The Tim Ferriss Show · Tim Ferriss: Bestselling Author, Human Guinea Pig

#854: Tish Rabe — 200+ Children's Books, Getting Picked for Dr. Seuss, Lessons from Early Sesame Street, How to Write 300+ Songs, and More

February 18, 2026·1 hr 27 min·7 clips

Tish Rabe went from opera singer to writing 200+ children's books after a chance meeting got her onto Sesame Street season two.

Tish Rabe did not start with books. She tells the host she went to college to study opera after years of feeling pulled between singing and writing. That split matters. This is not a neat career-plan story. It is about two skills that kept following her until publishing found a use for both. The numbers are big: more than 200 children's books, more than 11 million copies sold, and 300 children's songs. Still, the conversation stays close to the work. The turn comes through rhyme. Dr. Seuss had wanted a science series for early readers, aimed at children roughly four to seven, but died before finishing the first book. Random House needed someone who could work with science facts and still keep his bounce. Rabe had something to show them. Morris O'Rourke's Brachiosaurus had the mix they needed: subject matter, music, and a feel for pattern. Random House had stacks of research on mammals and birds. They asked whether she could write two books in four months. She took the material home and started writing. Those first jobs became Is a Camel a Mammal? and Fine Feathered Friends, and they led to a long run in that world. The host also presses on the business side. He asks whether her earlier rhyming book stalled because Dr. Seuss effectively owned that shape at Random House. Rabe draws the line carefully. Seuss wrote only for Random House, created the Beginner Books series, and sat at the center of a larger group of authors. His standard still hangs over the story. Rabe describes him as both author and illustrator, then makes her own role plain: she writes the words, but she does not draw the pictures. Editors and art directors told her he could arrive with a finished book that needed no fixing, no redirection, and no correction to the drawings. She missed meeting him by one year, but she did speak with Audrey Geisel. The episode ends with the simplest part of her message to children: read, write, and start now.

As heard by us

A useful creative-career case study on niche skill, timing, and turning a narrow capability into publishing opportunity.

Tish Rabe's career reads like a case study in creative optionality. She trained as an opera singer, kept writing, moved to New York, and eventually found a lane where music, rhyme, research, and children's publishing all overlapped.

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Why you'd press play

A singer's path into children's books, from opera school to Dr. Seuss and beyond.

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