#854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More

What It Covers

Tish Rabe, author of 200+ children's books with 11 million+ copies sold, traces her path from opera training to Sesame Street season two to writing the Dr. Seuss science series. She shares craft techniques for rhyming books, songwriting structure, starting an independent publishing company at age 71, and getting free books to underserved children.

Key Questions Answered

• •Write the ending first: Rabe structures every children's book by writing the final page before anything else, a technique she learned from Sesame Street writers who reverse-engineered Abbott and Costello comedies. The last page carries disproportionate weight because it is the final thing a child hears before sleep. Knowing the destination shapes every narrative decision made along the way.
• •Rhyme as a mnemonic device: Pure end rhymes — where sounds match exactly, not approximate "slant rhymes" like farm/barn — dramatically improve children's retention of factual content. Rabe's Dr. Seuss science books use this deliberately: pairing "migration" with "vacation" taught children a technical term they would not have absorbed from prose. Every book she now writes independently uses rhyme for this reason.
• •Song structure requires a B-section: When writing 300+ educational songs, Rabe consistently builds a verse followed by a contrasting B-section before returning to the main theme. She identifies the core educational fact first, then finds rhyming potential within that content. Mapping new lyrics to recognizable public domain melodies accelerates learning because children already hold the melodic framework in memory.
• •Research children's library shelves before writing: To distill complex topics into 24–42 pages of rhyming text, Rabe visits children's library sections and reads every existing book on the target subject. Because those books already simplify content for young readers, they provide pre-filtered facts. She records everything in a dedicated spiral notebook per book, then scans for words with strong rhyming potential before drafting.
• •Invent words when rhymes fail: Dr. Seuss maintained two non-negotiable standards — perfect rhythmic meter and pure end rhymes — but resolved impossible rhyme situations by coining fictional words and place names. Rabe applies the same fix in her own Seuss-series books, creating invented locations like "Gurpets" to unlock otherwise unavailable rhymes. This approach turns a constraint into a recognizable stylistic signature rather than a flaw.
• •Self-impose earlier deadlines to absorb writer's block: When contracted with an external deadline of April 1, Rabe records her personal deadline as February 15. This buffer absorbs the days when a project stalls completely. Her protocol when stuck is to stop entirely, switch to a different book or task, and return later — avoiding the compounding paralysis that comes from forcing output on a blocked project.