When HarperCollins approached Brooke Shields about writing a children's book (which would become Welcome to the World, Baby, illustrated by Cori Doerrfeld), she was pregnant with her second child. Her first pregnancy was the subject of the bestselling Down Came the Rain (Hyperion, 2005), which frankly and openly chronicled Shields's struggle with postpartum depression after giving birth to Rowan, now five years old. With this second pregnancy (she knew it was another girl), Shields wanted Rowan to be a part of the process. "I didn't want her to feel displaced," Shields said. "So I asked her, 'What do you want to do with your sister?'" These conversations formed the basis of the book, and in many ways, according to Shields, Rowan wrote Welcome to the World, Baby, for Grier, who is now two years old.
Shelf Awareness met with Shields in the Green Room at the Barnes & Noble in Tribeca in New York City on the afternoon of the book's release, June 24. She had been working on the set of the NBC TV series "Lipstick Jungle" since 5 a.m. that morning but still looked as fresh and energetic as someone who has based her career on acting and modeling. Asked if this book was easier to write than Down Came the Rain, Shields said, no, quite the opposite. "With Down Came the Rain, I had to recount [the experience]; it was like writing a diary," Shields said. "But writing a children's book is so frustrating. As my friend Candace Bushnell said, 'It has to be like poetry; every line has to sing.'"
Shields said she has always enjoyed writing, though her first publishing experience was not ideal. After she wrote the first chapter of On Your Own (Villard, 1985), a kind of advice book for teens, with life, beauty and health tips, her editor "chopped it all up" into terse sentences. Under those circumstances, "I didn't want to spend my first year at Princeton writing the book," Shields said, so she asked for a ghost-writer. [Full disclosure: This reporter went to college with Shields and shared a dressing room with her for the school's Triangle Show, in which Shields's featured role as a dancing waitress in the musical number "Spiller," a send-up of Michael Jackson's "Thriller," received national attention while she was a freshman.]
Since then, while much of her life continues to be in the spotlight, Shields has managed to enjoy great autonomy with her writing. The author did not have a say in picking the artist for her picture book, but she did give Doerrfeld notes on the scene she imagined for each line. The opening spread is just how events played out when the entire family returned home with Grier from the hospital, according to Shields; Rowan walked through the door first, opened her arms wide and proclaimed the title line, "Welcome to the world, baby!" Doerrfeld brought her own ideas to the artwork, too, of course. Shield's favorite example is the closing spread, "We can even share/ cuddling with Mom"), in which Mom's feet are in Dad's lap as the two girls cuddle with Mom on the couch. The artist added the detail of the baby holding onto her big sister's finger, so the whole family is touching.
As Shields made her way out to the crowd of more than 200, she exclaimed, "It's so great to see all the babies!" For those who have read Down Came the Rain, this simple statement had a deeper resonance. After she read the book, she took questions. One adult wondered why there were so many celebrity books for kids. Unlike Madonna, who said she felt a need to write for children because there were "no good books" for children, Shields expressed respect for the many wonderful books for children and the "great authors" who write them, then gave a refreshingly honest answer: "I think it's because we're asked."--Jennifer M. Brown