be published — the rhyming home of Dr. Seuss
• The same editor offered her a new science-in-rhyme series Seuss had started and never finished
• Two books due in four months; she went home and wrote "A Camel's a Mammal" and "Fine Feathered Friends"
• Audrey Geisel later commissioned "Oh Baby, the Places You'll Go" — a book to be read in utero, referencing all 41 Seuss titles
• When Pluto was demoted, Random House called mid-print: Rabe changed "pizzas" to "nickels" without touching the art

Craft: how the books actually get made

• Always write the last page first — it's the final thing a child hears before the book closes
• For the healthy-habits book, Rabe invented her own Seuss-style characters (Zing Singing Zans) rather than write a preachy list; Geisel approved it; Michelle Obama funded 16 additional pages
• Verse structure: decide what the science is, ensure the song has a verse and a B-section that goes somewhere and returns
• Writer's block fix: schedule the first draft well before deadline; when stuck, stop and work on something else entirely
• Choosing an illustrator is a craft decision — match the artist's style to the book's tone, not just availability

Starting a publishing company at 71

• Launched Tish Rabe Books during COVID because legacy publishers wouldn't commission a board book with dialogic reading prompts
• Owns the ability to write what she believes in: military families, bedtime routines, financial literacy for kids, community-specific books
• "Sometimes Apart, Always in My Heart" grew from months of interviews with service members, spouses, and children — tips from those interviews are in the book
• Alaska, the stuffed dog character, was added so deployed service members could read about a pet — and so kids had a physical soft toy to hold alongside the story
• "Mystic by the Sea" came from a Chamber of Commerce meeting; the entire concept arrived mid-conversation when four imaginary seagulls flew across the room
• Current crowdfunding campaign: free copies of the Central Park book to first graders in underserved New York City neighbourhoods

Music, memory, and staying sharp

• Opera training gave Rabe the ability to count musicians in, cue pre-recorded tracks, and navigate live production under pressure
• Jingle session singers in 1970s New York could sight-read four-part harmony in one pass; that speed and precision shaped her work ethic
• Singing to children matters regardless of vocal quality — the child wants to hear the parent's specific voice
• All her self-published books include a song written to a public domain melody; parents don't need to read music to use them
• At 74, she attributes mental sharpness to lifelong engagement with music, rhyme, and constant creative output