Every book has a story to tell, but there’s also a story behind every book—one that reveals how it came to be published. In the case of Richard Blanco’s One Today, the journey from inaugural poem to children’s picture book includes an attentive aunt, an editor with a long memory and a best-selling author-illustrator with a softer side.

The result is a dazzling collaboration in which the poem that Blanco wrote and read at President Obama’s second inauguration in 2013 is beautifully illustrated by Dav Pilkey, best known as the creator of the raucous, phenomenally popular Captain Underpants series.

The credit for this unexpected pairing goes to Susan Rich, editor-at-large at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, who has worked with such acclaimed authors and illustrators as Lemony Snicket, Frank Viva, Sophie Blackall, Jon Klassen, Maira Kalman and many others.

“When Dav Pilkey created Captain Underpants, which took the world by storm, we stopped thinking of him as a picture book creator. I had been waiting all these years to see him return to picture books.”

The story of how One Today was turned into a picture book “is unlike most stories of this sort in that it starts with my Aunt Marji,” Rich tells us from her home in Toronto. “She went to see Richard [Blanco] do a poetry reading in Maine, where she lives and he lives. And she called me early the next morning so excited about Richard and his poetry and said that I must talk with him.”

As Rich points out, she gets a lot of tips like this one, but they rarely result in beautiful picture books. In this case, however, she decided to follow her Aunt Marji’s advice and get in touch with Blanco’s agent.

“I was speaking with Richard’s representative and telling him some of my thoughts about publishing poetry for children, and he said, ‘Well, the thing about the inaugural poem . . .’ And I stopped him and said, ‘Are you telling me that the publishing rights for the inaugural poem are available?’ And he said they would be in May. So I snapped them up.

“Not every poem is suited to be adapted into a picture book, and not every poem is an inaugural poem. But this poem is both,” Rich notes, which made her decision to buy the rights to the work a relatively easy call.

Richard Blanco (left) and Dav Pilkey

Though Blanco’s poem was originally written for adults, Rich had no difficulty in envisioning its transition to a picture book. “One Today is a journey from dawn to dusk, from coast to coast, from history to the future,” she says. “It’s a grand journey of a poem and the best picture books are grand journeys.”

Rich’s next task was finding the right illustrator for the material, and she immediately thought of Pilkey, since she had been “an early, huge fan” of his artistic talent.

“When I started working in publishing many moons ago, I was an assistant at Orchard Books where Dav Pilkey was also starting out his career as a picture book artist. He did a number of beautiful, painterly picture books, including a Caldecott Honor-winning book called The Paperboy [1999],” Rich recalls. [Watch a video of The Paperboy.]

“When Dav Pilkey created Captain Underpants, which took the world by storm, we stopped thinking of him as a picture book creator. I had been waiting all these years to see him return to picture books and thought he would do a spectacular job with this text.”

Pilkey’s illustrations for the book in acrylics and India ink are indeed spectacular, capturing the bright orange glow of early morning, the hustle and bustle of a city on the move, and the joy and everyday companionship of a mother and two young children making their way through a single day.

“His talents are vast, and I knew that there were any number of ways that he could tackle and succeed with this kind of text,” Rich says. “There is something about The Paperboy that stuck with me all these years. He captures in The Paperboy the dawn of a day, and One Today captures a similar dawn—and the promise and the coziness and the sense of many things happening at once. I could picture it in Dav’s hands.”

An early part of Blanco's poem reads:

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise.

Pilkey illustrates these lines with a glorious spread that lets us peek inside windows as five different families get ready for the day—waking up, getting dressed, being together. Young readers are sure to enjoy his detail-packed illustrations, from a black cat that appears on every spread to the brightly colored cars and trucks that traverse the cityscape.

“Another thing about Dav that he’s done so well in his past picture books that he brought to One Today is that he’s able to depart comfortably from reality,” Rich notes. “There’s an elevated sense of existence. We’re not taken into the land of high fantasy but we’re able to see the fantastic in the world that we live in.”

Blanco, who was on board from the start with the picture book concept for the poem, has described Pilkey’s illustrations as “just beautiful.” And Rich considers herself lucky to have been part of the project.

“This is coming as we’re moving into the end of a historic presidency, and Richard Blanco’s voice has captured something essential. I feel very proud of this book in a way. I feel this is a historic book, for the ages. It’s a modern anthem for America,” she says.

And as for Aunt Marji? She’s justifiably proud and enthusiastic about the book.

"Aunt Marji is so excited,” Rich says. “She actually came to visit us recently, and I had just gotten my box of printed, bound books. I met her at the airport with one of them and then left a pile of five more on her bed so that she could give them away because I knew she would take such pride in sharing them with others."

Photo of Richard Blanco by Alissa Morris.
Photo of Dav Pilkey by Kai Suzuki.

RELATED CONTENT: Read a Q&A with Richard Blanco about his memoir, The Prince of Los Cocuyos.

This week, Matt de la Peña became the first Hispanic author to win the Newbery Medal for children’s literature with Last Stop on Market Street, illustrated by Christian Robinson. It may come as a surprise to some that the 2016 Newbery belongs to a picture book for 3- to 5-year-olds, but this profound little book addresses class in a nuanced, provocative way through the story of a young boy riding the city bus with his grandmother.

What was the first thing that went through your head when you found out you had won the Newbery?
“This has got to be some kind of mistake.” The imposter syndrome kicked in big time. And then I felt this wave of intense, visceral gratitude.

Who was the one person you couldn’t wait to tell about the award?
I’m going to cheat and say two. I couldn’t wait to tell my wife, who has been so supportive of my work throughout my career. And I couldn’t wait to tell my mom, who’s the reason I’ve always tried hard at life.

Do you have a favorite past Newbery winner?
Not only do I adore Linda Sue Park‘s work, she has been a mentor to me for years. And I’m absolutely head-over-heels in love with all of Kate DiCamillo‘s work. And I believe Kwame Alexander is one of the smartest, trailblazing voices in the field. Oh, and Christopher Paul Curtis‘ Bud Not Buddy is a masterpiece.

What’s the best part of writing books for a younger audience?
I love watching young, open-minded thinkers grapple with ideas for the very first time.

What kind of reaction have you gotten from your readers about this book?
My favorite reaction is when I go to underprivileged schools and diverse students take ownership of the story. The book feels validating to them. And I’m so excited about this new layer of validation, the fact that a story that these kids feel like they own has been recognized by such a prestigious way.

Have you read or listened to past Newbery acceptance speeches? Are you excited (or worried!) about your own speech?
I saw Kate DiCamillo give her speech for Flora & Ulysses, and I was deeply, deeply moved. I loved it back then, but now it petrifies me. I’m extremely nervous about giving my speech, to be honest, but I also find great energy in things that scare me.

What’s next for you?
I just turned in my next YA novel (I won’t say the title because it may change), which I’m incredibly excited about. It follows an 18-year-old mixed-race honor student who will be the first in his family to go to college. But this journey is complex. In a way, he feels like a sellout for “succeeding.” I’m also about to send a brand new picture book to my agent called Carmela Full of Wishes.

Author photo credit Heather Waraksa

Australian illustrator Sophie Blackall received the 2016 Caldecott Medal for her expressive artwork in Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear. It’s the real-life story of the original bear that inspired A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books, written by the great-grandaughter of the Canadian soldier who cared for the funny little bear.

What was the first thing that went through your head when you found out you had won the Caldecott?
Despite trying to banish any thought of the Caldecott from my mind, it was doggedly there all night. I imagined getting the call, imagined every detail. When I imagine something, it usually ends up in a drawing, not as a reality. I was pretty sure that the very act of imagining it was enough to prevent it coming true. And I’d heard the call usually comes before 6:30am. So by 6:31am, I’d resigned myself that it was not to be. I hopped in the shower. Made my son’s school lunch. Told Ed we could relax. It wasn’t going to happen. We had a lovely sad-happy moment of realizing that Caldecott or no, we were very lucky people indeed. And then the phone rang.

The rest is a blur. I think my legs gave way. I may have sobbed. It’s still utterly surreal that your life can turn around in a span of minutes. The sound of a room of laughing, cheering librarians coming down the wire will stay with me forever.

Who was the one person you couldn’t wait to tell about the award?
Ed was right with me and held me up when I was about to fall over. The next person was my editor, Susan Rich, who already knew, and who feels almost exactly as I do right now. This book has been a joyous collaboration from the start. The story is a true one and comes from author Lindsay Mattick’s family. The drawings come from my hand, but Susan’s editorial genius is on every page. After that I woke my sleepy teenagers, who were sleepily congratulatory. Then I couldn’t wait to tell my studio mates, Brian Floca, Eddie Hemingway, John Bemelmans Marciano and Sergio Ruzzier (who is in Italy right now). We have a tradition of watching the live streaming together with coffee and donuts. I kept them in the dark and when the announcement came . . . it was great.

Do you have a favorite past Caldecott winner?
Other than Brian Floca you mean? I can’t quite believe that my name is now at the end of this list of luminaries. Among them, Virginia Lee Burton. Maurice Sendak. Ezra Jack Keats. Barbara Cooney. The Provensons. O. Zelinsky. Wiesner. Selznick. Pinkney. Stead. Raschka. Klassen. Santat.

“The authors and illustrators who make books for children create a world for us to step into, a world we can visit whenever we like for the rest of our lives.”

What’s the best part of writing books for a younger audience?
My favorite books—the ones I care for deeply, the ones that feel like a profound part of who I am—are the ones I read when I was young. Winnie-the-Pooh. The Wind in the Willows. The Little House. The Snowy Day. The authors and illustrators who make books for children create a world for us to step into, a world we can visit whenever we like for the rest of our lives.

What kind of reaction have you gotten from your readers about this book?
The response to this book has been extraordinary. It’s the true story of a soldier who adopted a bear cub in a spontaneous gesture of tenderness, a gesture which would help inspire some of the most beloved books of all time. It’s about the impact of a single moment, it’s about family and the joy of passing down stories, and it’s about the most remarkable bear. Mostly people cry when I read it. In a good way.

Have you read or listened to past Caldecott acceptance speeches? Are you excited (or worried!) about your own speech?
I am not thinking about this too much yet. If I did I would tie myself in knots for the next six months. Let’s face it: The bar is set very high.

What’s next for you?
Aha! I’m working on a new series with my studio mate, John Bemelmans Marciano, called The Witches of Benevento, which comes out this April, and a picture book with Chronicle which is immense and immensely exciting.

Author photo credit Barbara Sullivan

Whether you’re in school or at work, “TGIF” is a familiar refrain. Carole Boston Weatherford’s evocative and moving new book, Freedom in Congo Square, is about people who work for the weekend, too—but in a context that’s far less lighthearted, set during a shameful and important period of American history.

Through finely crafted phrases and vivid, painterly illustrations, the book tells how slaves living in 1800s New Orleans worked toward a precious half day of temporary freedom, on Sundays at Congo Square: “It was a market and a gathering ground / where African music could resound. / Beneath the sun and open air, / the crowd abuzz with news to share.”

In a call from her North Carolina home, Weatherford tells BookPage that, although the people in her book were looking forward to a time of fun and fellowship, “I wanted to share a realistic depiction of slavery, that showed clearly that slavery was an injustice. Yes, Congo Square was a great place, but it was all they had. Didn’t they deserve so much more, for toiling like that all week, than a half day off?”

Freedom in Congo Square’s rhyming, rhythmic poetry builds as the pages turn, with couplets about the unending, wide-ranging work the slaves performed each day (“Tuesdays, there were cows to feed, / fields to plow, and rows to seed.”) and the cruelty of their masters (“The dreaded lash, too much to bear. / Four more days to Congo Square.”).

Illustrator R. Gregory Christie’s paintings help readers feel the slaves’ suffering, exhaustion and determined hopefulness. At first, the pages’ backgrounds are brown and green, echoing the fields where the enslaved work. Then, more colors seep in: pink, blue, yellow, purple. When Sunday arrives, the words leap from their previous placement at the top or bottom of the page and swirl throughout, joining an array of blots and brushstrokes, a sea of masks, musical instruments and exuberant dancing figures.

When she began writing Freedom in Congo Square, Weatherford says, “I challenged myself to mix picture-book tropes: the counting book and the day-of-the-week book. This gave the poem its structure and form, which the subject matter needed—particularly for kids, so they could digest it. I used that to propel the story. . . . It may be a pretty scene, but it shows you it’s not fair, tells you it’s not fair, then shows you how slaves had this release for half a day on Sunday.”

During that half day, people met up with friends and family, traded goods and played music. In fact, Congo Square is considered the birthplace of jazz. “I love jazz,” Weatherford says. “That’s another reason I was drawn to the subject matter.”

An appreciation for art in all forms was instilled in the author as a child. “My mother took me to the symphony, museums. . . . She really had an appreciation for art and for history.” Weatherford’s mother even asked her father, a high-school printing teacher, to print Weatherford’s early poems. Those typeset quotes, Weatherford’s “little motivational or moralistic poems,” meant that, “at a very early age—and before desktop computers—I saw my work in print.” But she didn’t yet yearn to be a writer. “It never dawned on me that the people who were writing the books I was reading were making money, or even alive,” she says. “I never saw any of them, and authors weren’t celebrities then like they are now.”

But after graduating from American University, Weatherford had a poem published in a city magazine. “When I saw that poem in print, I thought, that’s what I want to do! I came out of the closet as a poet, I always say.”

The next phase of her writerly career began after she married, became a mother of two and pursued her MFA. “I was taking my own kids to the library, and there were so many more multicultural books for them than there had been for me as a child. I was still writing adult poetry, plus things on the side to entertain my kids. I thought, maybe I can try to write for children, and before I got out of my MFA program, I’d sold two manuscripts.”

Her first children’s book, Juneteenth Jamboree, was published in 1995, and she’s written 46 more books since then. She’s also earned numerous awards, including a Caldecott Honor, Coretta Scott King Award Honor and the NAACP Image Award. And she’s a tenured professor at Fayetteville State University. 

“I work on multiple projects, have multiple jobs and work on multiple manuscripts,” Weatherford says. “It is who I am, not what I do.” She adds, “When I teach, I learn things as well. When I’m being stimulated intellectually, there’s no telling where it’s going to go.”

Certainly, in Freedom in Congo Square, poetry, art and history combine to create a jumping-off point for readers to learn and think about our country’s past and present. An introduction by a Congo Square expert, plus a glossary and author’s note at book’s end, provide food for further thought.

“I do that in all my books,” Weatherford says. “I try to have that author’s note that says this is based on real-life events. I want kids to know, because they can’t fathom that these kinds of injustices existed in the USA. We have to continually tell them this happened in the past. It wasn’t a video game, a TV series, a movie with a prequel or sequel. It happened.”

She adds, “It was important to me with this particular project that, in portraying the world of slavery, it was not romantic in any way. [The book] is for children, but it’s not candy-coated . . . and really, even sugar was a luxury for slaves. It’s a topic that’s near and dear to my heart, and I hope that I did it justice.”

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Miranda Paul is kneading a lump of freshly risen pizza dough on a picnic table. We’re celebrating the launch of yet another of Paul’s children’s books at an impromptu pizza party in her backyard in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where family, food and camaraderie are always at their best. While these celebrations are becoming a regular occurrence, they’re a thrilling event for Paul, who is still a relative newcomer to the children’s book world.

Twelve years in the making, Paul’s first book, One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia, came out last year. The book is based on one woman’s attempts to clean up and recycle the many plastic bags littering her small rural community in Njau, Gambia. Now in its fourth printing, the “little book that could,” as Paul calls it, “has significantly transformed the exposure and impact women are having in their community. It has legitimized their work. It has shined a light on how it happened.”

Paul is no stranger to the struggles in the West African nation. After earning English and secondary education degrees from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the former teacher taught in Gambia more than a decade ago, where the seeds of inspiration for the book took root.

But Paul’s passion for recycling and respect for the Earth is longstanding: She actively collects books for the Books for Africa organization; she collects rain for her garden in rain barrels; she’s not averse to wearing thrift store clothing. And she and her husband once owned a local shop featuring imported clothing and gifts.

Her now-shuttered shop is actually how I met her more than 10 years ago. Today, in addition to being what my husband calls “a Miranda Paul groupie,” I’m proud to call her a close friend. We share our writing successes . . . and failures. And our kids—including her 9-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son—play together, climbing up to their tree house, which overlooks the outdoor pizza oven, both handmade by her husband. “My husband is Superman,” Paul says proudly.

While One Plastic Bag launched her writing and book-touring career—she loves crossing the country visiting schools and libraries and regularly posts about those visits on Facebook—it was also critically well received. Among its honors was a 2016 nonfiction Honor Book for the Green Earth Book Award, given by The Nature Generation. Not bad for a book she was initially told was “institutional” and “not salable.”

After One Plastic Bag, Paul published Water Is Water, illustrated by Jason Chin, which received a lot of love in Mock Caldecott discussions nationwide, garnered multiple starred reviews and was eventually named to ALA’s 2016 Notable Books list. Songwriter Emily Arrow loved the book so much that she recorded it as a song—which Paul now plays (and kids perform) at her events.  

After Water Is Water, Paul’s publishing career snowballed, with the release of Whose Hands Are These? and four more books pending publication in 2016 and 2017—Trainbots, 10 Little Ninjas, Are We Pears Yet? and Blobfish Throws a Party.

Yeah, it’s all happening fast now. But Paul is quick to remind readers that she’s not an overnight sensation.

“I’m not sure if everyone is aware of how much time can pass before something comes out,” she laughs, reminiscing about writing 10 Little Ninjas (out this August) when her son was still in a booster seat.

Miranda Paul (top) and Sharon Verbeten (bottom)

Sure, to those on the outside, it may appear to be a charmed life—and Paul would likely admit that while she’s enjoying the ride, it’s been one paved with revisions and rejections but also lots of rewards. “To me, my books are a direct extension of who I am, and I think kids will be interested.”

And while publishers may gauge success in sales figures, multiple printings and glowing reviews, Paul is just as likely to gauge her success by the drawings and letters she gets from children on her travels. 

As the sun sets on another Wisconsin spring night, the chill sets in, the kids don their sweatshirts and Paul and her friends and family settle in for another great gathering around the campfire. 

For me, it’s just another night at the Pauls for pizza. But as both a writer and a librarian, I still pinch myself (proudly!) to call her my friend. 

From the creative process to production, Mac Barnett and Adam Rex follow a book’s preposterous and hilarious journey—but at the end, what really makes a book is that moment when a reader dives in. We spoke with Barnett and Rex about this laugh-out-loud, wholly original book.

What inspired this book?
Mac Barnett: The first time I was on a book tour—and this was with Adam, actually, for our book Guess Again!—a kid asked me how a book was made. There was a big whiteboard behind me, and I started diagramming the process. I’m not really interested in straight answers or nonfiction, and so the story pretty quickly went off the rails—pirates, beards, crying. (The tears, though, they were nonfiction.) Over the years, the demonstration became something I did again and again. One day a girl raised her hand afterward and told me that I should make that story, the story of how a book is made, into a book. And guess what: That girl grew up to be Lena Dunham.

Adam Rex: She’s great.

What is your favorite part of the book-making process? What is the most mysterious part?
MB: My favorite part is when the illustrations are all done, and I can see how the thing actually works as a book. The most mysterious part is what’s taking Adam so long to make all those illustrations?

AR: I actually feel pretty bad about how long I keep people waiting. It’s not uncommon for picture book illustrators to be booked a couple years in advance. And then the actual art takes me three or four months, which I think also surprises people—I once asked my twitter followers how long they thought a single average page of a picture book took to illustrate, and everyone who wasn’t an illustrator guessed too low. One person guessed “an hour,” which in my case is only off by about 20 or 30 hours.

But my favorite part of that process is probably when I break a manuscript into pages and start thumbnailing out a plan for the whole thing. Tiny sketches so messy and impressionistic that I can still see in them the promise that this book will be the best thing I’ve done or will ever do.

Do you ever play tricks on each other during the book-making process?
AR: Well, as I alluded to in my last answer, I did agree to illustrate Mac’s manuscript and then proceeded to not do anything for three years. It was like a doorbell ditch.

What do you think of the book’s portrayal of you?
MB: I’m much less self-impressed than the way I write myself, and much more handsome than the way Adam draws me.

AR: The portrayal of me is more or less accurate.
Why is the book printed in Malaysia?
MB: Globalism.

Once the book goes to print, that’s when things really take off, with pirates and astronauts and eagles and more. Why does the fantasy ramp up at this point in the book?
MB: Well, I arm wrestle a tiger on page two, so I might dispute the premise of this question.

What are you most excited about for young readers to discover about your new book?
MB: If you read the book backwards, it reveals the location of a buried treasure (Adam’s backyard). Get digging, kids!

AR: WE TALKED ABOUT THIS AND I SAID NO.

Is it possible to go any deeper? Dare to discover even more secrets about the making of a book? Check out the making of How This Book Was Made in the book trailer:

Sketches and interior illustrations copyright © Adam Rex, used with permission from Adam Rex.
Barnett author photo credit Sonya Sones.

Caldecott Honor winner Melissa Sweet’s joy for her work is evident when you crack open any of her books, but she’s feeling especially grateful about the journey to her newest one, Some Writer! “I feel incredibly lucky,” she tells me via phone, “and I felt that the whole way through. It was a gift as an artist and writer to be able to spend this much time with that material. What an amazing opportunity!”

It’s an E.B. White biography like no other, with original artwork, letters and family photos, as well as warm and detailed collages in Sweet’s signature style woven throughout the book. Sweet wrote it with the approval of White’s granddaughter Martha, whom she also consulted during her research, and whom she knew even before embarking on the project. “Martha lives in the same town [in Maine],” Sweet says. “We see each other at our tiny Memorial Day parade. We exchanged ideas, and I had a lot of questions for her that only she could answer. She was so incredibly gracious and generous that, without her, I’m not even sure I would have done the book, because I had a vision and she supported that vision.”

Sweet’s writing is reverent and engaging, telling White’s story from birth (1899) to death (1985) and focusing primarily on his adult writing life: his work for The New Yorker; The Elements of Style, written with William Strunk Jr.; and his three popular children’s novels, Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web and The Trumpet of the Swan. Sweet’s textured watercolor collages incorporate photos, letters and items that held great meaning in White’s life. “I felt it was such a visual life that there was no other way to do it,” she explains. “This could have been an unillustrated biography, I suppose, but I saw it more as a merging of a picture book and a nonfiction biography.” 

Sweet’s research for the book spanned roughly three years. “At first, to be honest,” she says, “you don’t even know exactly what you’re looking for. You just want every word, every article, anything he wrote or was written about him.” 

About a year into her research, Sweet went to Cornell University Library to see the E.B. White Collection, which she found thrilling. In Maine, she enjoyed tracking down small details: At the Keeping Society of Brooklin, she met a woman whose grandmother cooked for the White family. “You just never know what you’re going to find,” Sweet says, “and how it makes you feel—and whether or not you can use it—but it does make you feel that you’re getting to know the family more intimately when you go to places like that.”

Illustration copyright © 2016 by Melissa Sweet, with permission from HMH.

While pondering the book’s overall design and crafting it for the better part of a year, Sweet knew she had a “grand opportunity to show small details or a sense of place. I was able to go to the barn [that inspired Charlotte’s Web], and it was just so filled with stuff, materials that seemed exactly right. All those little bits of wires and screws and bolts, those things you find in a barn, made sense to me, artistically. That’s all I really had, that gut feeling that these are the right materials.” 

In the chapter on The Trumpet of the Swan, Sweet includes a collage of a trumpeter swan by John James Audubon and a map of Montana, where part of White’s novel takes place. Sweet points out, “Keen readers will remember at the beginning of Some Writer! that White took a road trip and went through Montana. I didn’t have to go back and say, ‘He had been in Montana in his early 20s,’ but I can reference it and readers can find out more if they want to. That’s an example of bringing in those visual elements that tell the story better than I can with the words.” 

Sweet is eager to share the book with young readers. You don’t have to go too far into The Elements of Style, she tells me, to realize that what he and Strunk are saying is that anybody can write. “White made me feel like I could be a writer, even though I had no evidence of that. And children could read this biography and say, ‘The things I’m interested in and the things I love about my life are writerly. They’re newsworthy.’ ”

In the immediate future and before the whirlwind of bookstore signings, Sweet will work with Island Readers & Writers, a Maine-based organization that brings writers to islands where children don’t typically receive visiting authors. She’ll participate in community reads, plays and more, at four to five islands in the state. “I’ll be going to islands where some of [the schools] are just a one-room schoolhouse with a dozen kids,” she says. “I’m so excited. I think E.B. White would like this.” 

But for now, she’s relaxing in what she’s named Wilbur, a replica of the first boat White ever built. Sweet’s husband made it for her in the midst of her research. “That is the only boat we have that doesn’t leak,” she says with a laugh. “That was an amazing gift. What a good husband, right?”

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

This article was originally published in the October 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Icebreaker is a publisher-sponsored interview.

In her new picture book, Fancy Party Gowns, award-winning journalist Deborah Blumenthal shares with young readers the little-known story of African-American fashion designer Ann Cole Lowe. Driven by an unyielding passion for her work, Lowe designed one-of-a-kind gowns for society women from the 1920s through the ’60s, including the dress for Jacqueline Bouvier’s wedding to future president John F. Kennedy in 1953. Nothing could stop Lowe—not prejudice, not segregation at design school, not even a water leak that destroyed all the dresses for Jackie’s wedding party.

Cat: I have to say, I just dived into information about this woman after reading this book. And that’s the goal of picture book biographies, I think—so, congratulations. Ann really was incredible.

Deborah: Yeah, I know. It’s just this story that hasn’t been told, so I was riveted when I heard about her.

When did you first learn about her?

I guess it was about two and a half years ago. It was interesting because it came through Facebook. A woman who I’m friends with on Facebook put up a post about Ann. My friend is very interested in women’s history and active in politics, and she often posts about different people who never got their due in terms of recognition. She had a post about Ann and about the fact that she designed Jackie Kennedy’s wedding gown. Immediately I was interested! And then I realized that no one had heard of this woman. I thought, oh, my history/background was rusty. You know, I spoke to a bunch of people I knew—history buffs, one woman who’s a feminist historian—and no one knew her name. Of course I really became intrigued then, and I started looking into her story. I was really captured, and that led to the book.

I was reading an interview with her from a 1966 issue of Ebony magazine, later in her life, and she really is as indomitable as your book portrays her. She only had one eye from glaucoma, and she’s cracking jokes about her second husband leaving her because she sketched dresses too much, and making plans for 15 new gowns, sort of brushing past the fact that she has no money to do so. She really was unstoppable, wasn’t she?

Right. I think like many artists, she just loved the work. She didn’t seem all that concerned about financing. That wasn’t her strong suit, but she just loved designing and loved making beautiful gowns. And she loved designing for society women, those were the women she wanted to design for. I think that’s what kept her going in the face of a lot of adversity that she had to deal with. I found it a truly inspiring story to write.

We could spend a lot of time talking about her hats, let alone her achievements.

Right!

“It gave her great joy to work with fabric and design and look at flowers and recreate them in fabric. I think she just blocked out a lot, and that saved her.”

The whole story’s made all the more remarkable by the fact that she was born and raised in the Jim Crow South. She came from a mother and a grandmother who were seamstresses in Alabama, and so she had a strong background, but she also had this drive that was all own. How do you think the era shaped her determination?

The impression I got was that she was able to block out what she wanted to block out. She was one of the people who was fortunate enough to, at an early age, find out what she loved to do. Most of us don’t have that, our passion, that early in life. She had this focus, this laser focus on what she loved to do. It gave her great joy to work with fabric and design and look at flowers and recreate them in fabric. I think she just blocked out a lot, and that saved her. Just doing work she loved, and it kept her going.

One of the most memorable moments in the book is when Ann is studying in a segregated design school in a classroom, all alone. And you write, quite simply, “And life wasn’t fair.” And then you echo that same line later when you’re talking about when she didn’t receive credit for Jackie’s dress. It felt like you were channeling Ann at that moment. It’s such a pragmatic response to something that is so unfair, you should righteously angry about it. The reader gets righteously angry. But she’s just unflappable.

She didn’t let the anger paralyze her. Because it can! I had one line in the book—“Ann thought about what she could do, not what she couldn’t change.”

It becomes a type of refrain.

Yeah, it’s like a survival instinct. You do what you love and you forge ahead. That’s the most inspiring part of the story, I think, and that’s what the takeaway is for readers: to find your passion and run with it when you do.

It’s such an incredible lesson, this power of small changes to influence the world. Do you sew?

No! No is the immediate answer. Have I sewn in the past? I took sewing in school. I was terrible at it. But you know what I do remember is, when I was sewing, you block out everything else. It really is a great escape from things. You’re so fixated on the fabric and stitching and working that it really is a great way to block out things. Was I good at it? No! But I didn’t really continue with it, so maybe I would’ve been!

Do you have a favorite gown of Ann’s?

I love the one she did for Olivia de Havilland with the roses. I love that. There is a show right now—I haven’t seen it, it just opened—at FIT, of some of her gowns.

Yeah, I was going to ask about that. I felt the show ties into one of the most striking quotes from Ann in the book, which is that she didn’t want to get rich or famous from design, she wanted “To prove that a Negro can become a major dress designer.” I was reading about this show at FIT, and the curators acknowledge that there’s a problem with using race as a lens to view art or craft. There’s a pigeonholing problem of grouping together artists just because of the color of their skin, but Ann really wanted that distinction.

At the time, it was very important. There weren’t a lot of people doing what she was doing, and she wanted to break through that. Obviously she did! Her work was clearly recognized for the quality, but she didn’t get the public recognition. She had clients and her work was in demand, but no, they didn’t recognize her publicly, which is the sad part.

I’d love to know what you think she might’ve meant by that, because she did become a major dress designer. Do you think she was happy with being known throughout the social elite that she was the one to go to, or do you think she did want that public acknowledgement? Not necessarily fame, but to be publicly named as the designer.

Well, I think both. Clearly, she was happy that she had all these clients, but I think she did want the recognition. And I think she hoped that, after she did Jackie’s wedding gown, she would get recognition, and I think it was a big disappointment to her that she didn’t. She was always hoping for that. It came in dribs and drabs a little later on in her life, but that was her greatest achievement, doing that gown, and clearly, everyone should’ve mentioned who designed it! There was only one mention in the Washington Post! I mean, how sad is that? Nine Hyde in the Washington Post said that “the dress was designed by a Negro, Ann Lowe.” They had to qualify it. It’s heartbreaking.

Is it still the most photographed wedding gown in American history?

I think it is.

Am I correct in saying that she didn’t just change the fashion industry for black designers, she kind of changed the whole dressmaking tradition? She was part of this transition from countless unnamed black dressmakers to the modern conception of the American designer.

I think she really was one of the first great couture designers. Well, I’d have to qualify that: I don’t know that she was one of the first in terms of couture designers. She was certainly one of the first in terms of black couture designers. In the business of designing one-of-a-kind gowns, she was up there with the best of them.

You’ve written in a number of genres, and I’m sure you gain inspiration from true stories and fiction alike. But as far as writing nonfiction, do you get more out of the research or the writing?

For me, nonfiction is the stepping stone for how I conceptualize [the story]. It gives me a lot of material to draw from, but I don’t think of this as a biography per se. It’s biographical, but I’d like to go one step further and digest all this information and spin a book out of it. I don’t think of it as a definitive work about Ann Cole Lowe, but I tried to draw enough information to take it to the next step, if that makes sense.

Well, sure. This is a person’s life. She lived through the Great Depression. Was there anything you had to leave out that you were especially sad to not see in the book?

No, I didn’t really leave out anything. Clearly there was a lot of suffering on her part, financially, and some very tough times. I’m sorry she wasn’t around to interview. It would’ve added a huge dimension to the book. . . . For me the most dramatic part of the story, actually, was her designing the gowns [for Jackie’s wedding party] and then having them destroyed by the [water] leak.

That was unbelievable.

Yeah! And then delivering them to Hammersmith Farm and being told to use a back door! I can barely tell that without tearing up. To me, that was the most dramatic moment, maybe in her life. So astonishing, so disturbing.

If you had had the opportunity to interview her, is there anything you wish you could ask?

The one thing I would’ve done, probably, is sat there and studied her, how she looked. She was obviously a great icon of style. There are very few pictures of her, but there’s one picture of her, which I’m sure you’ve seen, in the black hat and leaning to the side—

So much attitude!

Yes, and you just know that some women, they have it. They just know. I can probably count the number of women I’ve seen in my life, walking down the street, and you feel like saying, “Could you just stand still for a minute so I can analyze what you’ve done, how you look that good? Because I could never do that.” So I think I’d want to do first, a half-an-hour thing, “Why’d you decide on that hat? Why that hem length on that dress, because it’s so right?” I would’ve loved to have lunch with her and talk to her about clothes and her feelings about clothes and putting together a wardrobe. And then I probably would’ve said, “What do you think of my outfit?” [laughs]

Did you know the illustrator, Laura Freeman, beforehand?

No, I didn’t know Laura. I always say, when you write a picture book and then your editor hands it to an illustrator, it’s like giving up your child. And when you get it back a year or two later, you have no idea what it’s going to look like. I had no clue how the book would evolve, and I was just thrilled when I saw the art. She did such a good job. It’s filled with emotion.

The whole thing looks like textiles and fabric swatches.

She really got what I was trying to do, and I think she just did a super job.

Maybe the most prominent moment of fantasy is in the endpapers, where Ann’s designs are modeled by illustrated women of different skin colors. Ann is a self-described snob—she wanted to design for the top social tier, which at the time had to have been mostly white women, if not all. Do you think Ann ever had the opportunity to design for women who weren’t part of this white social elite class?

That’s a good question. I think primarily those were the women. I’ve certainly never seen any pictures of women of color wearing her gowns.

Which is why I so appreciated those endpapers, for this moment of playing dress-up with history, putting all these women in her beautiful gowns.

Absolutely.

One extraordinary artist honors another in Radiant Child, winner of the 2017 Caldecott Medal and the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award. To introduce readers to his picture book about Jean-Michel Basquiat, Javaka Steptoe turned our November issue’s Meet the Illustrator interview into a vibrant collage unlike anything we’ve ever featured in BookPage. The collage-on-wood illustrations in Radiant Child are both a fitting homage to Basquiat’s life and work and a brilliant translation of art that many young readers (particularly those who live in major cities) exist within. We checked in with Steptoe to hear more about his experience of winning the Caldecott.

What was the first thing that went through your head when you found out you won the Caldecott?
Honestly, I’m not sure anything went through my mind. When I picked up the phone, the woman who called said her name and that I had won a Caldecott. There was this pause, and I was waiting for more, because all I could think was that she was going to go on to say that I had won a Caldecott Honor. But suddenly there was all this cheering and I realized what she meant. It was overwhelming.

Who was the one person you couldn’t wait to tell about the award?
My friend Trina. She works at Brooklyn College and she’s been my number one supporter. She’s been saying that the book was going to win a Caldecott for a long time, so I called her as soon as I could after the committee told me that I had won.

Do you have a favorite past Caldecott winner?
I’d have to say Jerry Pinkney’s The Lion and the Mouse, which won the medal in 2010.

What do you wish you could say to Basquiat himself?
I think I would just smile and hope that he was happy with the book. I hope that he would appreciate what I had created.

What’s the best part of writing and illustrating books for a younger audience?
The best part is sharing the things that you love about the world with children. They’re very receptive and interested in hearing what you have to say. They get excited. They want to know more.

What kind of reaction have you gotten from your readers about this book?
I’ve received really heartfelt responses, people saying, “We knew you could do it” and “You deserve it.” It’s really nice to know that people were rooting for me and that they love the book so much.

Have you read or listened to past Caldecott speeches? Are you excited (or worried!) about your own speech?
Yes, I’ve heard past speeches. I’m not worried about my own, but it’s going to take awhile to figure out what I’d like to say. I’m still trying to process that this happened and everything that’s happened since, and I want to think about what it means to me. This is an opportunity that allows me to be the artist I want to be, to spend more time thinking about my art and what I want to share with the world.

Author photo credit Gregg Edwards.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of Virginia Lee Burton’s classic picture book The Little House, the 1943 Caldecott Medal winner. To say that illustrator John Rocco is excited about his new picture book about Burton (1909-1968), her life and her work is an understatement.

Big Machines: The Story of Virginia Lee Burton, written by Sherri Duskey Rinker (author of Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site) and illustrated by Rocco, is a passion project, one he enthusiastically tells me about via phone.

The new book is focused on the “big machines” of Burton’s work that her two young sons loved the most: the locomotive in Choo Choo; Mary Anne from Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel; Katy, the tractor from Katy and the Big Snow; and the titular vehicle from Maybelle the Cable Car. This, Rocco explains, was Rinker’s smart way of encapsulating some of Burton’s best-known books. However, the Little House of Burton’s award-winning 1942 book—the story of a cottage that becomes surrounded by an encroaching, bustling city—is a part of Big Machines as well. Rocco sees Burton, known by friends and family as Jinnee, as a stand-in for the little house itself.

“How she felt about her life was the story of The Little House,” Rocco says. “When they first bought their home in Folly Cove, it was too close to the road. So, they picked it up and moved it back away from the road. They wanted to be more secluded. I think that was the genesis of the idea of The Little House.” If you look at the cover of The Little House, Rocco explains, the house is surrounded by daisies. In Big Machines, Rocco gives Jinnee a skirt with the same flowers. “She is the Little House!”

The Folly Cove that Rocco speaks of was Jinnee and her family’s rural home in Cape Ann on Massachusetts Bay. Here, in the early 20th century, Jinnee created her books, raised her sons, gardened, tended animals, hosted friends and taught art, design and block printing in a group called the Folly Cove Designers. Rinker lays it all out in Big Machines, describing Jinnee as “quite magical” as she works and plays at her seaside home.

Like many people, Rocco is taken by the creative powerhouse that Jinnee was. “Can you imagine her day-to-day life?” he asks. “She’s making books; she’s raising her kids; they’ve got sheep [and other] animals they’ve got to take care of; they’re doing all the daily in-and-out of life; and then she hosted all these parties. She was a dancer, and she was always making costumes and putting on performances. It was full tilt.”

Both Rocco and Rinker spent time with Jinnee’s children and their families, including her son, Aris, a sculptor who lives in Santa Barbara, California. “He had boxes and boxes of Jinnee’s work,” Rocco recalls. “Her sketchbooks, her drawings, the linoleum woodblocks with all the Folly Cove designs. Tons of stuff. I remember I was rifling through the boxes, as carefully as I could with all my excitement, and came across the book dummy for The Little House in something like a cardboard box. Sherri and I were both kind of freaking out, having a blast.”

Showing Aris the book dummy for Big Machines, with Rocco’s illustrations, was a similar thrill. “Aris was beside himself. . . . When I brought him some of the art, he said, ‘Man, it’s like Jinnee is right here in the room.’”

Rocco says he was given “total freedom” to explore what the illustrations would be. “It took me a while to find the sort of visual through-line,” he says. He was also given the option to reproduce Jinnee’s artwork in the book but was not interested. “This book is not a biography, so much as it is a celebration of her art, and so I was thinking we should celebrate it in a new way.”

Readers see Jinnee in constant motion in the book—much as she was in her life—and as a woman who made the world magical for her children. “I didn’t want to draw her sitting at a desk, making pictures with her two kids looking over her shoulder,” Rocco says. “I wanted her to move in space and show her gracefulness.”

Conscious of doing his best to represent her artwork while also trying to avoid merely copying it, Rocco kept his deep appreciation for her work at the center of his mind. “Where appropriate, I would emulate her style for the different books,” he says. “I laid out the text in the way that Jinnee always did, which was to really have it flow. That was always important to her. You can see from her early book dummies that every line of text was cut out in a separate little strip of paper, and she’d move them around, trying to get the right design.” Capturing her style while still making the artwork his own was “tricky, obviously, because she has a different style than me, but I was pretty pleased with the way it came out.”

Just as the little house—surrounded by all those big machines—comes to life, so does Jinnee, quite magically.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

This article was originally published in the September 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Bestselling author Lisa Bevere has inspired millions of adult readers with books such as Without Rival and Lioness Arising. Her first picture book, Lizzy the Lioness, with illustrations by Kirsteen-Harris Jones, is the story of a playful lion cub who’s tired of being little. When Lizzy wanders away from the pride, she finds herself facing danger that she’s just not big enough to overcome. As Bevere makes very clear with this sweet story, being little is never a weakness, and sometimes asking for help is the bravest thing to do.

Why was this an important story to share with young readers?
We live in days fraught with confusion and peril. Our children have never been so inundated with conflicting messages and the demise of social boundaries. Our day demands bravery. I wanted children to know that they are never too young to have a voice and that there are times when the bravest things they can do is to ask for help.

Lizzy the Lioness was inspired by your own “Lizzy,” your granddaughter. You’ve said that strength and bravery are “particularly important” concepts to share with your granddaughter. Why?
I love Lizzy’s fierce innocence. She is strong and wants to do everything that her big brother and sister can do. I didn’t want to see this desire to put her at risk. I decided to fictionalize a story I’d read where a pride of lions rescued a little girl from her abductors in Ethiopia. I thought it would be fun to make Lizzy the littlest lion cub and create a fun story where being little wasn’t a detriment to being a hero.

This isn’t your first time using the metaphor of a lion to address the behavior of humans. Why do you return to these regal creatures?
Lions can’t help but inspire. . . . They are fierce and nurturing, free and yet intimately connected to their pride family group. In the wild plain of life, they know who they are, not to mention, they roar. I wanted this visual and relational connection made for the readers. Brave happens in the context of community where the voice of everyone is heard. I wanted to empower and validate this connection for children.

While Lizzy the Lioness has a great message for kids, there’s an author’s note at the end for parents, teachers and guardians, with conversation starters for talking to kids about asking for help. What do you think is the most difficult thing about talking with kids about this subject? And what is the best way to approach it?
I found that my boys wanted to unburden their soul as I was putting them to bed. I had hoped to make this release happen when I was wide awake and ready to be wise at 4 p.m. Bedtime was not my time of choice, so I felt that adding in tools that could make intentional conversations happen would be helpful when parents were tired and children were tender.

Also children follow what we model even more than what we say. Somewhere down the line adults have thought asking for help is a sign of weakness rather than a sign of strength. I wanted to sneak in the message to parents and mentors that it is courageous to ask for the help they need as well.

So often in children’s literature, the youngster at the heart of the book must navigate tough situations all alone. Why was it important to encourage kids to turn to the adults in their lives?
Whether we feel qualified or not, related adults (parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and guardians) are their best guides, not peers. Our vulnerability and experience can go along way to teaching others from both our mistakes and successes. To that end, I want to create intentional conversations that located specific needs so the adults could equip the children with whatever they needed.

What do you love most about writing?
Writing gives me the ability to mark trails that others may follow.

What’s next for you?
For now I’m going to keep climbing the trail set before me.

This BookPage Icebreaker is sponsored by Macmillan Children’s.

Kathryn Otoshi is an award-winning author-illustrator, best known for her self-published books One, Zero and Two, and her co-authored book Beautiful Hands. Her new wordless picture book, Draw the Line, is a tale about two boys with a powerful message that sneaks up on readers.

First, the two boys draw separate lines, then discover their lines can combine into one. The line becomes a thread between them, something they can play with. But when one boy’s feelings get hurt, the line becomes a focus of their tension, and the two boys pull and pull until the line splits right down in the middle, in the book’s gutter, creating a literal rift. In happy moments, yellow swirls around the heads of the boys, who are depicted in black and white; in heated moments, purple boils, darker and darker. But there is a way to repair the pain between them, and it’s quite simple: One friend must reach out.

Cat: There’s so much I loved about this book. The color! The gutter! But before we get into all that, I want to talk about you a little bit. This is your first book with a major publishing house. Congratulations!

Kathryn: Thank you!

I’ve read that you change your artistic style to match each new story you write. I’d love to hear how you chose the style to fit Draw the Line’s concept, and how the book’s wordlessness ties into that.

Well, it was hard, to be honest with you. I wasn’t quite sure how to draw this book. I kept doing different sketches, and it was too loose and I had a little bit of the Goldilocks syndrome when I couldn’t get the line exactly right—which is funny because it’s called Draw the Line. I did illustrations over and over to make it look organic and fresh and spontaneous. It’s a hard thing to do.

Another thing about the illustrations, if you look closely at the boys—it was a fine line (I guess that’s a pun, but I didn’t mean to make it right then) to make the boys, especially the one with the black hair, to look like he could be white or Asian or Hispanic, and it’s hard to do that with a line. And then the other boy, he’s definitely mixed. He has light hair, and he could have a dark tan or he could just be a different skin color, certainly mixed. But it was much harder than I thought.

And then also, the black and white aspects of [the book] became very important. In the beginning, I had planned the whole book to be black and white, and then we’d negotiate the gray zones. But it was [my editor, Connie Hsu]—thank god for Connie—who said, “Could we add a splash of color?” . . . Suddenly I realized the color in the illustrations could represent emotions, because I didn’t have words.

Oh, absolutely, and the use of color as representing emotion is one of the first things the reader really gets.

Thank you!

I think this book requires multiple readings, at different levels—the first reading is like the color reading, where there are these moments of yellow joy, and the royal purple as anger, and how it all comes together in the end. That’s step one. The color experience.

I so appreciate you saying that!

And when it does start to get really purple and really angry, it almost crossed over to sound. It was like, so dark and so intense that you could almost hear the color. As silly as that is to say! But with the color, you can hear the boys screaming.

That is the biggest compliment I’ve gotten on this book. I’m so happy it crossed over to that for you. I do work in layers. [The book can be read by] different kids from all ages, from the very young, 3 or 4 years old, to older kids. . . . When Connie and I started talking, we treated [the colors] as cast members, going in states and going out and really becoming their own personalities. If you notice, too, the colors are complementary colors, in that they are opposites. Yellow and then sort of a blue-violet color, because we’re talking about the black and white of things.

There was one moment in particular when someone, maybe a lesser author-illustrator, could’ve been tempted to insert words. It’s early in the story, when the boys’ line goes from being a drawing to being something else—when they pick it up and start playing with it. In that moment, it goes from Harold and the Purple Crayon creativity to being something else. Someone might have felt like there was something to explain, that the line is like the boys’ very existence. But you let the color do that for you.

That moment when they pick up the line is exactly how you feel when you have a true connection with somebody. Suddenly you realize, “Hey, we have a connection.” And it’s like magic. And you pick it up, and that’s how it grows. And sometimes it’s very much about chemistry and relationship and how you interact with somebody . . . it’s kind of how I feel about you right now! It’s exciting.

But what if I start asking questions that are totally off, or I start pushing my own agenda in this interview? That’s like when the boys start to yank on this thread that they’ve created together, and it starts to split right in the middle, in the book’s gutter. At first there’s this push and pull across the gutter, and then it splits and becomes that chasm.

I do see the gutter as a way to either separate or [act as an obstacle to] negotiate—how do we find a way to cross over it? In my book One, when Red crosses over the gutter, it’s a very aggressive movement across the stage. I meant it to be that way. So it was really cool how the gutter is something that the chasm grows from.

At the point when the boys start to create that rift, everything in the scene starts to feel less possible. Before, they were playing on this dreamy, limitless salt-flat plain, and then as soon as it’s broken, their world starts to get small and limited. At that point, the reader starts to be more aware of the setting. Is that something that you were playing with?

The tricky part was to make [the line] a horizon line. I did want it to feel like a little bit amorphous, and at the same time, the hopelessness that you were referring to feels like, “How is this going resolve and come together?” This sounds funny because it looks so simple, but it was really hard to do. That line was a character to me and had to become so many different things. It was a 1-D line and then a 2-D line and then a 3-D line. That line as a character becomes a chasm and later it becomes a road. How much can I stretch your belief in this line and what it could do? And that’s what I wanted the reader to experience as well as, what can we negotiate and work out with this line? And can it become something bigger?

When it becomes the horizon line, it becomes our thread of hope. And when the first boy walks away, it feels like it’s all over, when in fact he’s reaching out, even though he is the one who was hurt first. He starts to build the road. Which is a moment of great humility, and then the boys get on their knees, get dirty and start doing the difficult work of rebuilding.

We all want validation, but what I wanted to project subtly was that it’s not about the right or the wrong but how we come together and how we unite. We don’t reach out from the farthest points of the chasm. Here’s what you need to do: Go to the point. Take that journey inside yourself to what happened, where the rift started. Take a look at it . . . and if it is something you want to resolve, then you start looking at where our common ground is. Where our edges connect—literally. Where it’s closest and where the reset could happen.

When the boy reaches out close to where the rift started, he is able to bridge the gap. I had to do that with my parents, who I had a disagreement with. I didn’t want to go home for Thanksgiving at the time because I was upset . . . for different reasons. But I was working on Draw the Line at the time, and I’m like, I have to go home because I’m writing this book.

So I went home, and [at the time] with the elections, there were so many things going on with [so many] families. My parents were interned in the camps during World War II. I was projecting my own feelings on that, but ultimately I made the decision to go home, and instead of talking about what I didn’t understand, I talked to them about being interned in the camps during World War II, and what did that feel like? And talking about the strength they had, feeling the bigotry, signs [saying] “Japs go home.” And I was able to have a very meaningful conversation with them. And then eventually [I was able to] bring it over to current events. Very lightly. I [found] common ground in a different way.

Oh wow, you made me cry.

It’s not that we’re always right—but who is the person that has not the bigger vision, but the solution or can see beyond the confines of the box? And it’s the person—could be you—who has the greater vision on how to unite that has to reach out.

One thing that I wanted to mention that influenced me was a TV program I saw about how people think. For example, the name of a person or some subject matter . . . is like a button that goes straight to a hot plate in your head. The word goes into your head, and there’s a roaring flame to your nerve endings from point A to B. It’s just that that word always makes you angry. And in your head, you start losing your ability to think otherwise. It’s almost like nerve endings die off, and pretty soon the term narrow-minded really applies. We’ll say, “Oh, they’re so closed” or “close-minded,” but truly that’s the only pathway that’s been forged. That’s why I love reading and books and people who love to read, because it develops critical thinking, and you’re able to think beyond just that one path.

Do you plan on visiting schools for Draw the Line?

Yes! Absolutely. I’m doing a lot of different school visits. I can just see school visits being so playful for this book. I usually divide up the audience so that there’s an aisle, so that I can make it more interactive and talk with them as I’m speaking. It’s boring to watch someone behind a podium. . . . [I want to] find a way to experience the divide and have the kids come together. . . . Basically the point is crossing over that line and realizing you always have something in common with somebody else. And maybe have [kids] physically embody that, that feeling of commonality.

Illustrations © Kathryn Otoshi