The Childrens Book Review » Award Winners

Award-Winning Illustrator Marla Frazee & the Best Interview Ever

Bianca Schulze — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:50:03 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: January 30, 2012

Marla Frazee

Marla Frazee is the award-winning author and illustrator of many celebrated bestselling books including The Seven Silly Eaters, Stars, The Boss Baby, Roller Coaster, and the Clementine series. Her acclaimed books All the World and A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever received the Caldecott Honor Award. She lives in southern California with her husband and three sons, where she works in a backyard studio under an avocado tree. I’m willing to bet she makes some crazy delicious guacamole.

Nicki Richesin: You knew from a very young age that you wanted to become a children’s book illustrator. It must have felt incredibly gratifying when A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever won the Caldecott Honor Award. How does it feel now looking back on your youth and realizing your single-minded determination and drive has helped you achieve your goal?

Marla Frazee: You mean aside from making me feel old? Well, I guess I had determination and drive to some extent, but when I compare my growing up years to my children’s growing up years, I honestly feel like I was a slacker! I just loved children’s books, and I loved drawing and reading and writing stuff, and I never stopped loving all of that. I did get very serious in college – I attended Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and the program was so grueling that I hardly retain any memories of that time because I was so sleep-deprived.

NR: Your latest book Stars is a gorgeous, magical book about stars and all their practical applications, but it’s also about wishing. Could you tell us a bit about working on this project?

MF: When I first read Mary Lyn Ray’s manuscript, it reminded me of A Hole is to Dig with its seemingly random, childlike sentences and it’s high-wire act of how-is-she-gonna-pull-this-off, oh-my-god-she-just-did! I thought it would be impossible to illustrate, which is why it was so intriguing. I spent many months just thinking about it before I started sketching. It is always fascinating when a book begins to take form, because it goes from being abstract to tangible almost on its own accord. I am often surprised by this, even though I am making it.

I work very closely throughout this process with my editor, Allyn Johnston, VP and Publisher of Beach Lane Books, and we discuss the emergent book at every single stage of its development. I depend on that give-and-take very much.

When it was time to paint the finishes for Stars, I had to make an effort to slow myself down. Some of the paintings in Stars were laborious. Hundreds of layers of watercolor, hundreds of snowflakes, hundreds of mossy stars, etc. But it was calming, too, and I usually need to calm down.

NR: Many of our TCBR readers are aspiring authors and will be encouraged to learn that it took you a long time to break into children’s book publishing. You worked in advertising, educational publishing, and toys and games wherein your artwork was used to communicate messages or teach something, but with children’s books you had to tell a story. You’ve said it took you quite a while to develop this storytelling component in your illustrations. How did you eventually learn to do it?

MF: Yes, it is always helpful to hear a story such as mine and I am more than happy to share it. Even now, I get all prickly when I hear about someone who was offered a contract by the first publisher who saw their work or someone whose first book hit #1 on the NYT bestseller list. I hate those kind of stories. I’m all for delayed gratification.

What I had to do was learn how to tell stories with my pictures. At first I didn’t even know what that meant because I thought I was already doing it. After all these years of drawing stories and trying to teach it, I think it boils down to a pretty simple rule: it takes time to get to know the characters in a book and the world they inhabit. My first sketches are always horrible. Stereotypical. Contrived. Generic. I have to put in the time in order to deepen them and have it all mean something.

NR: In the Clementine books, you wanted your images to hearken back to that era and to look as if they came from that time. You’ve said you’d like your work to appear as “fresh as paint, but to have been around long enough to be a classic.” How do you accomplish this in your illustrations?

MF: This is a hard question! No one has ever asked me that before.

I work on the book’s structure before I know what the content of each illustration will be. I think there was a formality to the classic books I admire and I try to riff on (or out-and-out rip off!) some aspect of that with each book. I never just wing it when it comes to structure – and I’m referring here to the pagination and layout of words and pictures within the picture book form. I plan it out, using the rhythm and meaning of the manuscript to dictate what the relationship between words and pictures should be on the page.

NR: When you’re searching for a manuscript to illustrate, you look for a challenging and exciting project- almost like a puzzle you want to understand. You work on a book for about a year. At which point in this process, do you usually feel as if you’ve begun to solve the puzzle?

MF: I definitely feel like it is solved when I have a finished sketch dummy, with text and images in place, page turns figured out, content in the pictures established. Before that, it is all in flux. By the time I start to paint, I’ve got a pretty good handle on what is going on with the book. Then it is a matter of executing it. Sometimes there is a lot of trial and error in the beginning of the painting process before I get a sense of the materials and color palette I want to use. But that’s a different and lesser challenge to me, because by that time, the puzzle of the manuscript is solved.

NR: I loved one of your earlier books called Mrs. Biddlebox about a frustrated crank who decides to bake a cake to lift her mood. I was shocked to learn that the author Linda Smith died the same year this book was published. I wondered whether you knew Linda personally and if her death affected your work on Mrs. Biddlebox?

MF: I didn’t get to meet Linda in person, but we spoke on the phone a few times. I called her to see if there was anything she might want to share with me about the book. This is not the way it typically works between authors and illustrators, of course. Usually discussions about the development of a book go through the editor. But I knew that there was a chance Linda would never get to see the finished book and I felt it was important for me to hear what she might want to say. I’m glad I did, because Linda died before I even started the first sketches.

Linda was very professional during our phone conversation and didn’t want to influence my thinking, but she finally shared some of her thoughts. One was that Mrs. Biddlebox should have a pet of some kind, and she suggested a mangy dog or a skinny cat or something. In the initial sketches, I drew Mrs. Biddlebox with a dog and a cat and then a goat and I even tried a raccoon. Finally I settled on the goose. It seemed right. It turns out that Linda used to have a goose named Gabby who would follow her around and bite her through her jeans. Linda’s husband and kids said Linda would have been delighted with Mrs. Biddlebox and her goose. This convinced me that I was taking good care of Linda’s brilliant story, even though she wasn’t alive to see the finished book.

While I illustrated Mrs. Biddlebox, it was often hard to keep from focusing on the sadness of Linda’s death and still honor her wickedly subversive and darkly funny manuscript. It was a balancing act, and maybe because of that it remains one of the most gratifying projects I’ve worked on.

NR: You received the Caldecott Honor Award in 2009 for A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever. You must be grateful that you created this thank-you card/book at your editor’s suggestion. Did it feel different working on a project that sort of documents your son’s adventures rather than working on a fictional project that another author dreamed up?

MF: Absolutely. My editor (whose son is the other boy in the story) and I were often worried that we were engaged in a vanity project, God forbid. Luckily we never thought this at the same moment or we would’ve bagged it. But one of us was always convincing the other that there was something happening with it that was worth our attention. As the book came into being, the story began to take on a life of its own. Basically, A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever is a highly fictionalized account of a very real week. The emotions are all true. The events, well, not so much.

NR: The Seven Silly Eaters is a family favorite in our home. I especially love that Mrs. Peters found the time to play her cello, as if! Could you describe how you first brought the Peters’s family’s adventures to life with your humorous and lively pictures?

MF: Mary Ann Hoberman is brilliant, of course. But the premise of The Seven Silly Eaters – seven children, all of them with weird eating issues, and a mother who is actually attempting to meet their needs – is almost disturbing. The challenge was how to temper it. Linda Zuckerman, my first editor and the editor of The Seven Silly Eaters, thought the way to do that was to illustrate it with animal characters. But I really wanted it to be a human family. I related very strongly with the mother. The story is really about how she is pulled in all directions by the demands of raising children. What parent among us can’t relate to that?

I felt the cello was a way of reinforcing the mother’s identity. She is in danger of seeming like a dishrag. I also pared down the world this family exists in. They have no neighbors, no jobs, no car, no phones, no TV. And I put a dad in the book. Mary Ann Hoberman never mentions a dad in the text. Imagine. A woman having a baby every time there’s a page turn? With no dad in the picture? THAT wouldn’t have worked at all! Of course, he’s implied. But it is amazing how when we look at picture books, it is often hard to remember what story is being told in the words and what story is being told in the pictures. And that’s how it should be – a seamless experience of words and pictures telling a larger story together than could be told by either the words or pictures alone. That is what we aim for every time up to bat.

NR: Your Caldecott Honor Award-winning All the World is truly a masterpiece. It somehow subtly balances the stunning splendor of the world (in your illustrations) with the beautiful simplicity of the poetic text (by Liz Garton Scanlon). I’d love to know more about your creative process on this book.

MF: Liz Garton Scanlon’s manuscript is an incredible mix of expansiveness, intimacy, specificity, poetry, emotion, and universal truth. When Allyn sent it to me seconds after she received it, she didn’t wait in a polite way to see if I would be interested. She demanded that I drop what I was doing and start illustrating this thing called All the World right away! This is not the way we usually talk about new projects. There is typically a lot of hemming and hawing and whatnot. But as soon as I read it, I understood where she was coming from.

All the World was daunting. The challenge here, for me, was how to portray “all the world.” An impossible task. When I am confronted with an illustrative problem that seems insurmountable, it is usually that I am thinking too literally and I need to find the emotional truth of whatever it is I’m trying to figure out. In the case of All the World, I decided that no one – certainly not me – has ever experienced “all the world,” but we all have the sense that we belong here. On good days, at least. When I personally feel like I belong to the world, it is because I am with people I love in places I love. So I decided that would be my solution. I set All the World in a place I love – the central coast region of Southern California – and populated it with people and things that I love. I stopped worrying that I wasn’t representing every place, every person, every possible experience. And I hoped that through this personal expression of mine, others would find their own personal meanings as well.

I do believe this to be the over-arching philosophy behind most of the books I’ve fallen in love with over the years. The more personal and heartfelt the story is for the author and/or illustrator of the book, the more universal the emotion that can be gleaned from it. We see this again and again. But it’s hard to remember. It is so easy to go to a place of, “Well, that’s just about me. No one will care about that.” But actually, if it comes from a true place and is spoken from the heart, people do care. A lot.

NR: Could you tell us a bit about your upcoming book Boot & Shoe and any other projects you’re working on?

MF: I’ve just put the finishing touches on Boot & Shoe. It’s about two (almost) identical dogs who live in the same house – one spending his days on the front porch and one spending his days on the back porch. This is the perfect arrangement for them, until a squirrel comes along and seriously messes with their heads. The most difficult thing about Boot & Shoe was keeping it light and not bogging it down with extraneous detail. I hope I did that. I think I did, because when I look at the completed book, I wonder why on earth it was so hard to do. It seems like it should’ve been so easy. I think that’s a good sign. I am going to take it that way because otherwise I’m just beating myself up.

Now I’m beginning work on the 6th book in Sara Pennypacker’s Clementine series. There will be 7 altogether. Sara is bringing this series to a close in the most amazing way.

My next project after that is still under wraps because it involves a book with a text that was published previously, but was not illustrated. I’m very excited about it. And in preparation, I’ve signed up for an oil painting class at Art Center. So I am suddenly a student again, instead of a teacher, working totally out of my comfort zone.

That’s got to be good, right?

Nicki Richesin is the editor of four anthologies,What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding On To, and Letting Go of Their Daughters; Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond; Crush: 26 Real-Life Tales of First Love; and The May Queen: Women on Life, Work, and Pulling it all Together in your Thirties. Her anthologies have been excerpted and praised in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Redbook, Parenting, Cosmopolitan, Bust, Salon, Daily Candy, and Babble.

Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, 2012

Bianca Schulze — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:52:16 +0000

By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: January 25, 2012

Winner

Honor Book

“The Michael L. Printz Award is an award for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature. It is named for a Topeka, Kansas school librarian who was a long-time active member of the Young Adult Library Services Association. The award is sponsored by Booklist, a publication of the American Library Association.” ~YALSA

(Theodor Seuss) Geisel Award, 2012

Bianca Schulze — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:47:02 +0000

By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: January 23, 2012

Medal Winner

Honor Book

“The Geisel Award is given annually to the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished American book for beginning readers published in English in the United States during the preceding year.” ~ALSC

Caldecott Medal, 2012

Bianca Schulze — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 21:15:28 +0000

By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: January 23, 2012

Medal Winner

Honor Book

“The Caldecott Medal was named in honor of nineteenth-century English illustrator Randolph Caldecott. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.” ~ALSC

Newbery Medal Winners, 2012

Bianca Schulze — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:46:09 +0000

By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: January 23, 2012

Medal Winner

Honor Book

“The Newbery Medal was named for eighteenth-century British bookseller John Newbery. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.” ~ALSC

Jane Yolen, America’s Hans Christian Andersen

Bianca Schulze — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 20:33:18 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: December 27, 2011

Known as the “Hans Christian Andersen of America,” Jane Yolen has written over 300 books including Owl Moon, winner of the 1988 Caldecott Medal. She has also been awarded the Regina Medal, the Kerlan Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Society of Children’s Book Writers Award, the Mythopoetic Society’s Aslan Award, the Christopher Medal, the Boy’s Club Jr. Book Award, the Garden State Children’s Book Award, the Daedalus Award, a number of Parents’ Choice Magazine Awards, and many more. A devoted mother and grandmother, she lives four months of the year in St. Andrews, Scotland and the rest at her home in Massachusetts.

Nicki Richesin: You began writing stories, essays, and poetry as a child and continued as a gold star student at Smith College. You sold your first book Pirates in Petticoats (love this title!) on your 21st birthday. That must have been an exciting day for you. How did you become a children’s book author?

Jane Yolen: By accident. I thought I was a poet (of adult poems) for my heart and a journalist for my pocketbook. But somehow the first book I sold was for kids. It turned out that I loved doing it so much that of my over 300 books, all but about twenty are for children.

Your late husband David Stemple was the inspiration for Pa in Owl Moon for which you won a Caldecott Medal. Your husband had a profound impact on your life and writing. How did he encourage you and influence your work?

JY: First, I want to be sure that you (and your readers) know that the book won a Caldecott, an award given to the illustrator and the book, not the author. Though of course I benefit as well!’

As to David, he was not only my cheerleader, my inspiration/muse, at times my gadfly, he was always my first reader.

Some of your most recent books like Sister Bear: A Norse Tale and Snow in Summer seem terribly romantic and yet like Not One Damsel in Distress knock the charming prince to the rescue off his horse. How important to you is it that you create feminist role models for young readers?

JY: I don’t labor to send a message in my stories. Boring books are written that way. Didactic books are written that way. However, as a modern woman I can’t help but be influenced by the zeitgeist. So all those butt-kicking young women seem to fall naturally from my fingers onto the keyboard and thence the page.

Your fantastic book The Devil’s Arithmetic was adapted to film by Dustin Hoffman. How did it feel to see actors speaking words you had written and bringing them to life on the big screen? Would you like to see any of your other books adapted to film?

JY: Well, films come with big paydays, so of course authors like to have them happen. BUT films also come with big problems, changes, even the massacre of favorite characters. So it is always a mixed blessing. Film and print are simply two very different and demanding mediums.

Scotland is the original land of the faeries- a country rich with folklore, fairy tales and traditions. I believe many of your books (including Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast) were inspired in part by your time there. How has living part-time in Scotland influenced your writing, if at all?

JY: Lots and lots. Three ways really. 1. Sometimes directly: a story is set there. Like the Tartan Magic series. Tam Lin picture book. Lost Boy: The Story of James M. Barrie and Peter Pan picture book. 2. Sometimes indirectly, i.e. a setting or character or turn of phrase. Wild Hunt is definitely my Scottish House, but only I know that. And 3. I write more during the summers I am there, and the light floods in from 4:30 a.m. till nearly midnight. I am a writer in the daylight not the dark.

You’ve been inspired by your great love of both folklore and poetry in your writing. Which came first for you, the beauty of words or the legend that brought them forth?

JY: Both, inextricable.

What does it mean to you when you say, “I still believe in books”?

JY: I know that story delivery systems are changing even as we speak. Phone apps and e-books and movies, and TV and and and and. . .but story still remains. However, I love books, the physical nature of them, how they smell, how they feel in the hand, how a page is turned, the rustle it makes. How I can annotate, turn down a corner of a page, tear a piece out. (Shhh, don’t let anyone know I said that.)

You’ve said, “I don’t care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.” You’ve written so many stories at this point. Are there still more you feel as if you’re still itching to write that have been waiting for you to tell them?

JY: At 72, I KNOW I don’t have the time to write down all the stories still in my head.

I read on your blog that you’ve been writing a poem a day since January 1. Would you be kind enough to share your favorite one with us?

JY: Perhaps not my favorite, but one of them:

February 1:

Month’s Turning

This is the turn of the month,

Cornerstone of the year.

Forty some days towards the light.

I am still here, still here.

This is the hurtling snow,

Trees groaning heavy with white,

When the writing comes hard and comes slow,

And it’s still night, still night.

This is the furnace’s laughter.

This is the plow’s early call.

The driveway holds ice that is hidden,

And I have to watch for a fall, a fall.

This is the turn of the winter.

This is the inning of fear.

This is the month of my birthday.

And I am still here, still here.

©2011 by Jane Yolen, all rights reserved

Thank you so much for your time.

Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night

Bianca Schulze — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 07:04:26 +0000

Add this book to your collection: Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman

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Movie Trailer: Hugo Cabret

Bianca Schulze — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 07:09:50 +0000

The movie version of one of my favorite books of all-time, releases on November 23, 2011. Please read the book before seeing the movie—it’s outstanding!

Add this book to your collection: The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

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Review: Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai

Bianca Schulze — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:50:40 +0000

By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: April 26, 2011

Inside Out & Back Again

by Thanhha Lai

Reading level: Ages 8-12

Hardcover: 272 pages

Publisher: HarperCollins (February 22, 2011)

Source: Publisher

Award: 2011 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature

What to expect: Vietnamese Americans, Emigration and immigration, Immigrants, Vietnam, Alabama

How much do we know about those around us? This is the question that debut novelist Thanhha Lai challenges her readers with.

Based on Lai’s own personal experience as a Vietnamese refugee, Inside Out & Back Again is a poignant story divided into four parts using a series of poems that chronicle the life of 10-year-old Hà, a child–refugee from Vietnam, during the year 1975—the Fall of Saigon. Along with her mother and three brothers (her father has been missing in action for nine years), Hà travels by boat to a tent city in Guam, is moved to Florida and then finds herself living in Alabama sponsored by an “American cowboy” and his wife. In Alabama, the family are treated as outcasts and forced to integrate quickly through language, food, and religion, to be accepted as a part of the community.

Adjustments to Hà’s new life are delivered through smells and tastes and touch. In “Part One: Saigon,” a verse titled “Two More Papayas” gives Hà’s delectable description of her most cherished fruit. In “Part Three: Alabama,” a verse titled “Not the Same,” which is followed by “But Not Bad,” showcases the bitter differences between the comfort of her precious birth city and the emotional challenges of her new home in Alabama, combined with the acceptance of change.

Two More Papayas

“…Middle sweet
between a mango and a pear.

Soft as a yam
gliding down
after three easy,
thrilling chews.”

Not the Same

“Three pouches of papaya

dried papaya

Chewy

Sugary

Waxy

Sticky

Not the same

at all.

So mad,

I throw all in the trash.”

But Not Bad

“… I wake up at faint light,

guilt heavy on my chest.

I head toward the trash can.

Yet

on the dining table

on a plate

sit strips of papaya

gooey and damp,

having been soaked in hot water.

The sugar has melted off

leaving

plump

moist

chewy

bites.

Hummm …

Not the same,

but not bad

at all.”

Told with pure honesty, emotions run freely from verse to verse and page to page. Hà’s voice is clear, allowing readers to make a leap from sympathy to deep seeded empathy by experiencing her joy, pain, anger, frustration, loyalties, challenges, loss, and determination. The clarity of Hà’s self-awareness and development toward self-actualization is reminiscent of Susan Patron‘s character Lucky, also a 10-year-old girl, from the Newbery winner (2007) The Higher Power of Lucky (2006). Both characters suffer loss, make mistakes, struggle through emotional challenges, and, through sheer determination, intrinsically blossom.

Lai has created an emotionally powerful novel inspired by her own memories and each word is to be savored, pondered, experienced, and felt. Beautiful!

Add this book to your collection: Inside Out and Back Again

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Bink and Gollie by Kate DiCamillo & Alison McGhee

Bianca Schulze — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 02:13:09 +0000

Add this book to your collection: Bink and Gollie

Award: Theodor Seuss Geisel Award Winner, 2011

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