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"Deep in the Forest" was originally published in Ladybug Magazine in the December 1993 issue. I got word that it was accepted for publication the Saturday of the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, 1992. I remember because I followed Lois Lowry (quite by accident) to the bathroom and called out "I'm following in your footsteps." When I got home that day, I found out that I'd sold two poems. The other poem, "Drip by Drip," was sold to Cricket.

I wrote "Deep in the Forest" with my daughter Lisa Kay, driving home from the downtown library. She'd had to do research for a school project, and on the way home I said "We should write one of those fingerplays." And we did. Together. While I drove! When I laced my fingers palms up, they looked rather like bears sleeping all in a row. That became the central idea of the fingerplay.

In 1996, the poem was also reprinted in a Cricket Book, Can You Do This? Fingerplays and Action Rhymes from Ladybug. It was reprinted again in Ladybug Magazine in the December, 2001 issue.

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