Toby Speed

MORNING REPORT

She lived in a shoe
so she said
and all those children were not starving.
You could see for yourself.

The pot of broth was there
if you looked
boiling and hissing back in the heel
its ladle angled out like a defiant elbow.

The children were taken away by car
while cameras clicked.
She had lived there a long time
faces coming and going
many fathers.

She was a hard-working woman
so she said
as they carted her away.
Her face was on the news the next day.


Toby reads "Morning Report":



Subscribe to Channel Five-Two for first view of new videos.


Toby confesses: "'Morning Report' came to me when I was looking through old nursery rhymes for inspiration for a story. 'The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe' is such a concise dramatization of a real, present-day problem. I found myself thinking about the mother and how she would defend herself if accused of child neglect."

TOBY SPEED is a poet, children's book author and mystery writer living on Long Island, NY. Her most recent poetry publication was in Four and Twenty. She is the author of seven children's books, including Two Cool Cows, an IRA-CBC Children's Choice Book, and Brave Potatoes, which was on both the Publishers Weekly and The New York Times children's bestseller lists. Death Over Easy, her first murder mystery, will appear in September 2013 from Five Star. She is hard at work on the sequel, Death Under the Radar. Visit tobyspeed.com to learn more.