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.

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.