Nick Bruel: Hello. My name is Nick Bruel, author and illustrator of Boing and Bad Kitty and Who is Melvin Bubble?

And by now you may be wondering how you can possibly remember such a sloppy name as Nick Bruel. Well, the best way is through a method known as mnemonics. That's spelled M-N-E-M-O-N-I-C-S. It means any method you use that helps your memory. And when I was a little boy, several very clever albeit cruel children utilized mnemonics to remember my name. One day they realized, hey, Bruel rhymes with drool and fool and mule. And even better, Nick rhymes with ick and sick and lick. So if you want to remember Nick Bruel, all you have to do is remember lick drool or sick mule.

And as for where the name Bruel comes from, that information has been lost to the ages. I've always suspected it might have been the sound one of my ancestors made when he stepped on a frog or ate something that didn't agree with him.

But the name Nick has more than one origin. While everyone in my family agrees that my name is Nick, which is convenient, no one is entirely sure who came up with it. My aunt always said I was named after my grandfather, Edward Nicholas Bruel. My grandmother always said it was because my parents were married on December 6th, which is Saint Nicholas day, which also happens to be my wife's birthday. My mother said it was the only she could come up with that didn't sound horrible next to Bruel. But my father said he named me Nick because at the time he was reading The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett, and the detective in that book is named Nick Charles. I suppose he could have named me Charles, but he didn't, and here I am.

Thanks a lot. Bye now.