It’s not surprising that kidlit author Marthe Jocelyn’s idea of a Florida vacation in January means attending a Key West literary seminar to learn about writing short fiction. That particular form of storytelling is, after all, one of a shrinking number of genres the prolific jack-of-all-trades hasn’t touched.

Or wait, scratch that. My next book, the one that I’ve just handed in, started as linked short stories, she tells me during a break from the workshop. Then it turned into a novel. So I guess this course is a little late for me. Maybe, but based on her track record, it’s doubtful she needed any help.

Beginning her writing career in her early forties after first working in kids’ clothing and toy design, Jocelyn has now published more than 25 books that run the full range from alphabet lessons for toddlers to novels and non-fiction for teens. The illustrated board books she collaborated on with artist Tom Slaughter (her former partner) have been translated into four languages, her decade-old picture book Hannah’s Collections is used to teach math in schools across North America, and Mable Riley: A Reliable Record of Humdrum, Peril and Romance “ a fictional diary of an eighth grader growing up in Stratford, Ontario, at the turn of the 20th century “ was awarded the inaugural TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award in 2005.

Jocelyn uses a crafty metaphor to explain her creative breadth: I don’t try to filter the ideas that come into my head, she explains. They all sit up there in a jumble, like the junk drawer in your kitchen. Sometimes, I pull out a tack. Sometimes, it’s a bundle of string.

That description is especially apt for her latest release. Sneaky Art: Crafty Surprises to Hide in Plain Sight (Candlewick/Random House) is a guide to making guerrilla artworks from materials found around the house. Jocelyn says the project, which already has a sequel underway, was inspired by her time living in New York City among the street graffiti, the accidental installations of found objects on the sidewalk, and the burgeoning trend of yarn bombing. (Jocelyn is now based in Stratford full time.)

But while her productivity benefits from an open mind, it is equally due to the fact that she lets one book plant the seed for the next. Ten years ago, Jocelyn’s research into the orphanage where her grandfather was dropped off as an infant informed A Home for Foundlings (Tundra Books), a history of a London hospital that began a program to raise abandoned children in the 18th century. The book, Jocelyn’s first work of non-fiction, inspired her subsequent YA novel, Folly, published five years later, which speculated on the life and motivations of her great-grandmother. In [Folly], I imagined what might have led her to give up her child when he was nine months old, she explains.

The same research also led to Scribbling Women: True Tales From Astonishing Lives (Tundra), Jocelyn’s collection of brief biographies of influential but little-known women writers. While poking around the foundling hospital’s history, she came across letters from Mary Wortley Montagu, an English Lady who, while abroad in Constantinople, witnessed a technique for inoculating against smallpox that was unknown back home. She wrote a letter about what happened, a very precise, step-by-step letter. And that single letter changed the course of medical history, she explains. I thought, if this single letter had such an impact, how many gazillion other letters changed the world in even small ways?

Jocelyn’s greatest source material, however, is her two daughters, Hannah and Nell. In fact, a new genre the author recently tackled is the mother-daughter collaboration, which has spawned a pair of picture books, co-authored by Nell, for early readers: 2011’s Ones and Twos and Where Do You Look?, released in February by Tundra Books. The duo started working together after Marthe sent one of Nell’s high school projects “ an abecedarian of 26 ways to die “ to her publisher. Tundra wasn’t prepared to print something so edgy, but her editor encouraged the two to work together.

She always had everything going on at once, Nell says of her mother. When we were younger, she used to illustrate homemade books, but also worked as a clothing designer, was a great cook, and was involved in our school. The intense level of activity, she says, is reflected in the studio where the two work on layouts for their books. It’s like a bar with peanut shells covering the ground, but it’s paper clippings instead. I don’t even know where the surfaces are because they’re so cluttered.

For her part, Marthe is happy to share her chaotic studio with her daughter for as long as she can have her. The thing about Nell is, I’m trying to get her to work with me now because she outranks me as an artist, she says. At some point she’ll realize she doesn’t need me.

If that time does come, it’s unlikely to affect Jocelyn’s output. She still has new formats to master. I would love to write an easy-to-read book “ a first reader, she says. And I’d like to write a mystery. I’m working on a ghost story right now. And I’m collaborating on another book, a middle-­grade adventure fantasy with Richard Scrimger, a children’s book author of some renown.

She adds: I made a vow very early on that I would try to do something in every children’s genre. I’m two-thirds of the way there. Whether or not she achieves the goal, that optimistic ambition has certainly been the secret to her success.

From the March 2013 issue of Q&Q.