Feiffer says her books are humorous and story-driven with an underlying theme of acceptance.

She is a readily approachable 45-year-old wife and mother with a musical speaking voice, an affinity for children and dogs, a cozy home in Oak Bluffs, and in the midst of an almost impossible market, a successful career as a children's book author.

And she makes it all seem as natural as a smile.

"For me it's very organic," Kate Feiffer explains. "I don't go into it thinking what I want to write or how I want to write it. I don't think about what sort of vocabulary I want to use. I just start writing, and it just sort of grows on its own."

It began four years ago with Double Pink (2005), and her sixth book Which Puppy? was released this past April. Double Pink is the story of a little girl much like Feiffer's daughter Maddy, whose preference for everything pink leaves her disappearing into the color. Then came Henry the Dog with No Tail (2007), illustrated by her famous, Pulitzer-prize winning father, cartoonist, playwright, and author Jules Feiffer. Using the family's Australian sheepdog as the model, it is the story of a dog on a quest. Her 2008 book, President Pennybaker, illustrated by Caldecott Honor-winner Diane Goode, tells of a little boy who wants to change all the rules.

The unassuming author--who writes in her small charm-filled guest house next to the home she shares with husband, Vineyard native Chris Alley, and their precocious 10-year-old daughter Madeline ("Maddy")--got this year off to a remarkable beginning with three books released in three consecutive months. In February, Feiffer's first chapter book, The Problem with the Puddles (2009), was released. It tells the story of an eccentric family and their equally quirky dogs, Big Sally and Little Sally. When the family vacation ends and everyone piles into the car for the ride home, the Sallys are accidently left behind. And the zany adventures begin, with surprising complications.

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"I was thinking about this whole idea of separation," Feiffer says, "and losing the people you love, and trying to make something funny of this anxiety we have about being displaced from the people we most want to stay connected to."

Released this past March, My Mom is Trying to Ruin My Life, again illustrated by Diane Goode, was the result of a visit to Maddy's school where Feiffer went to offer her daughter a pair of shorts to change into because the day had become too warm for the sweatpants she wore to school.

Maddy, who was having lunch with her friends in the cafeteria, saw her mother--"And she shot me a look that sort of said it all: 'Oh my gawd, please leave. What are you doing?'" Feiffer smiles. "So that was my inspiration for that book--that look."

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Then, in record time, she wrote the picture book, Which Puppy? (illustrated by Jules Feiffer), released this past April. In it, all sorts of critters compete to be chosen as the President's family dog.

But when it is suggested that her life seems ideal, Feiffer shakes her head, no, and laughs. "Here's the neurotic part," she says, "the fear that after the last story you write, you're never going to be able to find and write another good story, that you won't know where to go from here. Certainly I have a lot of anxiety about whether I will find another theme, another idea that I feel connects with kids." She laughs lightly again, and adds, "It's labor. But I love doing it, and once you get into the story, it's fantastic."

She explains that writing her chapter book was for her, a return to what she did all during her childhood --"which was sitting at home, spending my days making up these elaborate stories."

Hers was an interesting childhood. The Manhattan-born and bred Feiffer, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence, is the eldest of three daughters of Jules Feiffer, the daughter of author Judy Feiffer, and the stepdaughter of writer and performer Jenny Allen. She left Manhattan in 1991 to work for WHDH Channel 7 in Boston as a researcher and associate television producer ("Frontline"), and producer of the news program Reallife. Once married, she commuted between Boston and Martha's Vineyard until Maddy was born in 1998, when she moved to the Vineyard year-round.

But she still remembers how it felt to have her family dynamic publicly revealed in her father's work. "That's how I grew up, trying to reconcile my father using our lives for material. He did these deep psychological pieces and sometimes brutally mined the family for material. I had a hard time dealing with that in the past and forgiving. Sometimes I was proud, and it was exciting; but other times it was quite painful."

Like her famous father, she admittedly takes stock of what's going on around her for inspiration but is careful to generalize her stories when drawing from family events.

Her carefully plotted stories move quickly forward, and although each contains a moral, it's always delivered lightly and with humor. "I think my books are story-driven, but there is a theme in them: striving for acceptance and accepting who you are. And I don't want to hammer anyone with a message," she says. "We're inundated with messages these days. I don't need to be the delivery system. I want to deliver a funny story, an engaging story, something that is a little different and maybe one that has some complexity and a little twist."

Feiffer and her father are collaborating on another book together: My Side of the Car, due for release in 2011. For this one, she is drawing from her own childhood, recounting the time she and her father were driving to a much-anticipated visit to the Vineyard's Felix Neck Wildlife Center in Oak Bluffs. Her father looked out of his window and noted that it had begun raining. Maybe this nature trail walk wasn't such a good idea. She looked out of her window and said, "No Dad. It's not raining on my side of the car."

Another tale to tell.

C.K. Wolfson is a freelance feature writer and year-round resident of Martha's Vineyard.