Bernardosaurus says:

While I was doing my research on animals for Dinosaur Cousins?, I kept coming across unusual animal names like catbirds, dogfish, tiger sharks, and elephant seals.   These combined animal names stuck in my mind, and after Dinosaur Cousins? was published, I thought Animal Cousins would be a fun book.  I compiled a list of animals with unusual names and submitted it to Harcourt Brace in 1988 with the title Animal Cousins, but they rejected it.

Since I was busy with other projects that were accepted for publication, I filed Animal Cousins away.  Many years later, I was still fascinated by these combined animal names, so I decided to re-work Animal Cousins.  I made some rough sample pages.  On one page I illustrated what my imagination thinks a catbird looks like:   a cat with wings swooping down from a tree, chasing after mice.  On the facing page is my realistic illustration of a catbird along with factual text that explains how a catbird got its name.  "Catbirds call to other catbirds with a song that sounds like a cat's meow," plus more information about what it feeds on, and where it is found.  I mixed in some fun -- "Next time you hear a meow in your backyard, take a good look.  It might be a catbird."

I submitted several other illustrated pages along with a new list of names to Harcourt in 1994, and this time around they loved it.  We were going to call it Animal Cousins until my son Glenn suggested Catbirds & Dogfish, which everyone liked better.

This book is another example of my favorite theme, the importance of persistence!