I often find myself wondering “how is this my real life” when I get to work on some of my editing clients’ picture books. “The Cheese Tax,” by Ron and Roberta Lenert, is one of those books! This team wrote and illustrated this book, and it is forthcoming from Lawley Publishing, so I get to share about it coming out in the world soon! It publishes on October 13th, and you can preorder it on Amazon (affiliate link) or via the authors’ website.
The book is inspired by the famous video about having to give your dog some cheese whenever you open the cheese drawer. In my house, this is the “hardboiled egg” tax–I don’t like the yolk so my dog knows to come running every time an egg cracks! Unfortunately, when I’m baking with raw eggs, he’s sadly disappointed.
I did a little interview with the authors below. Enjoy a good chuckle!
Tell me about your real-life inspiration for the book.
Roberta: One afternoon our daughter played the ‘cheese tax’ song on her phone, and someone gave our dog Kona a bit of shredded mozzarella. We started singing the song and we fed the dog every time we ate cheese that week. Then it became our routine.
Ron: We had written drafts for a few other children’s books and had an open ear for more ideas. Then it hit me that that our cheese tax was fun, and I wanted to write a book that was, above all else, fun to read. Then the rhymes started flowing and started keeping me up at night.
If you were stranded on a desert island and could only eat one kind of cheese for the rest of your life, what would it be? What would your dog say to that question?
Roberta: Caramelized onion cheddar cheese from Trader Joe’s.
Ron: Cheddar. Doesn’t really matter what kind, but I will put shredded cheddar on a disproportionate number of my meals at home.
Kona: Kona’s favorite kind of cheese is the type she is offered! She is not picky! We devoted an entire page of the story to comment on her very low standards. For her Instagram page, we have tried several ‘taste test’ posts, and they are just chaos.
What is the funniest thing your dog has ever done?
Roberta: She goes out on a double kayak, and loves to go up to the very front and stand like a mermaid figurehead. She’s playing with fire, and has taken a few unintended swims.
Ron: She loves to be hugged. When I am leaning down to pull weeds in the garden, she loves to slide in right under my arms, push into me, and stay there.
Kona: Kona celebrates every part of the day. But she thinks some things are not funny, like when someone had an omelet yesterday and didn’t share any melted cheese.
Does your dog expect anything else from you in your routine?
Roberta: Whenever we are in the kitchen, Kona expects to share. She really comes running when she hears plastic. She will go right next to kitchen island and ‘sit pretty.’ No barking, no whining, just a constant, penetrating stare.
Ron: It started with just cheese, but then I started to look for fresh food to feed her. And I realized how boring a life of just dry kibble would be. Now it is carrots, apples, berries, fish, hardboiled eggs, and even celery. The cheese tax has encouraged us to give her a better diet, and brings our friend to hang out with us in the kitchen all the time.
Who should buy this book? Did you mean it for both adults and kids?
Ron: Families with young kids and a dog. The target children’s age is 2-7, and we just added a Cheese Tax coloring book to our website which is perfect for that group. For a story initially conceived to just make kids and parents laugh, I didn’t realize how many connections we could establish in telling the story. But in creating the book, we got feedback from babies to adults so that everyone would find something special about the words and images. In the final test groups we were no longer looking for things to fix or correct, we were making lists of things that were loved and then elevating or cutting what wasn’t on the list. There were SO MANY words, stanzas, and art that we had to step away from. Only the very best made it.
I think the title will catch a lot of people’s attention who recognize the internet meme. And once they look inside, they will realize how much more there is to it.
Roberta: For the last two months I’ve carried around the author’s advance print everywhere I go. There has never been a kid, even in middle or high school, that could put it down until they had looked at every single page. And our adult friends have loved it, giving us great feedback on elements from the rhyming cadence to the mouse (hidden on every page).
When you get past the laughs, it’s about bonding – between the adult that reads the book (again and again) to a child, between the family and their pet. And its fun to be part of an ‘inside joke’
How did you decide whether to self-publish or try traditional publishing?
Ron: We were very fortunate. I did a lot of research on trad publishers that accepted submissions directly from authors, made submissions, and Lawley Publishing was the first that connected with us. We had submitted the story with (fairly detailed) storyboards, and Lawley asked if I would serve as the illustrator as well. They were taking a chance there, I developed a lot as an artist in the months following. They have been great to work with.
Tell me about the illustration process. I know you had to work on your artistic skills a lot to create this book. What was that like?
Roberta: That was all Ron. We didn’t know much about the other illustrators our publisher used, so I encouraged him to do the artwork.
Ron: I had an informal artistic background, and had been drawing more as we storyboarded our other projects. At every point in this book I kept getting pushed further. Technically – I moved from pen on paper to colored pencils on paper, then to scanning linework that I would color on Canva, then I bought a tablet. I finally purchased the iPad and work in Procreate. Stylistically I changed a lot too. I moved from very realistic models of the dog to make her more of a cartoon. I had people vote on 5 different versions of the eyes alone. I watched tutorial after tutorial on color pallets, layering and texture, and perspective. I asked for feedback from anyone that I thought had expertise. The final art looks nothing at all like the initial images we started with.
Full disclosure, I worked on this book as an editor. Can you share a little bit about your revision process?
Ron: You are one of the best editors ever! You helped SO much fall into place, from rearranging pages for story flow to suggesting small word substitutions. Every author needs at least one editor to look over their shoulder and add a new perspective. I don’t want to minimize the other professional editors that helped in later phases (we had two others), but we realized rhyming books are so technical any missteps really stand out. We were so lucky to have your guiding hand. (Tracy: Aww, shucks!)
Roberta: We thought we had a perfect draft lots of times, and then a trained set of eyes would review it, and we would learn how much we could correct. People also read with different meter, and emphasize different words, so when we received new feedback we were constantly adjusting. I think these years of revision is what really sets a book like this aside in the current era. Self publishing is fine, but it really flooded the market with books that were never edited, never critiqued, and never refined.
What is your biggest hope for what this book will bring into the world?
Roberta: I hope it brings bonding – kids and parents doing nighttime reading, teachers and students discussing in the classroom, and families playing with their pets. It also pushed us to set up thecheesetax.com, and we’ve been creating free activity pages and now a companion coloring book.
Ron: I would say I hope this book brings enjoyment. A child that loves the brightly colored pages, an adult that chuckles at the jokes. If it causes a reader to smile or laugh then it worked. However, I suspect that if people like this book once, they will want to keep reading it again and again – it’s that kind of a book.
What is next?
Roberta: The books are available on our website now, but official publication on Amazon and Barnes & Noble is October 13. So we are now focusing on marketing and promotion. We have submitted the book for several professional reviews, we are visiting local bookstores to request that they stock and display, and we are looking at setting up a booth at upcoming bookfairs and other events.
Ron: I just finished the coloring book, which was surprisingly time-intensive. I really worked to hand-craft each page, and it expands learning on this theme into ABCs, word recognition, activity challenges, and pet-ownership education. There are also free activities on the website. Beyond that, we will continue refining other projects. I’m really hopeful about a board book we are about to pitch. Our publisher doesn’t do board books, so we are on the hunt!
Back to Tracy!! I hope you enjoyed learning about this fun book! If we’ve got to pay the dog a cheese tax, the dog has to pay the photo tax, so here’s Roberta, Kona, and Ron!
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