Translated into 57 languages, Robert Stanek’s books
have sold nearly 20 million copies worldwide.
Robert Stanek created the Bugville Critters for his
own children, who urged him to get the books published for
others to enjoy. Today, there are more than 100 books to
choose from, all written and illustrated by Robert Stanek
himself.
PARENTING MAGAZINE
RECOMMENDED Robert Stanek's
Bugville Critters stories were recommended to
parents for their children by Parenting Magazine
in September 2008. The magazine recommended
"Visit Dad and Mom at Work," "Go To School,"
"Have A Sleepover," and "Visit Garden Box
Farms." These stories are included in "Bugville
Critters Storybook Treasury Volume 1" and in "Bugville
Audio Collection 1."
Bugville is home to
many special critters and it’s where you’ll meet Buster and all his friends. Robert Stanek is the highly-acclaimed author of more than
250 books for
young people and adults, including Journey Beyond the Beyond and The Kingdoms
and the Elves of the Reaches. Robert Stanek’s Bugville Critters stories address all the major issues of
growing up and are designed to appeal to the ever-growing interests of children
three to eight years old. These refreshing stories combine facts about our
natural world with fictional stories that instruct and entertain.
Letters to Buster are pouring in from across
the country and around the world. Children everywhere are asking for
more Buster.
They want more Buster books. They want Buster
to visit them. They want Buster to go to their school.
Uncle Wallace, as I knew Wallace Stegner, won the Pulitzer
Prize in 1972, the National Book Award in 1977, but on an
ethical basis refused a National Medal from the NEA in 1988.
My forefather was like that, always working against the
grain, and in that we share common ground. Looking back, in
fact, it’s remarkable how much common ground we share in our
decades-long careers as writers and in our everyday lives.
Wallace Stegner was a tall man both in stature and legend. I
have the tall part down pat. Like my wife of 31 years, his
wife of 52 years, Mary, was short, rising only to his
shoulder, and as instrumental to his work as the air he
breathed. Uncle Wallace was an adopted son of Utah, as I am
of Wisconsin. Our home states are where we grew up and what
we think of as home even though as adults we chose to live
elsewhere. I split my time between Washington and Hawaii
when I can, just as Uncle Wallace travelled between homes in
California and Vermont.
He and I had hard-scrabble childhoods. We were moved about
by our parents, to the countryside in our youth. We
experienced the worst of poverty, the failings of our
parents. We learned early that you didn't complain, that you
must keep a stiff upper lip, and that you never abandoned
anything you started. He and I fell in love with the West,
each in our own way. All of these things influenced our
lives and make our writing unique.
Uncle Wallace schooled me regularly against succumbing to
the trend du jour of headquarters, aka the American
publishing houses in the east. I was to write whatever the
hell I wanted, theme du jour be damned. Writing our way came
with a heavy cost; we paid heavy penalties for being out of
step with the literary establishment. He was impatient with
my early writing, always wanting it to be more staid and
literary. Once he understood that I saw writing as a
challenge to the soundness of my character, as he did, he
embraced it heartily. Although my work was eventually
published and/or distributed by nearly every major American
publisher, I still did it my way and bent the publishing
world to my will just as he did—and when headquarters
wouldn’t bend enough I went independent just as Uncle
Wallace told me I should do when it was time.
Credited as the co-creator of the modern creative writing
industry, having taught writing first at Iowa, Harvard and
Wisconsin, and then at Stanford, where he built the
prestigious program, Uncle Wallace blazed trails by teaching
young people to write literature. As a respected and skilled
teacher myself, I gave instruction on new technologies and
am credited with transforming the computer writing industry
with my plain language style. A style that Microsoft
eventually adopted for its own, having been unable to bend
me to its will to write in Microsoftese, that unknowable
language only Microsoft itself truly ever understood.
Millions of training courses taught by Microsoft and others
used my words as their foundations.
Uncle Wallace wrote short stories, fiction and nonfiction.
His more than 30 full-length works include 13 novels, with
the Pulitzer Prize winning “Angle of Repose” and the
National Book Award winning “The Spectator Bird” being among
his best known works. His eight works of nonfiction include
an autobiography, a biography and a book on teaching
creative writing. Wallace Stegner believed steadfastly in
the American West and in later years in its preservation,
which he wrote about in essays and several collections.
Thanks to his words and encouragement, conservation and the
environment are constant themes in my own work as well and
especially in my Bugville Critters books.
Most of Uncle Wallace’s correspondence from his long,
storied writing career, both personal and professional, was
kept and curated by his wife, Mary, and is now shared by the
Special Collections Library at the University of Utah. But I
know personally that the collection doesn’t contain all of
his correspondence. Uncle Wallace threw a long shadow over
my life and career. He’s a reason I became an editor and
columnist for the school newspaper in the 4thgrade
and never stopped writing afterward. I wrote to challenge
myself and prove my character every day, just as he did.
He challenged me to succeed on my own, on the merits of my
work, and I did. I signed my first contract and broke into
publishing on my own in 1995 writing nonfiction, nearly 2
years to the day after Uncle Wallace passed away, having
written many original works of fiction that garnered his
approval but were as yet unpublished. He told me to never
lose the writer’s voice I’d found and encouraged me to
always keep challenging myself, to prove my character
through my writing, to write more about my life and
experiences, and to most especially continue my crusade
against the literary establishment. This was at odds with
the way his son, Page, wrote. Page was an academic at heart
and a historian, who also taught creative writing for many
years, but mostly published scholarly works.
My forefather Wallace Stegner told me winning the Pulitzer
was impressive but it didn’t really help sell his books or
pay his bills, nor did the National Book Award, nor the
three O’Henry awards, nor the two Guggenheim fellowships. It
wasn’t that he didn’t like fame, hobnobbing with the elite,
or his charmed life. He appreciated the accolades bestowed
upon him, but it all became a distraction from his writing.
His works in his lifetime sold hundreds of thousands of
copies, they did not sell millions. Because of this, he
often took on projects for the money, which is something he
told me not to be afraid to do. The craft of writing is
about the writing. Professional writing is work.
Professional writers write to pay the bills and pay the
bills I did as I wrote for major publishers across several
decades.
I never wanted Uncle Wallace’s academic career, awards or
social calendar. Sure I’ve taught in colleges, hobnobbed
with royalty, met and dined with presidents and generals,
been paid thousands to speak to captains of industry, but
I’ve always preferred the simple life, regular folk and the
quiet comfort that comes from routine. The simple routine of
putting words to paper is my routine, and that’s something
Uncle Wallace would have appreciated as he always wanted to
do more writing and less hobnobbing.
The name Wallace Stegner never became a household name in
his lifetime. Nor has he become a literary celebrity,
despite three biographies written about his life and career.
He is thought of as a great but uncelebrated writer. He was
okay with that and with what he’d achieved, just as I am
okay with what I’ve achieved. Over the past 35 years, I’ve
written hundreds of original works and they’ve been
translated into 57 languages and counting. I’ll take
millions of copies sold over fame and celebrity any day.
Traveling in France some years ago, I couldn’t help but
smile and remember Uncle Wallace when a Parisian
acquaintance told me that the American west was all cowboys
riding the range and how the cowboy hat and boots he was
wearing were just like the ones the real American cowboys
wore. Uncle Wallace would have understood the irony in that
statement because he rejected these superficial aspects of
Western mythos, telling me more than once that the idea of
the cowboy alone on the range was completely false. The West
wasn’t about rugged, self-reliant individuals, it was about
people coming together and cooperating to accomplish much
more than they could alone.
Thanks for reading, I’m William Robert Stanek, Microsoft’s
#1 author for nearly 20 years, and author of over 250
topselling books.
Robert Stanek wrote the Bugville Critters books as bedtime
stories for his children. The stories address real issues and
challenges all children face as they start school, make friends,
and learn about the world around them. The stories
provide lessons about life, friendship, family, our world, the
natural world of which we are all a part, and our environment.
Robert Stanek's children have enjoyed hearing the tales of
Buster Bee, Lass Ladybug, Cat Caterpillar, Barry Beetle, and all
their friends for many years. As they got older, they urged Robert
to bring his stories to life for other children to enjoy, and that
is what he set out to do in 2004. The first Bugville Critters
stories were published in 2007 to instant acclaim.
Cool Fact #1: Robert came up with the idea for the Bugville Critters in the 1990s and
wrote the first book in 1996. When that book was published in 2007,
over a decade later, Robert had already completed over two dozen Bugville Critters books.
As of 2010, all of the original books are now fully illustrated and
being released in print.
Cool Fact #2: Robert's children are the ones who urged him to get the Bugville
Critters books published and that is what he set out to do in 2004. Once
he decided on getting a publisher, it took nearly four years to get the
first set of books into print.
Cool Fact #3: To bring the books to audio, Robert began working with voice artists in
2005. It took two years of work with multiple voice artists to get to
the release of the first Bugville Critters audio book and five years to
complete the production of all the original books. All of the original
books were first released in audio and then in print.
Bugville
St. Patrick's Day Screensaver
& Wallpaper Created by Robert Stanek
Download the
installer file (.exe) and then
double-click to install the
screensaver. If you don't want to
use the self-installing executable
file, download the
screensaver file instead and
then double-click this file to use
as a screensaver. The screensaver is
customizable.
Bugville
Valentine's Day Wallpaper
Free Desktop
Background Created by Robert Stanek
Download the
installer file (.exe) and then
double-click to install the
screensaver. If you don't want to
use the self-installing executable
file, download the
screensaver file instead and
then double-click this file to use
as a screensaver. The screensaver is
customizable.
Buster
Explores the Solar System Wallpaper
Free Desktop
Background Created by Robert Stanek
Download the
installer file (.exe) and then
double-click to install the
screensaver. If you don't want to
use the self-installing executable
file, download the
screensaver file instead and
then double-click this file to use
as a screensaver. The screensaver is
customizable.
Bugville
Critters Go To Camp
Free Desktop
Background Created by Robert Stanek
Download the
installer file (.exe) and then
double-click to install the
screensaver. If you don't want to
use the self-installing executable
file, download the
screensaver file instead and
then double-click this file to use
as a screensaver. The screensaver is
customizable.
Download the
installer file (.exe) and then
double-click to install the
screensaver. If you don't want to
use the self-installing executable
file, download the
screensaver file instead and
then double-click this file to use
as a screensaver. The screensaver is
customizable.
(c) 2006 - 2020 Robert Stanek. Reagent Press. All Rights
Reserved.
