Nature photographer Nancy Rose began making waves on photo sharing sites with her unique and playful photos featuring curious wild squirrels. Her adorable images went viral, and fans began asking for more, prompting Rose to release her first children's book, The Secret Life of Squirrels. We asked Rose a few questions about her passion for photography, her creative process and, of course, Mr. Peanuts. 

How did you first become interested in photography?
I bought my first film camera when I was in high school and loved taking pictures, but film was very expensive so I did not take as many photos as I wanted to. In 2007 my son signed me up for a photography class using a digital camera, and my interest was rekindled. I could finally afford to take lots and lots of photos, and this helped me learn to improve.

Where did the idea for this photo series come from?
I was putting birdseed and nuts out in my backyard and taking lots of photos of the birds and squirrels. One day a squirrel sat on top of a pumpkin, holding onto the pumpkin stem, and he reminded me of a captain steering his ship, so I thought how cool it would be to find a little boat for him to pose on. I never did find a boat, but, at the suggestion of a friend, I made a little mailbox out of cardstock and decorated it for Valentine's Day, and then added some tiny envelopes. To get the squirrel to "pose" for me, I hid peanuts inside the mailbox. He came along searching for the nuts, and I got some shots of him "mailing the letters." The photo was a big hit on Flickr, where I share my photos, so I was inspired to try more photos with some other props. I decided to make a calendar for my family and friends and created photos for each month of the year using props like Easter eggs, a Christmas tree,  a Halloween pumpkin, etc.

Why squirrels?
Squirrels are so curious and cute, and they can stand in poses almost human-like. Blue Jays also come to take the peanuts from my sets, but they don't pose the same way.

What is your process for making the miniatures?
I have always made crafts so I have lots of supplies in my craft room. Sometimes an idea just pops in my head and I am lucky I can find the things I need. The washer and dryer were made of empty milk cartons cut and folded into shape and covered with paper. The barbecue was made of tiny foil loaf pans and popsicle sticks. Most times I don't really have a full idea of what I am making—it just develops as I go along. Lots of trial and error. I might take some photos and then decide to add more details and change the props a bit. Every setting has to function as a "still life" on its own before the squirrel enters the scene, and I need to think about how the squirrel will likely behave, like standing to look into the washer or peeking into the dryer.

What do you love most about photography?
Photography is like meditation to me. I can get so immersed in what I am doing that I lose track of time. I always wanted to paint and draw but was not great at it, so photography allows me to express myself creatively. It is also a terrific exercise for the mind since there is always so much more to learn. My husband and I love to travel, and photography allows us to have memories of all our trips.

What’s the funniest thing you’ve seen Mr. Peanuts do with your props?
I found a small ceramic bathtub which was the perfect size for him. I made a tiny yellow rubber ducky out of cornstarch play dough and sat it on the side of the bathtub. To keep it in place, I inserted a toothpick into the ducky and down into a tiny "towel" which was draped over the edge of the tub. The squirrel came along and bit into the duck and carried it off, with the towel trailing along behind. He carried it up a huge pine tree and just when I thought it was gone forever, along came a Blue Jay and knocked it down to the ground where I was able to find it, and set it all up again.

Is there a particular scene you can’t wait to build and photograph next?
A fan of my squirrels mailed me a small grocery cart, just the perfect size, and I want to build a set and have him shopping for groceries.

What’s one piece of advice you’d like to give to young readers?
I think everyone should find a hobby or activity which gives you pleasure and helps you relax. It can be reading books, doing arts and crafts, playing a musical instrument, learning to cook or playing sports. We all need to find something that makes us happy, teaches us something new and keeps us from getting bored. Sometimes it takes a long time to learn how to be good at something so we should not give up too easily. Try lots of different things until you find the things you love and that you want to learn more about.

Will any other animals get their close-up?
As soon as I set up my little props and put peanuts out, I get a few Blue Jays and sometimes chickadees and crows who like to grab the nuts before the squirrel can get there. They often chase each other away, so it can be pretty funny watching them, but then I have to keep adding more peanuts.  At first I was upset because peanuts were so expensive and then I realized it was a small price to pay for all the laughter and joy they bring. A chipmunk who lives across the street also comes over now and then, but he is much more timid than the squirrels.

Photos used with permission of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Do animals have a Santa Claus? This is just the sort of question Jan Brett would ask. In her new book, The Animals’ Santa, a young snowshoe hare in a cozy striped vest doesn’t believe all the other animals when they talk about Santa. As the squirrels and porcupines decorate the forest and share stories about the mysterious giver of gifts, the incredulous little rabbit crosses his paws. In the same way children wait up all night, hoping to hear to the sound of jingle bells and hooves on the roof, the little rabbit’s older brother—a true believer—decides to try to catch Santa. Brett’s classic illustrations capture the precious details and gentle beauty of the snowy wood, and children will treasure this tale of believing in Christmas.

What was the inspiration for this funny little story?
This funny little story just appeared to me all of sudden, the way you see in cartoons when someone has a light bulb idea over their head. . . . I was thinking, wait a minute, why don’t animals have a Santa Claus? I was thinking how I could make it into a poem about how the earth changes on its axis, and we go from fall into winter and about winter solstice. I was thinking, maybe in those couple of days, the animals don’t kill and eat each other. It was kind of poetic!

And I thought [the animals’ Santa] would be a snowy owl because they’re kind of like avian nomads, traveling all over from the arctic where they breed and where they live. They travel on silent wings, if you know about owls. What a perfect Santa Claus an owl would make!

The little skeptical rabbit’s brother decides to try to catch Santa in the act by hanging up pieces of ice. What was your inspiration for this?
I love this time of year when it’s cold enough for this ice to form. It has this kind of skin over the top of a puddle. It’s really fun to run through it and go crinch crinch crinch. It has very pretty designs, and often I’ll stop my run and see a little stream that’s coming through the woods, and it will be like lace. All this ice, this beautiful lacey ice. . . . There’s a tinkling noise that happens when it breaks. It could be a lovely trap, not a mean, awful trap.

What do you love most about these animals?
I love these animals from the arctic. I’ve always had an affinity—well, not an affinity so much as a curiosity about these animals that are white in the winter and brown in the summer. I mean, how did that ever happen? There’s something so sophisticated about how the pigment in the fur can change from winter to the summer. It sounds almost unbelievable.

One of my favorite elements of your illustrations has always been the border scenes. In The Animals’ Santa, little lemmings that look like elves make gifts for the woodland creatures. These scenes seem to be decorated with porcupine quills.
I had gone up to Canada, to Newfoundland . . . for a school visit. . . . We had stopped at this store that just specialized in native crafts. It’s a level of craft that’s really an art. I love these boxes made of porcupine quills, and I had collected them for years, not really knowing what they were. I just really love the tactile feeling of them and the colors that are used. Sometimes the Native Americans would use vegetation from native plants, so the colors aren’t knock-your-eye-out orange or red. They’re just these beautiful colors. So I met these people that have this beautiful art and found that some of these quills can be flattened out and form almost like a raincoat. . . .

One day in the summer I was driving along, and I saw a porcupine that had been hit. But it wasn’t squished, it just looked like it had went to sleep. So I went to the hardware store and got a big rubber mat that would go in a bathtub and gloves and a big, huge aluminum shovel to pick it up. The reason they’re called porky-pines is because they’re really heavy and fat! It took all my strength to get it into the car. . . . The quills, even if you just get near them and touch them, those barbs will stick you. They’re kind of dangerous. So I had these gloves and everything, and took picture of it, and this porcupine was kind of a major part of this book. . . . I started to photograph it . . . but then decided to do the next best thing, which is to draw it!

Do you have a favorite scene from The Animals’ Santa?
It would definitely be the owl. I really didn’t do it justice. This is a beautiful, beautiful animal. I’ve never really seen one—I might’ve only seen one on the wing one time but I didn’t have time to take a picture of it. They are so beautiful.

At the time I did the book, I had read somewhere that the white ones are mostly all male, so I made him all white. The females have these black markings on them—so beautiful. Last year there was an eruption of snowy owls. Apparently, from my reading, and also from this website by this guy Norman Smith, who’s from the Audubon and from my area in Boston, they had an eruption. What happens is, the lemmings and the snowshoe hares have a really good year, and there’s lots of vegetation for them to eat, and they can have multiple litters in a season. It quickly turns to fall, and then the owls feed on them, and all of a sudden you have more owls than the land can support. And who gets kicked out? The young males, so the big males can defend their territory and tend to stay up [in the arctic], and all these young males fly south. They came as far as Boston and even further, and they’d gravitate toward Logan Airport and to some of these barrier island beaches that look like the tundra. . . .

So that’s my favorite page, but I couldn’t really capture the luminescence of those feathers. It’s almost like a magical thing. It’s almost like the real animal is as unbelievable as the Santa Claus owl because of their lifestyle and the way they look. They almost kind of look like Santa Claus with their fluffy heads and mustache.

Your illustrations to me, and for so many readers, epitomize Christmas. As someone who’s constantly telling Christmas stories, how do you always find more inspiration in this season?
I would go back to what I would call my craft. I love to do details in my drawings. When I was 6 or 7, I knew I was going to be an illustrator. I used to promise myself that I’m not going to do simple drawings of cartoons, although I loved Charles Addams cartoons when I was that age. But I wanted to have things that really were pithy, that had a full range of emotions.

When you’re little, you have your own sense of aesthetics. You ask a 6-year-old what they’re going to wear to school, they’re going to tell you that they want this but not that. I think the smart parents respect that because it’s kind of a flag of a child’s individuality. It’s what they like and their idea of what beauty is. . . . I used to love books that felt like I could walk in the page and be in a different place, that transporting, that time-machine feeling of a really good story. Sometimes the illustration was the thing that propelled you in that world.

I always wanted to do that, but my style is so detailed that sometimes you don’t see the forest for the trees because it’s so busy. But the snow is the perfect foil for being able to show a little red squirrel with a brilliant coat and little whiskers that are kind of shining in the moonlight. The beauty of nature against the white. I think anybody who goes down a walk after a snow—it’s almost as if your whole color reference is booted, jump-started, because you’re seeing stuff for the first time. All of a sudden a birch tree, which is white, all of a sudden you can see the greens and the pinks and the yellows, and there’s always a few trees with a few leaves attached, even in a snowstorm. You wouldn’t see that if it was a late fall without any snow. I love that! It works for my pictures. The snow makes everything more defined.

When I go to my book signings, I talk about how everybody has their own style. Figuring out what makes your style work is part of the process. . . .  One thing you need for that is time. That’s a big talking point when I talk to the children: Give yourself some time to draw and let your imagination take you away. It can be a human and exciting experience to, all of a sudden, create something.

Sally M. Walker likes to connect young readers with history. In her new picture book, Winnie, she does just that, telling the little-known story of the real bear who inspired A.A. Milne’s legendary children’s book character, Winnie-the-Pooh. 

When World War I soldier and veterinarian Harry Colebourn first saw the bear for sale at a train station in Canada, he knew he was the one to take care of her. He named her Winnipeg (later shortened to “Winnie”) after the capital city of Manitoba. When he was transferred to a training camp in England, he brought Winnie with him. She became a beloved member of Colebourn’s regiment, though in 1919 he donated her with a heavy heart to the London Zoo. It was there that a young boy named Christopher Robin first visited her. And the rest is literary history.

Winnie and Harry Coleburn at Salisbury Plain in 1914. Source: Provincial Archives of Manitoba, Colebourn, D. Harry Collection, No. N10467.

Walker has a passion for research and “finding the story” in her subject matter. “There are so many stories out there,” she tells BookPage from her home in Illinois, “especially if you’re a history geek.” Turning this slice of history into a book for children was particularly exciting for her, given that it’s a story most people haven’t heard.

Her own moment of revelation was one she won’t soon forget. “I was flabbergasted when I found out about it,” Walker says. Mystery writer Jacqueline Winspear was discussing her new book at a local bookstore and explained that the Veterinary Corps was very active during World War I due to the number of horses in use. Winspear briefly noted that Winnie-the-Pooh was a real bear, bought by Canadian veterinarian Harry Colebourn. “And I totally blacked out the rest of what she was talking about,” Walker says, “because I was busy writing down: Colebourn. Harry. Canada. She just casually mentioned it, but that was all I heard. A real bear!”

It was then that the author eagerly embarked upon her research, which she describes as a grand adventure. “I realized that the story was legitimate. But still, as a nonfiction writer, I always want to track down the roots and confirm things.”

Walker contacted the archivist for the Ft. Garry Horse Regiment in Manitoba. She discovered that the story was well documented and that all the materials were in their archives. Colebourn, she learned, not only kept diaries during World War I but also mentioned the bear in them. Walker was thrilled. “Sifting through old documents is what excites me,” she says with a laugh. “I contacted the provincial archives of Manitoba, and sure enough, Harry Colebourn’s son, Fred, had copied the diary onto microfilm. I spent several days doing nothing but reading through all of Harry’s diaries that he had during the war.”

Though mentions of Winnie in Colebourn’s diaries aren’t especially detailed, there are also photos in the archives—many of Winnie with other soldiers. “It’s clear that she was very much a mascot of the unit,” Walker says. “You also get a sense from Harry’s diary that he was a social and caring man. He mentions at one point in his diary having to take a bullet out of his horse and caring for horses that had various kinds of illnesses. You have the sense that Harry was a man who loved animals. I think he enjoyed people. He liked to help out. He liked to be good. And I think this sense is what came out in Winnie—his genuine caring.”

Walker also traveled to the London Zoo and speaks with enthusiasm about her research there. “The archivist there let me look through the ‘daily occurrences book,’ ” she says, “which lists what’s going on at the zoo. It’s intriguing, the kinds of information they liked to record for the zoo materials. The day Winnie arrived at the zoo, it was foggy. There were 243 visitors in the zoo. When she was accessioned into the zoo, they also brought in two African civets and a kestrel. You really have a sense that you’re touching history and touching the story. You can even read about the day that Winnie died, May 12, 1934. It was a fine, warm day at the zoo, and they note that one American black bear, a female, was put down on that day.”

Colebourn died in 1947, but not before witnessing the success of Milne’s Pooh stories, the first of which was published in 1926. And while the fictional Pooh became a beloved character around the world, the real Winnie was remembered in stories passed down through Colebourn’s family. Fred ensured that his father’s story was not forgotten, and Walker speaks with great respect for his efforts.

She also describes what the zoo calls their “Winnie Files.” These include zookeepers’ testimonies and letters from soldiers who wrote about what Winnie meant to them. “And what you see in there repeatedly,” she says, “is that the zookeeper would say, ‘Yes, we had some other bears, but no one could trust those bears. The only bear we could trust was Winnie. Winnie was special.’ ”

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

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The sweet, crowned star of Dan Santat’s picture book, The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend, is a hero like no other—because he almost doesn’t exist! Beekle’s an imaginary friend with no child to imagine him, and so he leaves his fantastic island, full of other strange creatures like him, in search of a friend.

What was the first thing that went through your head when you found out you had won the Caldecott?
I never won the top prize for any artistic award in my life. When the phone rang, I had a good idea who was calling, considering the fact that no one else would be calling at 4:30am, and I thought, at best, I would have earned an Honor. When they had told me I had won the actual medal I just broke down into tears. It was a dream come true. A dream I never thought I would ever achieve.

“Creating content for a younger audience feels like I’m playing. I don’t ever have to take myself too seriously or worry about maintaining a cool, hip image. It’s just raw honesty.”

Who was the one person you couldn’t wait to tell about the award?
The first person I called was my agent, Jodi Reamer, who really has become one of my closest friends, which I treasure, because I don’t know if many people can say that about their relationship with their agents. It’s very Jerry Maguire, I know. She has been my guide, transitioning me from illustrator to author/illustrator, and I’ve trusted her with my career advice. It’s sort of creepy because everything seems to be going exactly according to her plan. Anyway, I called her twice right after the committee called, and she didn’t pick up. Then I texted her, and I still heard nothing. Her loss. I then shared my news with my editor, Connie Hsu, who was a major piece of the puzzle to the success of this book. Months ago she had joked that if Beekle ever won a major award, she would get a tattoo of Beekle. The first thing I texted her was, “Time for you to get a tattoo.”

Do you have a favorite past Caldecott winner?
Respectfully, I couldn’t name any one past winner, because almost all of them have been inspirations to me. I will say that Brian Floca was a personal favorite because he’s a friend of mine and I knew how long it took for him to get the book done. When your friends win you feel like you won in a way, too, you know?

What’s the best part of writing books for a younger audience?
Creating content for a younger audience feels like I’m playing. I don’t ever have to take myself too seriously or worry about maintaining a cool, hip image. It’s just raw honesty. The whole community is also overall just really friendly, from the children to librarians and teachers, as well as the other authors and illustrators in the business.

What kind of reaction have you gotten from your readers about this book?
I’ve heard some parents and librarians tell me that they cried when they read the book. There are other adults who just think it’s just an ordinary story and don’t see anything special about it. I’ll sometimes read a review where someone comments that Beekle just goes to a playground and meets a kid and that’s that. I can tell when someone completely misses the symbolism of the story.

I’ve heard nothing but positive things from children. Many parents have sent me numerous images of handcrafted Beekle dolls that they made for their kids, which I think is adorable. Around Halloween there were a few Beekle Halloween outfits, as well as Beekle Jack-O-Lanterns, and now I see images of Beekle snowmen being made out on the East coast. It feels great to know that a character you created has touched so many.

Have you read or listened to past Caldecott acceptance speeches? Are you excited (or worried!) about your own speech?
Erin Stead did a wonderfully honest speech. I had the pleasure of meeting her and her husband for a quick bite to eat the day before the actual banquet, and I remember her telling me that she was extremely nervous about the whole thing. I listened to Jon Klassen’s speech online but was unable to attend. He and I have known each other for years and so it was great to hear a friend accept the award. Brian Floca was the first time I saw a good friend accept the award in person, and I had a permanent smile on my face that evening.

I’ve done plenty of speeches to large audiences in the past so I’m not too worried about this one. I think I have a pretty good sense of humor, and the book was deeply personal to me, so I think people should expect some laughs and some tears. It’s pretty easy for me to be open and honest with folks, and I think people can relate to you from their own experiences in life and feel a connection.

What’s next for you?
Well, first I’m going to try to relax more that I have in previous years. I say “try” because I know I’m just a workaholic by nature. In terms of book projects I’m finishing up my next picture book with Little, Brown called Are We There Yet?  I’m working on my next graphic novel, The Aquanaut, with Arthur Levine Books (Scholastic). Dav Pilkey and I are finishing up two brand spanking new books for our Ricky Ricotta’s Mighty Robot series (also with Scholastic), and I’m working on a YA graphic novel memoir of how I went from studying biology to pursuing a career in art.

Lastly, I’m illustrating some great picture book manuscripts that have been written by Gennifer Choldenko, Tom Angleberger and a few others that I can’t name just yet. We’ll see how much I actually get done. Previous Caldecott-winning friends have told me that my life will be too busy to get any real serious book work done. That remains to be seen.

Nashville author Lynne Berry offers twice as many laughs with two new picture books. Pig and Pug is perfect for early readers, as a pair of reluctant friends confront their differences. The hero of Squid Kid the Magnificent presents a spectacular magic show, but his sister, Stella, isn’t impressed.

Two books pubbing on one day! If you had to, could you pick a favorite between the two?
Yes! My book twins! Fraternal twins, of course, not identical—but twins nevertheless—and what proper mother could pick a favorite between twins? Turns out, I am not a proper book mother at all, and I am rather partial to Pig and Pug! It’s not that I don’t love Squid Kid, I certainly do—but the inspiration for Pig and Pug came from my very own grumpy pig (Sir Francis Bacon) and my best pug pal (the Empress Evelyn Pookena), who belongs to a dear friend. In my mind, Pig and Pug are Francey and Pookie, so I can’t help but have an extra-special place in my heart for this book.

What was the process of working with these two illustrators?
I must be the luckiest writer alive, because every one of my books has had a spectacular illustrator (not to mention outstanding editors and art directors). Other authors and illustrators sometimes work more closely together—quite a few well-known collaborative teams—but I think it’s fair to say I have had little to no input on the art for my books. My participation has been limited to receiving from my editor sketches or early spreads or first full layouts, and saying, “Wow. Wow. Wow. Carry on. Please.”

But I will say this: I wrote these two stories for the illustrators into whose hands they fell—Squid Kid for Luke quite intentionally, and Pig and Pug for Gemma without an intention in the world. I met Luke once, many years ago, shortly after our first book together was published. At that meeting, Luke asked me if I had ever written any stories about squids, because he loves squids—cephalopods of all sorts, really, when it comes right down to it—and he would love to do the pictures for a story about a squid. So, I set about writing a squid story for Luke. When I wrote Pig and Pug, I’d not heard of Gemma (please forgive me, I do sometimes live under a rock), but now that I have heard of her—wow. Could ever a story have been better suited for an illustrator, than Pig and Pug for Gemma?  So, the evidence is in: I am the luckiest writer in the world. To collaborate on a pug book—a PUG book—with Gemma Correll—GEMMA CORRELL! And squids by Luke LaMarca—at risk of repeating myself: wow.

Animals always have such distinct and hilarious personalities in your picture books. How did you know that squid siblings would squabble so? Or that a pig and a pug, if they took a moment, could get over their differences?
Thank you! Most of the time, I am not at all sure what the characters in my books are likely to do until I discover they are doing it. In writing a squid story for Luke, I had several false starts—the characters were not cooperating with me AT ALL—until it dawned on me the squid I was writing about was SQUID KID the MAGNIFICENT. Well! Of course he was a ham (no cross-book pun intended). Of course he was a magician. Of course his sister would give him grief about his not-so-magic tricks. How could it be any other way? Pig and Pug, I think, are at the mercy of the destiny of their names: pigheaded and pugnacious. They just can’t escape it. But I knew they could see their way clear (as mud, anyhow) to friendship because they scrap the way brothers scrap—and no matter how brothers may scrap, no friends are friends like brothers are friends.

What would the animals on your farm think of your books?
I would love to show you, if I may! So that’s the reaction from a representative sampling of the critters—I think it’s safe to say they speak for the rest. Or, at least, for the goats and the ducks. The chickens are not all that bright, and tend to have a poor appreciation of literature in general, I find.

Have you always had such a knack for young reader rhyme and rhythm? Do you ever find yourself narrating your life in your head in this same way?
I am very much drawn to rhythm and rhyme. I can forego rhyme, at times, but rhythms draw me back again and again. I am not at all sure where this comes from; I am not a musical person, but the rhythm of language just gets right in amongst me. I should, indeed, spend more time narrating my life in rhyme! I am a worrier, so the narration of my life tends to take a gloomy turn more often that it should; narrating in the form of limericks would clear that up in a hurry, I expect.

What do you love most about writing children’s books?
I love the most getting to work with such talented and creative people. When I send a manuscript off to my editor, the story is just a smattering of words on a sheet of paper. That’s all. And yet, an editor can see a book. An art director can see a book. An artist can see a book— a book with setting and characters—sometimes characters not even mentioned in the text, sometimes entire visual subplots not even hinted at in the text. I love to see the words leap off that humble sheet of paper, get chummy with some amazing art, maybe say hey to the new fellas with whom they will never cross paths in the text—and make a BOOK.

What’s next?
I am hopeful that Pig and Pug will have the opportunity to embark on new adventures. I cannot stop thinking about these wee little imps, and would like to see what might happen at a picnic with a table full of pies, or during an afternoon at the local pool. My best guess: Hijinks might very well ensue.

Many children’s books about divorce have a gentle, easy-does-it style, protecting kids from the toughest aspects of a parental split. In her new picture book, Divorce Is the Worst, Anastasia Higginbotham takes a different approach, avoiding the usual platitudes and offering a fresh, child-centered view that acknowledges a range of feelings.

With wonderfully inventive illustrations created through a combination of collage and photography, the book shows a child getting the news about an impending divorce and experiencing everything from anger and guilt to heartbreak. Higginbotham avoids a list of dos and don’ts for children of divorce but urges them to “Know your troubles as well as you can. Then let them be.”

Divorce Is the Worst also includes appealing doses of humor, as when the child’s parents try to buy an “outrageous gift” like a horse to compensate for the pain they’ve caused, or when the child endures the awkwardness of meeting a parent’s new “friend.” Higginbotham writes: “Contrary to the title of this book, meeting a parent’s *friend* is WORSE than the worst making it the absolute worst, even if the friend turns out to be nice, sort of, later on.”

An excellent resource for children and parents, as well as therapists and educators, Divorce Is the Worst ends on an uplifting note with tips on how kids can use collage to make books and tell their own stories.

We contacted the first-time author at her home in New York City to find out more about her debut picture book and her plans to expand it into a series on coping with Ordinary Terrible Things.

Why did you want to tackle a serious topic like divorce in a picture book?
I think childhood is difficult, even when you are loved and people are watching out for you. There’s so much that kids can’t control and I’m always interested in how they’re coping with that. There’s a scene in an old episode of “Mister Rogers Neighborhood” where Chef Brockett thanks Mr. Rogers for listening to him express sadness about losing a contest, and Mr. Rogers says, “I like important talk.” Same goes for me, especially when it comes to childhood. I like giving kids credit for what they’re managing at home, at school and in the privacy of their own minds.

What reactions have you gotten to the book so far, from children and adults?
Kids get it. They love the angry eyes, the bike crash, the horse and all the screaming about meeting a parent’s “friend.” They want to know how I made the art and if the kid in the book is me. Adults whose parents got divorced when they were kids tend to be surprised by the force of their feelings in response to the book, which is really the point. They’ve got this volcano of raw emotion they didn’t even know was there. Then there are the adults who may be seeing for the first time what their divorce may have felt like from their child’s point of view. How they react depends on how open they are to receiving that information.

Your approach to this issue is very straightforward; there’s no sugarcoating the pain divorce can cause children and adults alike. Why did you decide to go in this direction?
My book does a few things differently from other kids’ divorce books. One, it doesn’t try to make kids feel better about the divorce. Two, it doesn’t subtly insist that the child believe and accept that the divorce is in their best interest. I wanted to make a divorce book that demanded very little of children and instead holds up a mirror of understanding and compassion—period, the end. It’s meant to help kids notice their life just the way it is and reinforce that the kid’s experience is real and it matters. This makes it relatable to a lot of situations besides divorce.

Do you have any personal experience with divorce that influenced the book?
I was shocked and heartbroken about my parents’ divorce. My parents portrayed it in a positive way. They told us not to let it affect us. They said it was the solution to the problem, not the problem. But I was attached to our original family. I didn’t want my parents to have new partners and I missed seeing my dad every day. That seemed selfish though, so I tried to just be supportive. My siblings and I made jokes about it constantly as if it was ironic instead of sad. But it was just sad.

Some of the coping strategies you suggest for children of divorce are unusual: “Start by creating a place where you can be all in one piece,” for example. Why is nature an important part of the coping process?
Nature is always out there. It doesn’t leave you. And if you’re someone who believes that nature is alive and has spirit, nature can also bear witness for you and offer solace. If your family is falling apart or being mean, you can turn and look out a window and see what the sky is doing. Maybe you can even go outside and watch the sky change and see if your feelings may change along with it. You can get absorbed in the path of an ant or treetops swaying. Nature can pull you up out of yourself.

The illustrations for this book are really unique. Can you describe the techniques you use to create it?
I make collage illustrations on torn grocery bags, using grocery bag paper for people’s faces and hands, and scraps of old clothing, ribbons and magazine images to create all the environments. I write the narration and dialogue by hand. I make the child’s home comfortable and personal and enjoy building houses and furniture. I draw the child’s face, hands and hair in pen and dress them in tiny clothes: jeans and a shirt, jacket, socks, bike helmet, etc. The illustrations are 3D, so the pages are photographed to preserve those dimensions and shadows.

Why did you choose to use brown paper bags extensively in the illustrations?
Brown paper bags are the toughest and prettiest of all paper and they’re free! Brown bags can elicit strong positive associations with food, nurturing, surprising packages in the mail. You have to peek in to see what’s in it for you. It also makes the people beautifully brown and we need more diverse books.

The blue jeans on the kid are the cutest! Did you sacrifice a favorite pair of your own jeans to make the kid’s pants?
No need to sacrifice! The jeans are made from the bottoms that I cut off my own kid’s jeans to make shorts. The black shirt that the kid wears at the very end is made from a pair of batman size 2 underpants. The plaid flannel shirt I’m wearing on the author page was my grandfather’s and the pink flannel underneath was my grandmother’s. Every page has something like this.

An endnote tells us that you’ve been “making books by hand” your whole life. How did you get started and how has bookmaking helped you “change and grow”?
I had an elementary school teacher who gave us lots of independence with our storytelling and I wrote and illustrated books in her class. I’ve made paper dolls for friends and cartoon books for my oldest sister Amy to try and make her laugh about bad things happening in her life. The Ordinary Terrible Things series comes out of my own desire to heal from experiences I had that are common to a lot of children. Making the books does heal me. I take care of the kid in the story and the kids who I imagine will read the book someday, and I can feel myself healing. It happens while I work.

What other topics do you plan to cover in future installments of the Ordinary Terrible Things series?
Next up is the death of a loved one, followed by confusion about sex, bullying/school violence, sexual abuse and chronic illness. I also want to do a book about white privilege and racism, another on money and another about birth stories (adoption, surrogacy, sperm/egg donors). I could go on and on. If I get the funding, I will.

All illustrations from Divorce Is the Worst copyright © 2015 Anastasia Higginbotham. Reprinted with permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York.

Ben Hatke, author of the popular Zita the Spacegirl series, brings readers a junkyard tale of friendship with his new book, Little Robot. A little girl, armed with a tool belt, gumption and lots of independence, discovers a lost blue robot. After she fixes him up, the two explore cats, flowers and frogs—until the factory where the robot belongs sends a bigger, scarier robot to retrieve him.

Considering the popularity of your Zita the Spacegirl series, it’s no surprise that this new story has some major E.T. and Lilo & Stitch vibes, and yet the lost creature here is a robot. How is a robot like an alien?
I think robots are, in some stories, almost an anti-alien. Robots, in stories, work really well as being “us.” The robot in this story is activated for the first time and is very much like a child.

Where did this little robot character come from?
About four years ago I drew a short, silent, five panel comic about a little robot. It was a very simple gag, that first comic but before long, and almost without thinking, I found myself drawing another Little Robot comic. And then another . . .

I made 30 Little Robot comics in all, and through those comics the robot’s personality developed. Gradually the little trashcan shaped robot started suggesting that there was a larger story to tell.

Were there any Little Robot moments that you really, really wish had made it into this story?
Not really. There are things that happened in the comic strips that I thought were fun, like marching, dancing vegetables, but those things didn’t fit the new world that the robot was inhabiting. As far as the main story goes all the best bits from my sketchbooks made it into the final piece.

You’ve described this book as your “little love letter to summer and friendship and robots and makers.” What about this story sums up summer for you?
I think the setting and the sense of idleness. And being near a river. I’ve spent a lot of summers near a river. If there was a soundtrack to this comic it would just be the sound of cicadas.

What are some of the most important lessons about first friendship that the little girl and the robot learn in this story?
They have to learn to navigate their disagreements. They have to learn to figure out what friendship even means and how to balance the difference between responsibility and possessiveness.

Why do you believe it was necessary for this story to be wordless?
It’s not really wordless, it just has very sparse dialogue. I tried to do a story that had words but that could be read without words. In this way I had very beginning readers in mind.

How do your own kids influence your stories? What do you think they would do if they found a lost robot?
I have started to refer to my kids as the Quality Control Department. They really do check up on my work, probably daily, and they have gotten good at giving me honest opinions about the stories I’ working on. When they are confused about part of a story I know I have to reexamine it.

And if the girls found a robot? Wow. I hardly know how to answer that one . . .

What is your favorite part of the writing process?
My favorite part is the good days, when the typing part and the sketching part are working perfectly in tandem and I’m listening to just the right music and the ideas are flowing. I have come to really love seeing the structure of a story take shape.

What’s next for you? Will we see these characters again?
The next book is a picture book called Nobody Likes a Goblin and it was probably the most fun I’ve had drawing a book. It’s my little attempt to examine and flip over some of the tropes of classic fantasy. After that is a graphic novel called Mighty Jack which is about a very dangerous garden. I don’t know when we’ll next see the characters from Little Robot, but the girl from that story has a very small blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in Mighty Jack.

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.