Rachel Michelle Wilson wants to hear your pee pants story. It’s just one of the ways she’s creating community around her debut book, How to Pee Your Pants: The Right Way (Feiwel and Friends), a how-to-style book in which a bespectacled owl deals with a telltale wet spot and social mortification.
Wilson knows firsthand the shame of sitting on a bubble-wrapped chair in the school office, but she also discovered that sharing her story encouraged others to open up and laugh. Since her book’s release, stories have poured in, including one from an eight-year-old—a new kid in a new school, no less—who wanted to “help other kids feel less alone.” Those who submit stories on her website can earn membership and a certificate (suitable for coloring) in the PFF (Pee Friends Forever) Club—as long as they promise to be “a PFF to those in need forevermore.”
Speaking from her home on Washington State’s Puget Sound, Wilson refers to herself as an “overpreparer”—and in a sense, she’s been preparing for this debut for a long time. Growing up, she was a font of creativity, writing operas and skits and turning them into videos that she edited on her dad’s computer. Still, she says, it was “a buttoned-up childhood” and she sensed she was “the oddball in my family,” yearning for permission “to express the full range of myself.”
Reading picture books gave her a sense of what was possible. And she couldn’t get enough of the comically transgressive Captain Underpants series—even though she “got the message somehow” that they were “boy books.” “When I went to my friend’s house,” she recalls, “I would go to her brother’s room and read Captain Underpants while I was supposed to be hanging out with her.”
School projects provided a steady outlet for her talents, but once in the working world, she opted for writing roles in the tech sector that left the creativity to others. She now realizes her stint in user experience (UX) for an app was unexpectedly valuable. “UX writing relates a lot to picture books,” she says. “You’re taking these word puzzles and figuring out how to get a point across very clearly, distilling it into a layered simplicity.”
With encouragement from colleagues, she decided to try out her gifts again. She joined workshops and writers’ groups, and as she shaped her portfolio she realized she loved illustrating as much as writing. She also created an extensive online presence—not easy for someone who describes herself as “an old lady in a younger lady’s body,” but she believed it was essential for establishing herself in the picture book world. Currently she has a podcast, a Substack, and, in a throwback to her childhood, produces a steady stream of “silly” videos.
While researching picture books, Wilson noticed her favorites shared an agent: Steven Malk at Writers House. Malk found her query in the slush pile—“So there’s hope!” Wilson says with a laugh—and referred her to colleague Lindsay Auld. Auld had previously turned her away when she wasn’t accepting new clients, but this time she took a look, and they were off and running.
During submission conversations, another professional soulmate emerged: Feiwel and Friends editor Anna Roberto. “We were immediately laughing—always a good sign when making a funny book,” Wilson says. Roberto’s brief, incisive prompts also helped nail the ending, balancing the how-to tone with an emotional punch that avoided feeling preachy.
Wilson’s next book, To Catch a Ghost—which she actually wrote before How to Pee Your Pants—is due out from Scholastic in July, and she’s working on her second book with Roberto. With a four-book deal in hand, she’s been able to leave her tech job and focus full-time on book creating.
But the overpreparer isn’t resting on her laurels. She continues to look for inspiration in classic and contemporary book creators—most recently, Wanda Gág. “I’m so inspired by her theories of illustrations, the atmosphere around objects, how to use space,” Wilson says.
She’s also discovering a new learning curve. All her research into getting published hadn’t prepared her for the actual publishing process. “You have to learn the rules of how each publisher and each specific team works,” she says. The technical intricacies of paper, ink, and printing are new territory as well. “I’m learning what my options are, so I can make better books.”
Meanwhile, living the dream includes school visits. “I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time,” she says. She leads an interactive writing workshop that combines the how-to structure of How to Pee Your Pants with a kind of Mad Libs experience. One school’s standout result: “How to Escape a T-Rex: The Right Way.”
