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

Caldecott Medal winner Allen Say’s Silent Days, Silent Dreams is “an imagined biography” of deaf, autistic and dyslexic artist James Castle, but more importantly, it’s a tremendous and haunting tribute to a great artist by a great artist. Say shares a look behind the creative process and his hopes for the book.

There’s a lot to love about James Castle’s art. What do you admire the most about it?
I admire the directness of James Castle’s art, which reminds me of Zenga—the style of painting in Zen. He drew what he saw without thinking in the abstract medium of language that turns paintings into ideas called “isms.” Castle bypassed the ism-stage because he had no language: He couldn’t hear or speak or read, and he was also autistic and dyslexic. Ironically, his misfortunes nurtured him into one of the most original American artists of any period. His pictures come straight from the heart, and they are very moving.

It’s clear that you felt compelled to make this book and tell Castle's story. What started as a portrait of Castle as a favor you owed a friend became this book. Did you respond to previous projects with that kind of driving passion, or did this top them all for you?
Starting a new book is always exciting and scary. In this one, there was more scare than excitement: The little grove I wandered into turned out to be an endless forest. It was a kind of calling for me: I had to find out how a child without hearing or speech—and possibly autistic and dyslexic—had managed to teach himself to draw and succeeded in producing a vast body of artwork from reclaimed wastepaper trash bins. But I had no idea how to start the project. It’s not the kind of a book for which I could write an outline and lay it out in thumbnail drawings. Freelancing was the only way: I didn't have the nerve to ask for a contract for a book that was a confused mass of ideas and images. I went for broke, and did go broke, and finally asked my editor, Arthur A. Levine, for a contract. He was most understanding.

Why, in particular, did you decide to tell the story from the point of view of the nephew?
As the loosely connected story emerged through the drawings that were spread out on the floor, there were always gaps that needed filling. In those gaps I often put in drawings in my style as asides, to let the readers know that they were reading a story told by a third party—a kind of digressive pauses, or varied spatial experience, as though going from a small room into a hallway, then into a large room. It seemed to me that the text needed a particular person or personality to reflect this third party. The brilliant idea of choosing Castle’s nephew, who had known James all his life and was instrumental in bringing his work the attention of the public, came from Arthur. Let me go public here: Thank you, Arturo-kun!

You mention in the book’s author’s note about using some of the materials Castle did (sticks, soot, spit, etc.) to recreate his art, as well as drawing with your nondominant hand. What was that like? Did you go through tons of drafts for those pieces?
Castle managed to teach himself to draw with most primitive drawing materials such as soot, spit, burnt matchsticks, liquid laundry bluing, on bits of trash paper he collected around the family farm. I thought about him for a month, and remembered my own childhood when I had drawn in secrecy, hiding from my father. Drawing with my left hand reverted me to a 5-year-old boy who drew with total concentration; it was a kind of meditation in these dreadful times. I drew helter-skelter in many sketchbooks, and since I draw best when I’m not thinking (bypassing the word-processing stage), I cut out the sketches that turned out well and used them directly in the book. Though I did hundreds of drawings that didn’t make the cut, James Castle had a liberating influence on my work.

You also mention in the author’s note what incredible range Castle had and that, for this book, you decided to concentrate on his drawings. Is there maybe another book in you that focuses on some of his other mediums? Or are you done telling his story?
This book begins with Castle’s birth and ends with his death, which puts it in the biography genre. But my intent was to try to see the world through Castle’s eyes and try to portray an artist who knew no language, who did all his thinking in pictures. It’s an imagined biography of a person who was entirely entrapped inside a silent body, to which art gave a peephole out into the world. With this book I want to invite my readers to imagine what James Castle endured and created works with humblest of materials that speak to us today. And I hope I’ve accomplished that!

What’s next for you?
I’ve been working on a simple experimental work that’s getting more complicated every day. It’s hard to be simple—as Zen practitioners know but will not say. James Castle just did it.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Silent Days, Silent Dreams.

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

There’s a monster in Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Junot Díaz’s first children’s book. It seems that no one wants to talk about it, especially not with Lola, the little girl at the heart of Islandborn. After all, how do you talk to children about the most horrifying part of your country’s history?

With his story collections (Drown, This Is How You Lose Her) and award-winning novel (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao), Díaz captured the biting, funny and city-wise voices of young Dominicans and Dominican-Americans, often returning to the same characters again and again. But 20 years ago, Díaz’s goddaughters demanded a story that represented someone like themselves—Dominican girls living in New York. It was an intimidating request, but Díaz fulfills that promise with Islandborn, which is about a tenacious little girl who learns about her heritage through the collective memory of friends and family.

“Children’s books present [a difficult task to] writers,” Díaz says, “which is to remember how fiercely you loved the books that you loved when you were young. To produce something that could create the possibility of that fierce attachment was a tremendous challenge.”

Illustration © 2018 Leo Espinosa. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Penguin Young Readers.

Díaz is speaking from his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, shortly after a major snowstorm had dragged the East Coast. In the middle of winter, reading Islandborn is like stepping into the sun after weeks of 4:30 p.m. sunsets—it is warming and wakening in a whole new way.

Lola lives in Washington Heights, New York, but she comes from the Dominican Republic, or “the Island.” When her teacher asks her diverse class to draw a picture of “your first country,” Lola is at a loss. She remembers nothing of her birthplace—but the people in her neighborhood do. Her cousin Leticia talks about bats “as big as blankets,” while others gush about the music, the mangoes, the rainbow-colored people.

Island imagery soon saturates Lola’s city world. Leo Espinosa’s digital mixed-media illustrations, in 1950s and ’60s retro style, are rendered in the brightest possible hues, palm fronds teeming from nearly everywhere. “I knew I wanted someone who had a Caribbean background,” Díaz says of Espinosa, who is from Bogotá, Colombia, “who would be able to understand the kind of joyful frenzy out of which I come.”

After hearing so many magical things about the Island, only one man, old Mr. Mir, tells Lola something different: “[E]ven the most beautiful places can attract a monster,” he says. A double-page spread reveals a huge, batlike beast rising from the ocean, bending palm trees beneath its wrath and scattering islanders in fear. The Monster is a terrifying embodiment of Rafael Trujillo, the Dominican dictator who orchestrated the 1937 Haitian massacre. The Monster reigned for 30 years, Mr. Mir says, until “Heroes rose up” to defeat it.

Understandably, the Monster was subject to intense scrutiny during the book’s production. But ultimately, “No matter what parents do . . . being a child is frankly a terrifying proposition,” Díaz says, echoing Maurice Sendak. “There’s nothing about monstrosities—and certainly Trujillo, he is a monstrosity—that is alien to a child.”

By the story’s end, Lola has learned about the Island’s good and bad, darkness and joy, and she is able to complete her assignment, which turns out to be the book we’re reading. In the same way that Lola is entrusted with the realities of her history, Islandborn trusts its young readership with the complicated emotions that come with reflection and memory. This trust—along with the text’s longer length—makes Islandborn perfect for reading aloud. What better way to experience a book about collective memory than by making it a collective reading experience?

“Reading, when we’re adults, is a solitary enterprise,” Díaz says. “This is not true of how we evolve as readers. We begin [by] reading collectively . . . with a parent or with a teacher. In my mind I couldn’t resist the fact that Lola’s journey not only models what it takes to face any large problem . . . but also what it takes to face the tremendous challenge that is reading, which is a collective [process]. So the fact that the book both models and invites the practice of collectivity was certainly no accident.”

Although her family and neighbors help, Lola finds a place within her community all by herself. She tells her class, “Even if I’d never set foot on the Island it doesn’t matter: The Island is me.” (Fortunately, Lola will go to the Island in the sequel.)

“It was one of the great liberations of my life when I discovered that it’s not other people who grant you [permission] to belong to a community. This is something that you grant yourself,” Díaz says. “Lola’s clearly immersed in her community in ways that are vital and generative, and yet, she never felt a full part of it. And I think the realization that there’s no metric that you have to achieve, there’s no set of criteria that you have to meet, but that in you, there’s a recognition of your place in the community—that, more or less, is what matters.”

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author photo by Nina Subin.

Eric and Terry Fan, who co-illustrate as the Fan Brothers, both live in Toronto, but it wasn’t until they were awarded the illustrious Sendak Fellowship last year that they first shared a studio space.

Over four weeks at Scotch Hill Farm in upstate New York, once owned by beloved children’s author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, the Fans dug into illustrating their newest book, Ocean Meets Sky, their fourth collaboration.

“We had started the book and completed the dummy,” Eric says via phone, “but I think we turned a corner at the Sendak Fellowship.” Terry agrees, adding that it was there that the book started taking shape and going in the direction they’d always envisioned. “The fellowship was pretty inspiring,” says Eric. “I don’t actually have a studio. I work from my home computer, so it was nice having that space—and the inspiring atmosphere.”

Ocean Meets Sky begins with young Finn, who is staring out the bedroom window of his seaside home. A framed photograph of his grandfather and a toy boat adorn the windowsill. Finn recalls memories of his deceased grandfather—his voice and his stories about a “place far away where ocean meets sky.” As a way of honoring him, Finn builds a boat, one just right for the journey he had planned to take with his grandfather.

Because building a boat is tiresome work, Finn falls asleep and wakes to discover his journey has already begun. Adrift in the ocean, he takes in the fantastical creatures formed in the clouds; he meets a “great golden fish” who promises to lead Finn to where the ocean meets sky; he visits the Library Islands with “bookish birds . . . roosting”; and he explores an island of giant shells. His odyssey has a few surreal moments, including a Cyclops-like creature that guards the Library Islands. “I remember, as a kid, reading books that were a little bit scary,” says Eric, “and that other level made [the stories] more thrilling.”

When Finn reaches the place he suspects may be the location of his grandfather’s tales, his boat lifts from the water. A surprise waits for Finn as he flies toward the moon, and he is reminded that his grandfather, though physically gone from this world, is never far away.

In many ways, Ocean Meets Sky is a tribute to the tradition of oral storytelling, in particular to the stories told by the Fans’ Taiwanese grandfather, who lived on the other side of the world and didn’t frequently visit (both Eric and Terry were born in the U.S. but moved to Canada as children). “Both of our grandparents used to tell so many stories to our dad,” Terry says, “and I think that [tradition] passed on to him. He used to tell us a lot of stories.” Eric agrees: “The storytelling aspect is a sort of merging of our dad and our grandfather. It is a way of honoring Chinese culture, [in which] relatives and family are so important.”

Eric and Terry also had fairy tales in mind when penning Ocean Meets Sky, and the rhythm of the writing evokes that spirit. (The book’s opening proclaims, “Finn lived by the sea, and the sea lived by him,” and the great golden fish describes the place where ocean meets sky as “high and low, and as deep as the sea.”) But Ocean Meets Sky also pulls from folktales in the way that readers experience the story itself.

From Ocean Meets Sky by Terry and Eric Fan. Reproduced by permission of Simon & Schuster.

Eric explains: “The reader is looking at it from Finn’s perspective. But as a writer, you’re almost looking at it from the grandfather’s perspective. It’s about what you’re going to leave behind. The place where ocean meets sky is the narrative world that writers create. Finn is the reader. You’re thinking about how, after you’re gone, these are the worlds you’re leaving behind for people.”

Like all of Terry and Eric’s previously published books, Ocean Meets Sky was a truly collaborative effort. “We both do the writing and the illustrating,” Eric says. “Sometimes we work on the same illustration. . . . We’ll each do different parts, and then we bring it together in Photoshop. Usually, we’re separated, but since this book coincided with the fellowship, I think that helped with communication because every day we were in the same space.”

They have traditionally created their illustrations with a mix of graphite and Photoshop drawings, but for Ocean Meets Sky, they experimented with some entirely digital images. “We did this out of necessity,” Terry says. “There wasn’t the greatest internet connection [at the fellowship], so it was hard to scan original artwork.” Though the beautiful, final illustrations are a blend of mediums, both Eric and Terry prefer traditional pencil drawings. “There’s something about it that you just can’t quite re-create,” Terry says.

There’s no doubt that the brothers enjoy collaborating. In fact, they’ll soon be adding their youngest brother, Devon, to the mix for a project they will publish with Tundra Books sometime in the next couple of years. “That will be a first,” says Eric, “to get three people together. That will be an interesting process.”

But for now, you can find the Fan Brothers surrounded by gently rocking boats and golden fish, in a place where stories matter and the ocean meets the sky.

This article was originally published in the May 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author photo © Eric and Terry Fan.

 This BookPage Icebreaker is sponsored by Macmillan Children’s.

A bustling city is inhabited by primary-colored residents whose hearts are changed when they discover the beauty of a more complex world in author-illustrator Arree Chung’s timely picture book, Mixed: A Colorful Story. When the Reds decide that they think they are the best color, they start shouting in the street. The color harmony is shattered, and the city is segregated into red, blue and yellow. But when a Yellow and a Blue fall in love and create a never-before-seen color, hearts and minds are opened.  

Although Chung began work on this picture book years ago, it seems that Mixed—with its message of love that’s sure to inspire readers of all ages—is being published at the perfect time in America.

Hilli: The first thing I noticed—aside from the gorgeous endpapers—was that Mixed is a pretty different story compared to your silly Ninja! series. What inspired you to begin working on this book, which is more of a message-driven story?

Arree: Well you know, I have ideas that come to me all the time. I remember when this idea came to me I thought, wow that is a really neat idea that has probably been done already. But I feel like ideas are like having kids. They just come to you. But the concept was pretty clear to me early on. I feel like as a creative person, it’s never the problem of having ideas, it’s the problem of choosing which one and narrowing it down and working on it for a long time. I was just really passionate about this idea because I thought it was important. I started working on this five or six years ago before everything that’s happening right now. I had no idea it would be coming out at this time which is, I feel like, the perfect time. There are so many other stories I want to tell. Some are silly and some are not, but I feel like I’m growing as a storyteller. It took me two and a half years to find the essence of Mixed.

Using color theory to personify the beauty of diversity is such a lovely concept. Was this inspired by your time in art school a little later in life?

Yes, definitely! I love drawing, storytelling and symbolism, and the more I worked on this idea I just found so many analogies that worked so well in terms of color theory: the way that colors look different with each other and feel different with each other and had so many different personalities. I think the most poignant point was thinking about the message—as the world mixes in culture, we create new colors. They’re their own color. It opens a lot of interesting conversations with kids.

Did any particular artists or illustrators influence your work? I think the art here has a really cool classic feel—I love the contrast of the black and white city with the colorful inhabitants.

I always think that stories drive every single visual decision. Everything you do in making a book that’s visual should serve the story. Mr. Men [a series by Roger Hargreaves] was obviously an influence, but it was also a challenge because I didn’t want it to look like Mr. Men at all, but I love how it’s so simple and kind of quirky. It’s something that kids can draw really easily. And then there’s an artist named Brian Biggs and he does Tinyville Town. I really like his lines and how thick and broken they are. My linework is a little different, but I really love the way he draws buildings and the graphicness of it. I think the last person I really looked at a lot was Christian Robinson because he just does great naive art. It feels so honest to a kids experience. So I kind of meshed them all together and made my own thing.

I think you did such a nice job breaking down a heavy story about discrimination for such a young reader. You wrap up this huge concept in such a small number of pages. It feels almost effortless!

If I make it look easy than I did my job! The story is always the hard part. Stories can go a million different ways and you’re thinking so deeply about what it means and trying to get the tone right, so it was not easy. I teach classes about storytelling, and one thing I teach is that you want to try to simplify your story to that simple truth or simple feeling, the experience that every kid has or a simple truth in life.

The simple truth that I simplified it down to is: Kids bring people together. There are two different sides of family who oftentimes may have discrimination or feelings, oftentimes kids will bring them together. Kids don’t see race, they don’t have those extra implications at a young age. It was hard. I was lost for a lot of time but just simplifying it down to that moment where green is born and she’s new and no one’s ever seen her before. That unlocked the story and that’s what brings everyone together.

I was lost at so many other themes about preserving culture. There are lots of other things I’m pretty confused about that are for another book, I’m trying to come up with a sequel.

I would love a sequel!

It’s called Mixed Up, and it picks up right after we left off in the last book where the city wasn’t perfect, but it was home, which is where we are as a society. I think it’s along the lines of figuring out our feelings about culture. There are folks that are older and are afraid of losing Chinese culture or African culture or America, whatever that means. So they’re a little mixed up. They want to be forward thinking but they also want to find that line.

How did you approach this story as a first-generation Chinese American?

I think I actually wrote it more for my nieces. They’re mixed and I thought about them a lot. I’m pretty close to their family. I thought more about my nieces and my friends who have mixed kids than my own personal experiences. Definitely what’s going on in the world influenced the illustrations a lot more in terms of segregation and the protests that we see so much now with each side thinking that they’re right. I have [that experience] going into a middle grade novel I’m sort of working on. It’s called Ming Lee and it’s about growing up as a Chinese American and not feeling completely Chinese and not feeling completely American. There are lots of funny embarrassing stories about not fitting in quite right. You just pull from your life—it’s not that hard!

Sounds like you have so many projects coming up! I can’t wait.

I have too much stuff, it’s a blessing and a curse! 

What do you hope young readers take away from this story?

There are two main things. I’d say the first one is that every color is special, unique and different and the world is more colorful with the diversity of colors. I’d say that’s the main one. The world being full of diverse colors is a richer place, and I think the story shows that visually. And then I guess the second one is that being accepting of all sorts of people and there is no such thing as being better or best. I had the honor of showing this at a school visit recently and they get it. They ask some really powerful questions.

I hope that these are the discussions that will happen in schools across America and in some way bring this country a little bit closer together. That’s my hope for it.

Illustrations © Arree Chung

Website: www.arree.com
Shop for autographed books: https://shop.arree.com
Arree Chung’s Storyteller Academy: http://www.storytelleracademy.com

Betsy Bird is one of the most beloved children’s librarians, dare we say, of all time. This holiday season, she joins with Caldecott Medalist Dan Santat for a picture book about a clever Santa scheme. In The Great Santa Stakeout, Freddy Melcher is a St. Nick uberfan, and he’s determined to get a photo with the jolly old elf.

Our holiday wish (though it’s a bit early) was that Bird would visit Nashville sometime soon. We must’ve been good this year, because she’s coming for the Southern Festival of Books. Here she chats about the joys—and confrontations—of a children’s book event.

What is the mark of a really great book event?
Sheer unmitigated enthusiasm from all sides. The best book events I’ve ever seen are the ones where the staff putting on the event are engaged and excited, the authors and illustrators being featured are active and interested, and the attendees who have come are just generally in a hazy state of joy. It’s that combination of elements that yields magic. We’ve all seen bored authors, droopy readers and disinterested staff. It makes us appreciate all the more the people who absolutely love this business and everything it entails.

What is most challenging to discuss with readers about a book or the writing process?
You’ll hear authors kvetch when they get the “where do you get your ideas?” question, but I don’t believe it’s because the question is overdone. It’s more that authors often have no idea what the true answer is. Writing is, by definition, strange. I’m going to sit down, create words that represent pictures that appear in my brain and put them onto a page in an order that not only makes sense but, ideally, will reach into YOUR brain and elicit some kind of a response. Humans are keen on tangibles, and nothing is more intangible than writing. Trying to say as much to an earnest 8-year-old, however, requires a great deal of verbal wrangling.

When visiting a city for a book event, do you have any rituals, either for yourself or to get to know the city?
I don’t, but I think I should. What a good idea. You know what I’d like to do? I’d like to visit a children’s librarian in every city. Nobody knows the ins, outs, oddities, peculiarities and specificities of a city like a librarian that works with kids. Someday, when I am rich and bored with oodles of time on my hands, I want to become a roving reporter that visits cities in the news and interviews the children’s librarians there. Until then, maybe I should start with these book events.

“Nobody knows the ins, outs, oddities, peculiarities and specificities of a city like a librarian that works with kids.”

If you could sit in the audience for an event with any author, living or dead, who would you like to see read from and discuss their book?
Oh! That’s easy. I’m going to cheat and say four authors. I would like to sit in the audience and watch a three-way conversation between Shel Silverstein, James Marshall and Trina Schart Hyman. I would like this conversation to be moderated by Maurice Sendak, who would periodically yell at the panel to stay on topic or derail everything with his own anecdotes and stories.

Has a reader ever asked a question or made a comment at an event that made you see your work in a new light?
That’s the wonderful thing about kids. You think you know your book? You don’t know ANYTHING, bub! Not until you’ve faced down a 4-year-old that has told you, in no uncertain terms, that your picture book is little more than a bald-faced lie. A cupcake has clearly been portrayed on the cover, indicating that there are more cupcakes inside the book. But are there more cupcakes inside the book. There are NOT! I ask you, madam author, how do you sleep at night?

Children’s librarianship has a lot of skills and characteristics in common with the work that Santa and his elves do—getting to know kids, connecting with them on things they want and need, etc. If Santa asked you to assist him as an elf in his workshop or on his delivery route, how would you stack up?
I would be a living nightmare. You are correct that there are some correlations between Santa’s elves and children’s librarians. However, when we produce miracles, they are often unforeseen. If a child walks into my library and asks for a book, and that book is not there, I am trained to find the child, as fast as I am able, magnificent, wonderful, compelling alternatives to the missing item. Now imagine me as an elf. A child has politely asked me for a children’s book that I think is less than stellar. Come Christmas morning, they gleefully rip open their presents to find . . . a huge pile of (in my opinion) preferable readalikes. AUGH! That poor kid. I’d be so busy trying to find the right book for the right reader that I’d probably spend 20 minutes on one child while the list of others just grew and grew. I don’t think I’m cut out to be an elf quite yet.

Sun and Moon Have a Tea Party, a charming picture book about what we gain when we look at the world through someone else’s eyes, is author-illustrator Yumi Heo’s final book and was illustrated after her death by Naoko Stoop. BookPage spoke with Stoop about how she became involved with the project, finding inspiration during times of hardship and what she would serve at a tea party with Sun and Moon.

You have illustrated picture books that you’ve also written, and you’ve illustrated picture books written by other people. Is your illustration process different for each of those situations? What parts of the process are the same? What do you enjoy about each? 
I appreciate both situations. Illustrating what’s in my mind gives me more freedom in many ways because I don’t have to guess what the author wants to express or emphasize in each scene. But I learn and discover more and stretch my drawing abilities further by illustrating stories written by others. I have been very lucky to be paired with wonderful authors including Patrick McDonnell, Kate Banks and Yumi Heo. Those experiences definitely gave my illustration skills more depth.   

What was the experience of illustrating Yumi Heo’s final book like for you? How did you get involved, and what did the project mean to you?
In the summer of 2017, I received a manuscript with a notation that the author, Yumi Heo, had passed away. Although I immediately knew I wanted to illustrate this beautiful story, I also knew that this was going to be challenging, because it was Yumi’s final book.

I never met Yumi, unfortunately, but I did some online research about her work and watched videos of her interviews. I realized we had quite a bit in common. We both grew up in East Asia and started our art careers in New York City. In one interview, she talked about what it was like to be a foreigner in her early days in the city. I could relate to what she said. Maybe our shared experience of crossing cultural bridges brought us both to this place.

We have created a book that speaks to what it is like to not understand people who are different from us, but to learn about them and to reap the rewards of that understanding. 

What was your favorite part of creating the illustrations for Yumi’s story? Do you have a favorite image or spread from the book?
There is a spread showing a busy square in a city. I enjoyed drawing all kinds of people, giving it a sense of diversity—just like in my circle of friends here in New York City. 

You often paint on plywood or brown paper bags. What do you like about painting with objects from everyday life?
I didn’t have formal art education. As an adult, I was playing around with my art at the beginning, just for my own pleasure, so I didn’t really need to worry about presentation. I painted on anything I could find. I especially loved drawing on brown paper bags from the grocery store and on leftover scrap plywood from a nearby factory. I think I just wanted to express myself, and those perfect materials were right there.

Authors and illustrators aren’t able to visit schools right now—at least not in person—but when you are able to share this book with young readers, what are you looking forward to talking about with them?
It has been a strange time. It’s hard to see children without school life. Although we are lucky enough to be able to keep communicating online, it’s never the same. I hope they can go back to school and study with teachers and friends in the same room again soon.

This has been a good time to learn about different perspectives. We only know what we know, and we have a lot to learn. Sun and Moon get into an argument in this book. We learn that we should not judge others before we know their story. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Sun and Moon Have a Tea Party.

How do you find inspiration during times of challenge and hardship?
I have been really grateful that I have a roof over my head and food to eat, and that I am healthy and working. During times of challenge and hardship like this, fear and anxiety can easily take over, but I find that if I stay focused on what I have and how that makes me happy each day, I find inspiration everywhere in small things.

During the stay-at-home period, I started a no-soil veggie garden on my windowsill, I started walking with my cat daily, and I met some neighbors I never knew before through walking her. I started bird-watching in my urban backyard; I spotted a pair of cardinals, along with other birds I can’t name. I now know how to cook more dishes, how to sew colorful masks and how to use new technology to connect remotely with people. . . . All of this inspires me.   

What’s next for you? Are you working on any new illustration projects that you’d like to share?
Currently, I am working on a storybook written by Donna Jo Napoli. It’s about a Japanese girl who has recently come to America and begins a friendship with the girl next door. Children are open with each other, even without a common language or cultural heritage. We have a lot to learn from them.

If you could have a tea party with Sun and Moon, what kind of tea would you like to have? What kind of cookies would you bring?
Just like in the book, it would be an Asian-style tea party with green tea and seaweed rice crackers. There would be iced tea for Sun to cool down and strong coffee for Moon to stay wide-awake all night! And I would bake cupcakes decorated with the sun and moon on sugary whipped-cream clouds. Yummy!  

Author photo by Rocco’s Photo Tavern. Illustration used with permission of Naoko Stoop.