On Valentine's Day, no one will sit with Gilbert at lunch after a plan he hatches to get back at two bullies backfires. On Halloween, he has to wear a pink tutu in the parade after he mistakenly carries off his sister's ballerina costume. And, in another unfortunate incident, he finds himself invited to the birthday party of the class bully who blurts out, "My mother made me invite all the boys in the class. That's why you got an invitation." Such are the tribulations Gilbert, an amiable opossum, faces in a popular series of picture books by Diane deGroat, published by Morrow Junior Books.

This month, Morrow will release deGroat's third title in the series, Happy Birthday to You, You Belong in a Zoo, a follow-up to Roses Are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink (1996) and Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet (1998).

All of the dilemmas Gilbert faces are ones thatyoungsters can identify with. Virginia Law, national accounts manager for children's books at Morrow, reported that the trio of titles has sold more than 200,000 copies, a figure fueled by the release of Roses Are Pink in a Mulberry paperback edition in 1997. And this number will surely balloon this fall, after Happy Birthday reaches stores and Mulberry issues Trick or Treat in paper with a 30,000-copy first printing.

"Though sales of the first two titles are steady all year, they definitely spike a few months before each of the holidays featured," commented Law, who expects that the third title starring Gilbert, with its birthday theme, "will sell well year-round."

DeGroat, who did not initially conceive of Gilbert as the star of a series, began working on Roses Are Pink after asking librarians and teachers "what kind of picture books were needed and what would be a good niche for me to jump into. Invariably they said they would love to see a Valentine's Day book, since they didn't feel there were many good stories to read to children as this holiday approaches."

Though she decided to make the young characters in the book animals rather than children, noting that "it makes it more fun for me as well as for kids," deGroat observed that "as it turns out, all of these animals have their own personalities, just like children do. Gilbert represents a regular kid that everyone can identify with, even though he's very hairy. He is still a sympathetic figure."

Others who view him as the likable kid next-door include Andrea Schneeman, now executive editor at a new, still unnamed children's division of North-South Books, who was deGroat's editor at Morrow during Gilbert's early days; the author credits her for helping to bring this character alive on the page. Schneeman described him as "everychild -- not too good, but not too bad. He's a well-intentioned fellow but, like any child, he gets grumpy when bad things happen to him."

DeGroat's current editor at Morrow, senior v-p and editorial director Barbara Lalicki, observed that much of Gilbert's appeal is rooted in his ability to overcome "the embarrassing scenarios he manages to get himself into. These are very real situations that any child could experience," Lalicki said. "It's obvious from Diane's plots that she is really plugged into what is going on in children's lives."

That she is. The author, now a resident of Amherst, Mass., spent many years volunteering in an elementary school library when she lived in Chappaqua, N.Y. "Even after my own daughter, who is turning 23, graduated from that school, I stayed on," she recalled. "I was able to zero in on this age group and familiarize myself with the age-appropriateness of some of the issues I wanted to write about and illustrate. The school library is a great environment to be in, not just to view the kids but also to see what they are reading and what is being published. It was a great resource for me."

Though time d s not allow her to make as many trips to schools these days, deGroat relies on these visits to keep in touch with her audience. "I can try out my ideas on them and discover what they think is funny," she said. "This connection with children is very important to me, and I never want to lose it."

Taking a New Direction

Though this series starring Gilbert and his pals is deGroat's first venture as an author, she has been illustrating children's books for some 30 years. When asked if, as a child, she aspired to a career as an illustrator, she responded definitively, "Absolutely not." After studying art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, deGroat was hired by Holt, Rinehart and Winston as a designer for a new basal reader series. "I did layouts for books and also was responsible for assigning art to freelance artists. There I was, a kid just out of college, assigning work to great artists like Jerry Pinkney and Ed Young! I was not a painter then as much as a draftsman, and it was incredible to be handling all this stunning, original art. These artists were a great inspiration to me. I learned to paint by looking at their work. And I decided that that seemed like a better job than sitting in an office."

While at Holt, deGroat tried her hand at illustrating and, in fact, created the art for some of the books in the basal reader series she was working on. "I didn't really have a style yet and I kind of copied others until eventually I fell into what I do now, what comes naturally," she stated. The first picture book she illustrated, for Crown, was Little Rabbit's Loose Tooth by Lucy Bate”an auspicious beginning indeed. DeGroat explained, "This has been in print for more than 25 years and has sold millions of copies. It is by far my most successful book."

Booksellers queried agreed that deGroat is definitely on the right track. Cindy Pyle, children's book buyer for the Odyssey Bookstore in South Hadley, Mass., reported healthy sales of Roses Are Pink, especially in paperback, and is looking forward to the paperback edition of Trick or Treat in time for the Halloween season. In her words, "Holiday titles are always popular, and these are especially so because the titles are so catchy and the artwork is charming."

DeGroat's art for Trick or Treat is charming enough, in fact, to have been selected to grace the cover of Barnes and Noble's current Back to School/Halloween catalogue, available in all of its stores. Deborah Williams, director of corporate communications for B&N, stated that this book was featured on the cover because "it has sold very well for us, as have the other books in the series. They are especially popular with teachers and children."

At San Marino Toy & Book Shoppe in San Marino, Calif., manager Ann McGann Yee also praised the kid-tickling titles of deGroat's books. In her view, "The great titles sell these books and make them hard to resist." But she noted that deGroat's humor extends beyond the front cover: "These stories appeal to kids even older than the average picture-book reader because they are very funny”even silly”and kids love that. These books are favorites of ours and we make sure that our customers see them."

Morrow's sales reps are also clearly bullish on Gilbert. Lori Benton, associate director of children's book marketing, recalled a discussion, when the company issued the paperback edition of Roses Are Pink, about the size of a counter display. "The reps were clamoring for an eight-copy or even a 10-copy display," instead of the six-copy display that had been planned, Benton reported, "and I just about fell on the floor. Reps are much more likely to say 'Take the number down' on a display rather than ask for room for more copies. It was obviously a measure of their enthusiasm for this book."

And, according to Law, Gilbert has vocal fans among booksellers, too: she said that some accounts have asked for a Gilbert costume as well as an event kit to entertain young customers. The latter, Benton projected, will likely be available by fall 2000.

That season, Morrow plans to release the fourth Gilbert tale, Jingle Bells, Homework Smells. DeGroat hinted that Gilbert is also likely to experience both a Thanksgiving and an April Fool's misadventure. Though she conceded that "writing is much more of a challenge to me than illustrating," she said that these books are coming more easily to her as she adds to the series, because "the characters already exist. Once I come up with the idea, Gilbert, his family and friends seem to do their own thing and move the story along by themselves."