The Childrens Book Review » Author Interviews

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.

Patricia Polacco: Great Artist and Storyteller

Bianca Schulze — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 04:40:34 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: January 10, 2012

Patricia Polacco

Patricia Polacco is the much-loved, award-winning author of many children’s picture books. She brings boundless imagination and her cultural heritage to her storytelling with her uniquely bold illustrations and great ability to spin a yarn. She has most recently published Bun Bun Button and Just in Time, Abraham Lincoln. The new documentary Tricia’s Michigan gives viewers a rare glimpse into her beautiful Michigan home to see her doing what she loves best, working on her books.

Nicki Richesin: Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to chat with me. My daughter and I have loved reading your beautiful books for years now. You’ve created quite a remarkable collection of children’s books. Do you consider yourself a born storyteller?

Patricia Polacco: I don’t know that story tellers are born. I think I was shaped into one by being raised by amazing story tellers. My dad was a wonderful story teller, his family was Irish. My mother’s people were Russian and Ukrainian, natural story tellers. So I literally, inherited it from both sides.

You’ve talked of the huge influence your grandparents had on your life and the cultural legacy they left you and your family. We’ve enjoyed reading your many books about doting grandparents who teach important lessons to their grandchildren (such as The Bee Tree, Babushka’s Doll, and Thunder Cake). My best friend read When Lightning Comes in a Jar to my daughter and actually started weeping as she read it. How do you convincingly convey your grandparents’ wisdom to future generations?

I guess I am relating how it happened to me. You can be convincing when you are telling a memory that is true.

You studied iconography, received a Ph.D. in Art History, and used to restore icons for museums. In your illustrations, you have recreated some truly stunning images. You’ve also inserted actual photographs of the people you’ve known and loved in your books. How did you replicate this art work as you did with Russian art in Rechenka’s Eggs and Babushka’s Mother Goose?

You color xerox it and keep reducing it in size until you have the size you want and then simply paste it into the artwork.

You lived in Oakland, California for many years and then decided to move back to your childhood hometown Union City, Michigan. How did living in the San Francisco bay area influence your work and how has returning to Michigan again after all these years changed, if at all, how you work?

Well obviously, living in Oakland, the multiculturalism of that life influenced how I wrote. I don’t know that it has changed how I work. If anything, it has added a richness due to the absolute difference of living here. Small town compared to big city.

In your new book, Just in Time, Abraham Lincoln, you tell a time travel story about two little boys who meet President Lincoln during the Civil War. I got chills when the boys show him a penny with his profile on it and tell him that one day there will be an African-American president. I know your home at Meteor Ridge Farm was once part of the Underground Railroad and briefly visited by President Lincoln. Did you feel his spirit move you to write this book?

In a strange way, yes. I was also influenced by taking many, many train trips through Harpers Ferry, which is the setting for the story. But I have been a Lincoln scholar for years.

I’m told your latest book Bun Bun Button was inspired by a young fan who gave you her much-loved stuffed animal at a reading. I know other children’s book authors, like Beverly Cleary, have been similarly inspired by letters or by meeting their fans. You also host bi-annual events, like the Meteor Festival, at your home for your devoted readers. Could you tell us a little bit about your relationship with your fans and how they have inspired you in your work?

Just a correction here; the little girl, Morgan, did not “give” me her Bun Bun, she let me hold it briefly. I do between 150 and 200 school visits a year and you can’t help but be inspired when you are around young people. I am inspired everyday by observing things that children do and think and say.

You’ve written so many award-winning books. Is there a story you’ve been longing to tell that you haven’t written yet?

I have a wonderful Christmas tale that I am going to be writing in the next couple of months that is a grand tale that I have wanted to write for years. It is called Gifts of the Heart and is a personal story of my childhood.

I recently read your marvelous Babushka Baba Yaga to my daughter and it was the first time I had read a version of this story wherein Baba Yaga was a kind and sympathetic character. How did you come to create this story?

I took 50 American school children one summer with me to Russia. We were doing an art camp in a small village about 60 miles north of St. Petersburg. These children ranged in age from 9 to 17 years old. They had preconceived ideas, as most Americans did, about what Russians are like. So in a real sense, they believed all Russians were like the original Baba Yaga that appears in so much folklore. I took these kids for a walk through a dense forest and we started talking about the legends of the Baba Yaga. I put the notion to them, what if everything we read about her is a lie? Just as everything they had heard about Russians, they were discovering was quite untrue. This inspired a version in my heart of a Baba Yaga who had been completely misunderstood and demonized by vicious rumors and untruths.

A documentary called Tricia’s Michigan has just been released about your life and work in your hometown. It received a starred review from the School Library Journal and gives viewers the rare opportunity to enter your everyday life. Could you tell us a bit about how this project came about and your experience making the film?

The young filmmaker, Evan Polivy, is the son of a former book store owner that I have known for the last twenty-seven years. He contacted me and asked if he could bring his crew to my farm and collect film footage for a video. I jumped at it because I have known him since he was a little boy. I was stunned at the professionalism and the questions that he asked. I think he got a very real slice of life while he was here and put it together so beautifully.

What projects are you working on now and what can we expect to read from you next? What gives you the most satisfaction about your work?

The project I am working on as we speak is the prequel to The Keeping Quilt. It is called The Blessing Cup and describes Anna’s life during the pogroms in Russia and why the family was forced to leave and come to America. I am also working on new chapters to be added to the existing end of The Keeping Quilt, bringing it up to current times.

The Art of Miss Chew is about a wonderful art teacher that changed my life. This book is being released in April of this year. Also, Bully, which is about cyber-bullying among 6th grade girls. I believe that comes out this fall. Coming after that will be The Keeping Quilt and The Blessing Cup and also a biography of Clara Barton. My first young adult novel about the Holocaust, called The Pishky Box, will be coming out in a year or two.

What gives me the most satisfaction about my work? I guess the completion of it, leaving a record here that is going to last longer than my flesh and bones.

Interview with Bestselling Author & Illustrator LeUyen Pham

Bianca Schulze — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:48:43 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: January 9, 2012

LeUyen Pham

Bestselling author and illustrator, LeUyen Pham, began her career as a layout artist for DreamWorks Feature Animation. She wrote and illustrated All The Things I Love About You and Big Sister, Little Sister and is the illustrator of numerous other picture books. LeUyen maintains a blog with regular updates about her forthcoming titles. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, artist Alex Puvilland, and two sons.

Nicki Richesin: You made a rather dramatic exit from Saigon when you were two years old. Does your Vietnamese ancestry influence your work at all?

LeUyen Pham: I don’t think it does in the way that you mean. I never studied Vietnamese art in school, nor did we ever have much in the manner of art around our house. We were an immigrant family, refugees, and art was not a big part of our childhood. But I think the Vietnamese work ethic has definitely affected how I work. I’m one of those illustrators who will remained strapped to the drawing for days on end if somebody doesn’t stop me, and I have a hard time separating what I’d call from what I’d do on my own free time anyway. If I’m not staying busy, I tend to go a bit nutty. I think my mother was the same – she always seemed to be juggling multiple jobs, multiple projects. Sundays were no more or less a day of rest than Mondays for her.

Your first book (that you wrote as well as illustrated) was the lovely Big Sister, Little Sister. Why did you want to write this book for your sister?

LP: That book is so funny to me. It was originally written as a birthday present for my sister, laced with vignettes and comments that I thought only she would understand and find funny. We were on vacation together in Italy when I gave it to her. I remember we had just gotten into a big fight, too, about where to eat dinner. We had returned to our hotel room, and we were both being pouty. I tossed her the gift, rather off-handedly, saying something like, “Well, here’s your present anyway.” And she opened it, read it, started crying. And then we both got all emotional together, and went out for a gelato.

I hadn’t intended for it to be published, but when one of my editors first saw it, she immediately wanted to send it to print. I guess that’s the beauty of that particular book, the theme is so universal and relatable that I could have written it for any sister out there. But in the true theme of the book, once it was published, my sister called me up to ask for her share of the royalties. Sisters!

You’ve illustrated picture books for some very famous authors like Archbishop Desmond Tutu (God’s Dream) and Julianne Moore (the Freckleface Strawberry series). Did you collaborate with them on these projects or did you have the freedom to interpret their work in your own way?

LP: In both cases you mentioned, I was lucky enough to have some very smart and considerate editors who sort of let me have at it first. I think it was for my own protection more than anything, and probably a good thing, as I was admirer of both authors. In the case of Freckleface Strawberry, I was actually living in Paris for a while, and sketched her at cafes. Consequently, she’s a pretty savvy fashionista. Julie seemed thrilled with how I’d interpreted her, and that cemented our trust in each other as author/illustrator. Now Freckleface comes so easily to me, in terms of her emotional responses and gestures that I don’t think even my editor would suggest too many changes.

With Archbishop Tutu, I found an equal amount of liberty. In fact, I even recall an instance where the editor called for a change to an image that she found to be too controversial, I think it was an image of children praying in different manners around the world. I was asked to remove them from the thumbnails, but when Archbishop Tutu saw them missing, he insisted that the image be returned. So he was sort of my partner-in-crime, on that one. In fact, his daughter Mpho Tutu, who is a reverend in her own right, loved that particular piece so much that I gave it to her as a gift.

Could you walk us through the first steps you take when you begin sketching and dreaming about the book you’ve agreed to illustrate? How do you choose the books you want to work on?

LP: My main requirement is that on the initial reading of the manuscript, I have to immediately have a vision of the story in my head. That sounds simple enough, but you’d be surprised at the number of manuscripts out there that are visually very limiting. Stories with excessive word counts, embellishments, over-whelming descriptions, are always turn-offs. I always find that the best picture books operate on two tracks – the oral rhythmic speech (the story ALWAYS has to read well aloud), and the parallel visual story. Sometimes the two aren’t telling the same story, though they’re servicing the same script. Or for instance, in a book I completed just recently called Vampirina Ballerina (Hyperion Books for Children), the story is actually an instruction manual for a vampire who would like to become a ballerina (i.e. “Take night classes,” “You won’t be able to look in the mirror for proper form,” “Don’t bite the other students”). But the accompanying visual story is really about a young outsider who finds a way to achieve her goals without losing her identity. The emotional resonance I put in the character reflected me as a child, never quite fitting in, being an AWFUL ballet dancer, and wearing a bathing suit rather than a leotard to class. Finding that emotional turning point for me was key to making the manuscript more than it was.

You’re a mentor with the Motivarti Mentors Program. How important is it to you to make time to encourage and help young artists?

LP: I used to teach a while back, but found that it was actually extremely difficult to motivate others while maintaining my own identity as an artist. When you teach, the energy level required is extremely high, and you come home exhausted and not wanting to do your own work. I had to stop teaching as a consequence, but I’ve really really missed it. So when I got emails from students and young artists looking for advice, I’m always very keen on giving lots of advice if I can. With two young kids, that’s not always the easiest thing to do, but I try. I remember how important mentors were for me as a fledgling artist, and how much their words carry weight even to this day. I’d hardly expect my own words to be so far-reaching, but nowadays, it’s such a difficult business, and any words or advice I can offer up I will. Although sometimes students won’t like what I have to say! As a teacher, I think I had a reputation for being rather critical. But my goal in critiques was not to give the students my own opinion, but to get them to give theirs, to self-analyze and improve their work on their own. Because of course after you graduate, you’re facing that drawing table alone!

Your husband Alex Puvilland is also an artist. Do you ever work together and if so, do you have any future projects percolating?

LP: Besides our two kids you mean? Which believe me, are projects unto themselves. My husband and I used to work in animation together, actually, back in the day when we were young students fresh from school. The first time I met him, he didn’t speak much English, but he was already an amazing draftsman. We didn’t get together until years later. And we only started working on a joint project about five years ago. I had been offered the manuscript for The Prince of Persia by Mark Siegel. I had never worked with him personally before but he had seen my work when he was a designer at Simon and Schuster. I had illustrated a book there called Twenty One Elephants by Phil Bildner, a historically based picture book based in Brooklyn about the Brooklyn Bridge. I must have really impressed Mark with that book, because I had completed in record time, about three months from when I was handed the manuscript to when I delivered the art. I think it was my speed that affected him the most, because when he offered me the script for Prince of Persia, he warned me that it came with a deadline of nine months. It was a 180 page book! I don’t think he offered it to many artists, because I think most artists would have thought him crazy. And honestly, if I were more of a sane person, I would have felt the same. But for some reason, the only reason I thought of rejecting it was because at the time he offered me the script, I was two months pregnant and hadn’t told anyone in the publishing world yet. I talked it over with Alex. He works as a production illustrator for Dreamworks Feature Animation. His first love, however, has always been comics, having been raised in France where graphic novels are read as commonly as any other novel. While we were discussing the offer Mark had made me, I realized that Alex would be the PERFECT person to illustrate this story with. Not only is he an amazing artist with a very acute gift for storytelling, but he was also a true comic book connoisseur. So what that we had never worked on a project together before? And with Alex at the helm, we would be sure to make the deadline. Alex was hesitant at first to do it—probably wisely more concerned than I about us working together. But he finally agreed, and we suggested it to Mark, who was immediately enthusiastic about it. Mark had been looking for an excuse to work with Alex for a while anyway, and this would be a good point to start. And between the two of us, we managed to not only make the deadline, but we also turned the book in a couple weeks early. This, of course, was mostly because the due date of the book coincided with the due date of our baby. We had many many arguments about story interpretation to design and our artist egos were definitely bruised along the way, but over all, it was great practice for having a baby. We were forced to make decisions together, we learned how to compromise, and we felt the inexplicable pleasure of having accomplished something we both were proud of.

Following Prince of Persia, Mark offered us another manuscript by the same creator, Jordan Mechner. This was to be a massive endeavor, a historical graphic novel about the Templar Knights called Solomon’s Thieves. I think the title has changed, but what started out to be a three book collection has turned into a whopping 400+ book. We’re just finishing it up now, and I can tell you it’s a whopper. I think we’d like to work together again, as it’s a lot of fun to work with your partner on things. We’re one of those really rare couples who can work very well together (thank goodness!).

You recently published Freckleface Strawberry: Best Friends Forever. Freckleface Strawberry has been made into a musical. Have you seen it and what can you tell us about it? Were you at all involved in the production?

LP: I did see it, when it had its official opening. Julie was there, red-carpet and all. It was really weird to see, to be honest! In a good way, of course. I think I’m considered an official creative partner, but really I got to view some of the set designs and sign off on them. I didn’t really know what to expect until the curtain went up, and there was my book, blown to larger-than-life size on the stage. And there were props and costumes, all inspired by the book. It was surreal! I felt like asking if I could take some of the props home! The musical is great, amazingly fun, and the main character has been interpreted in such a lovely way. I kind of wish that if the book goes into a T.V. series, they could get the main star of the musical to do the voice. And of course, the set designer and the director spoke with me afterwards, and told me how capturing the look of the book was their main goal in the design. It was really pretty cool. Even now, I get friends in New York texting me or emailing me photos of Freckleface on bus stops, posters, kiosks, etc.

With which authors would you most like to work? Do you have any books you’re still dreaming of illustrating?

LP: Of course! I’ve got lots and lots of ideas I’d like to bring out. It’s taken me years, but I think I’ve finally reached a point where I’m focusing on my own stories. I think I’ve never felt as comfortable with words as I am with a paintbrush. But I’m not finding that my pictures are driving the stories so much more now, and I even find myself wanting to change some of the manuscripts I’m given. So that’s definitely a sign to write my own stuff. I’ve got one I’m working on next year called There’s No Such Thing As Little (Bloomsbury), a sort of concept book about little being a state of mind. And I’m working on a manuscript about an octopus at the moment. And just lots and lots of ideas. As for other writers, there are too many to count. I’m illustrating a book for Jerry Spinelli next year, which I’m looking forward to. But what’s funny is that I’d love to illustrate a book for someone outside of the world of children’s writers. I keep wishing Diablo Cody would send me something. Or if David Sedaris ever felt like having one of his animal tales illustrated, I’d beg for that job.

Is it true that you have a pet monkey?

LP: Only if you count my husband. And now two little boys too.

Maria Tatar on the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up

Bianca Schulze — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 07:54:32 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: January 4, 2012

Maria Tatar

Maria Tatar is Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University. Her latest book The Annotated Peter Pan is a glorious celebration of the centenary of the first publication of the novel, originally entitled Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie. It features a splendid array of photographs and illustrations, many reproduced for the first time, including The Boy Castaways of Black Lane Island. The book also includes a compilation of responses from famed artists, including Barrie’s contemporaries such as as Virginia Woolf and Mark Twain, to his work. For more on Tatar’s discoveries and Barrie’s creation of Peter Pan, please read on.

Nicki Richesin: I read The Annotated Peter Pan with such gripping wonder. It’s a marvelous book; congratulations to you. The story of Peter Pan has fascinated readers for generations and even proved a vehicle for a variety of adaptations in film, books, plays, and musicals. After your extensive research on this subject, what do you believe J.M. Barrie would think of its enduring appeal? Why do you believe his story has held such fascination for its audience?

Maria Tatar: Peter Pan started out as a bedtime story and turned into a cultural myth. Barrie knew that he was onto something important, but I think even he would have been surprised that the story has endured as long as it has. There is more to Peter Pan than fairy dust and pirates. It’s a story about what it means to grow up—the gains and the losses that we incur when we become adults. Barrie felt the pain of the process more acutely than most of us do, and he also saw himself as something of a “betwixt and between”—no longer a child yet still not fully adult. It was more than just the “inner child.” He was able to go back in ways that few of us can, capturing the sense of adventure and eagerness for experience that is part of childhood desires.

In your “Introduction to J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan,” you write, “We owe it to our children to give them books that do not put a politically correct dot on every “i” and that offer challenges, provocations, and an occasional sting that keeps us alive and thinking about those who lived before us.” You believe this would lead children to learn to search and explore and has been confirmed in your exhaustive study of fairy tales and in your books such as Enchanted Hunters. Could you further explain what you mean by this notion?

MT: I think it was Philip Pullman who told us that “thou shalt not is soon forgotten” and that “once upon a time” lasts forever. Great writers are above all else storytellers—occasionally even magicians—who give us worlds created by words. Children quickly grow wise to the ways of fiction and know that there are no easy messages, morals, and lessons in the books they read. There is no direct path from what is in the book to “truth,” nor is there a hotline to the meaning of life. When they read fiction, children develop a sense of curiosity about the lives of others (where else can you read minds and learn about what other people really think?), and they use their explorations of fictional worlds, along with their real-life experiences and exchanges, to develop a moral compass.

Peter Pan was my favorite story as a child. I read the edition edited by Josette Frank, beautifully illustrated by Marjorie Torrey, and published by Random House in 1957. We also had an edition illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Which version of this story do you prefer and why?

MT: Arthur Rackham’s illustrations for Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens are exquisite, and I can’t imagine any rivals to those images. But I also love Mabel Lucie Attwell’s illustrations, although they are for a younger crowd. I have grown to love F.D. Bedford’s illustrations for the first edition of Peter Pan. At first they seemed fussy and cluttered to me, but now they feel like windows into each of the chapters in which they appear. They have an astonishing depth and texture. I’m reminded of how much I disliked, as a child, John Tenniel’s illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now they seem to capture the essence of Carroll’s story, and I can’t imagine reading the book without them.

You draw an interesting comparison between J.M. Barrie’s relationship with Peter Llewelyn Davies (really all five of the boys) and Charles Dodgson’s with Alice Liddell. Both authors were inspired by their young friends to create Neverland and Wonderland, worlds in which civilized society did not exist and to which children might escape. The two authors were revered and yet rumors were spread by those who frowned on adult men befriending children. Why do you believe both authors were enthralled with these particular children and deeply influenced by their little muses?

Credit: Peter Pan, 1912 (bronze) by Sir George James Frampton (1860-1928) Kensington Gardens, London, UK/ The Bridgeman Art Library Nationality / copyright status: English / out of copyright

MT: We live in a culture deeply suspicious of anyone who takes an interest in other people’s children. Both Lewis Carroll and J.M. Barrie had a deep attachment to children, and they understood, in unprecedented ways, that there is beauty, humor, and poetry in the imagination of children. They lived in an era that famously developed a cult of childhood, but it was a cult that valued the beauty of children rather than their playful spirit and imaginative energy. Children were to be seen and not heard. Both Lewis Carroll and J.M. Barrie listened to the voice of the child and produced works that were, in some sense, collaborations. And, perhaps not coincidentally, both photographed children and appreciated the beauty of children at rest and at play. There is not a shred of evidence that there was anything improper in Barrie’s relationship to children, and the five Llewelyn Davies boys he adopted were quite firm about the fact that Barrie was a completely generous, benevolent presence in their lives.

While you were studying Barrie’s letters at Beinecke Library at Yale University, you wrote that you became very emotional. Although your response was in large part due to reading more about the boys’ feelings after the untimely death of their beloved mother and father Arthur and Sylvia Davies, I suspect it was deeper than this and due to finally reading about the boy who wouldn’t grow up and lived a life removed from the world. You discovered that few people truly knew Barrie apart from his adopted sons and housekeeper. What did you think when you read Barrie’s note, “May God blast any one who writes a biography of me” in his notebooks?

MT: Barrie described himself once as a shuttered house. I may have read his letters, notebooks, and diaries, but he remains a mystery to me—in a good sense. There were times when I felt myself to be an intruder in the archives, although there are those who will argue that posthumous papers belong to posterity. Occasionally I came across documents that seemed almost sacred—George’s letters to Barrie, written from the Western Front, just a few days before his death, to cite just one example. There was so much joy in Barrie’s life, and so many triumphs, but there is no getting past the tragic deaths of Arthur and Sylvia Davies, or George’s death in World War I, or Michael’s suicide at Oxford. Barrie was so guarded and private in real life that I felt it doubly important to treat his life with respect.

On your blog Breezes from Wonderland, you track the media and film world’s attempts to reinvent classic and fairy tales in film, music, plays and television. Which recent productions do you believe have been most successful?

MT: I rarely meet a fairy-tale revival or reinvention that I don’t like. I am enthralled by Catherine Breillat’s fairy-tale films, but I also find the new crime series Grimm, as well as the series Once Upon a Time, entertaining. I’m eager to see the three new Snow White films coming out in 2012, and I’m astonished that Hollywood, which has always used fairy-tale narratives as subtexts—is now explicitly reinventing the old tales

A.S. Byatt has written introductions for a few of your books (The Grimm Reader and The Annotated Brothers Grimm) and reviews of your books for The Guardian. How did you first begin working together and do you have future projects planned?

MT: A.S. Byatt has been wonderfully generous in writing the introduction for the Grimm books. Her work is always inspiring, and I am hoping that I will one day have the chance to meet her in person. We correspond from time to time, and I’m hoping to recruit her as a contributor to a handbook on fairy tales that I am editing.

Who do you believe are the most exciting children’s book authors of today and which ones do you think will make the sort of impact that readers will remember and cherish into their adulthood?

MT: I taught the Harry Potter series for the first time this year and was deeply impressed, once again, by the final book in the series—I think I now finally understand horcruxes and hallows, as well as the depth of Rowling’s engagement with the great existential mysteries. The devotion of my students to that series is nothing short of astounding, and the books have an unparalleled bonding power. It took me a while to become an ardent fan, perhaps because the books become more sophisticated and adult-friendly over time. Harry Potter grows up, and so does the generation of children that began reading his story when they were his age. I’m also a fan of Neil Gaiman, Lois Lowry, and Brian Selznick. And The Hunger Games is impossible to put down, even if it’s not a book to “cherish.” Children’s literature seems no longer to be just for children, and, these days, we live in a world of shared electronic media that has knocked down some of the old barriers.

What sort of projects are you currently working on?

MT: I have just finished a Young Adult novel about a boy growing up in Nazi-occupied Greece. It’s my first work of fiction, and it was inspired by a real-life story of an old friend of mine who lived in Athens during the second World War. Then it’s back to fairy tales.

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.

An Author, a Photographer & a Child’s Exciting Adventures

Bianca Schulze — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:09:25 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: December 22, 2011

Interview with the author and photographer behind Kiki & Coco in Paris—a child’s exciting adventures in the City of Light

Nina Gruener is the author of three children’s books Above San Francisco and Above New York and most recently Kiki & Coco in Paris. Stephanie Rausser is a lifestyle photographer who has had her work featured all over the world. Together, they created Kiki & Coco in Paris, the tender story of a young girl visiting Paris for the first time with her doll.

Nicki Richesin: Congratulations on your beautiful new book Kiki & Coco in Paris. I’m sure it will make a delightful gift for little girls this holiday season. Could you tell us about how you began the project and a bit about your collaboration?

Nina Gruener

Nina Gruener: Stephanie had this beautiful idea to bring a sweet rag doll along on her trip to Paris with her daughter Kiki. I didn’t see the images until a few years later when her slideshow of the trip was all over the blog world and written up in numerous magazines. I had no idea that we lived in the same town, but had a bee in my bonnet to turn these beautiful shots into a children’s book. There was something so Velveteen Rabbit about the look on Coco’s face. We finally met through Stephanie’s aunt and the rest is history…

Stephanie, you dedicated the book to the late photographer Debra McClinton who was your dear friend. Debra had such a vibrant personality. She was alive and so open to new experiences and people. Her playful spirit is perfectly captured within your book. Could you talk a little about your friendship and how it inspired this project?

Stephanie Rausser

Stephanie Rausser: Debra was my camera assistant for many years and she was the most upbeat, positive, and refreshing person I had ever worked with and met. Her death not only left a hole in my heart, but it also left me baffled as it all made no sense. I had never experienced anything like this and so I looked for ways to explore my grief and confusion. I had always imagined I would have a girl -somewhat like Pippi Longstocking- who would love to be photographed so I figured I would test that out. I picked the place I had most loved visiting when I was younger and I went there with my daughter. The book definitely has Debra’s spirit and creativity in it and there were days we would return to our Paris flat and the doll’s arm would have fallen off while we were out and I would sit there in tears sewing the arm back on. I just remember thinking about Debra so much on the trip. I still do.

Nina, your grandfather Robert Cameron started Cameron + Company in 1964 and you and your husband Chris took over the business after he passed away in 2009. You’ve continued the writing tradition in your family with your first book as a tribute to his legacy, a children’s adaptation of your grandfather’s Above San Francisco, and you just published Above New York. Could you tell us about his influence on your life and what you have planned for Cameron + Company in the future?

NG: My grandfather (Grok as many of us called him) always seemed larger than life. He believed that anything I touched was golden. I was once in a terrible student film and he told everyone it was headed for Sundance – it was not. But he loved us that way, with flair. And he lived his life and shaped this company in the same fashion. Every time we finish a project that I’m proud of, I think of him and how much he loved beautiful things. I am excited to keep growing our children’s line with a focus on photography and art.

Stephanie, I briefly spoke with your daughter Kiki about her favorite memories of your trip to Paris and she showed me the image from the book of her getting a new coiffeur at the hair salon. What was your favorite memory from the trip?

SR: My favorite memory of the trip was going to the fair at the Tuileries. Part of the deal was if I got to take photos of Kiki and her doll for forty-five minutes, then we would go to the fair before the sun went down. It was a great place for me to people watch and Kiki just was so excited to go there and go on the rides. We went almost every afternoon. Getting her haircut was a short second favorite memory. We took the subway across town after finding a kid’s salon and Kiki almost fell asleep in the chair. It was just the perfect thing to do on a Paris trip, a makeover.

Jess Brown created a lovely ragdoll in Coco. I understand life-sized dolls like Coco are gracing the windows of Bottega Veneta around the world. Would you consider doing a Kiki & Coco in London or Rome, or maybe San Francisco? What projects are you both working on now?

SR: I would consider it, but unfortunately Kiki is not theatrical -like Pippi- and she would prefer not to be photographed so really for me to be interested I would have wanted Kiki to do it with me. Jess thought it would be so great if we did “Kiki and Coco in Tokyo” mostly because it just sounds so great and rolls off the tongue. I have some other projects brewing but they are still in the works.

NG: I defer to Stephanie on that one! Kiki and Coco was a moment in time, and sadly, children grow up. But Stephanie’s work really does capture childlike wonder so I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more concepts up her sleeve.

I am just about to tackle the children’s adaptation of Above Chicago, which will be released in the fall of 2012. But there are a few other concepts I’m toying with. I am on a constant quest to find projects that both the adult and child reader will enjoy.

Thank you so much for your time and best of luck to you both with your future projects!

Yona Zeldis McDonough: From Madame Alexander to Marilyn Monroe

Bianca Schulze — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:37:28 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: December 5, 2011

Yona Zeldis McDonough

Yona Zeldis McDonough is the talented author of many books for readers of all ages: fiction and non-fiction for adults and award-winning children’s books. She has most recently written the highly anticipated second book in her Doll Shop series, The Cats in the Doll Shop. Although a prolific writer, Yona still makes time for school visits and readings. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Nicki Richesin: It’s a great pleasure to interview you. You have proved a prolific writer of both fiction and nonfiction for adults, in addition to your award-winning children’s books. My daughter adored The Doll Shop Downstairs and The Cats in the Doll Shop. Could you explain how you first discovered Beatrice Alexander, or Madame Alexander as she’s known, and how her story inspired you to write about the resourceful Breittlemann family?

Yona Zeldis McDonough: I remember Madame Alexander dolls from my own childhood. I longed for them though I never had one back then. As an adult, I started collecting dolls and bought a few of Mme. Alexander’s creations for my collection. When I was reading about her early life, I found out that her father owned and operated America’s first doll hospital. It was on the Lower East Side and the family lived in an apartment above the shop. Beatrice (she was Bertha in those days) and her sisters were allowed to play in the doll hospital sometimes and when I learned that, I just knew: here was a perfect setting for a children’s story.

Many of your books are set in Brooklyn, where you live with your family. Why has this area of New York proved such a “fertile ground” as you put it in your work?

YZM: I love Brooklyn. It’s so vast and filled with its own history, character and even mysteries. It is both a part of New York, and yet retains a separate identity. I grew up in Brooklyn and so it holds many associations for me.

You’ve written a great many biographies for children, including most recently Louisa: The Life of Louisa May Alcott and The Doll with the Yellow Star. You collaborated on your earlier biographies with your mother the painter Malcah Zeldis. How did you enjoy working on these projects together?

YZM: As one friend said to me, “Your mother is not a person, she’s an event!” I very much enjoy working with her. She’s lively, passionate and has lots of great ideas. We brainstorm to find subjects on which we want to collaborate; we’re a very good team.

I understand you’re putting the finishing touches on a new biography about Laura Ingalls Wilder for Holt. Wilder has such a devoted following and even after all these years, her Little House books have remained in print. You must have felt a bit of a responsibility in honoring her memory for her fans. Did you discover any interesting details about her life?

YZM: The sheer volume of material on Wilder is formidable and I am not sure I found much that was new. However, I do think I offer a new and perhaps feminist interpretation of the material. In the bio I wrote, I tried to stress how her mother’s influence did so much to shape her life. Her mother was an educated woman, and wanted her daughters to be educated as well. She read to them, and did her best to see that they went to school, which was unusual for the time and their circumstances. Even after Laura’s older sister Mary went blind (from an illness), Laura’s mother was insistent that she receive an education, and managed to save enough money to send her to a college for the blind in another state. I was so struck by that. Most people would not have thought educating any girl was so important, yet Laura’s mother made so many sacrifices in order for Mary to have an education and become self-sufficient. And later, Laura communicated her love of learning to her own daughter Rose; Rose became a well-known journalist and author. I tried to stress the continuity there: how the love of books, of reading and writing, was forged and passed on by mothers to daughters.

I read on your blog that you’re putting together a new collection of stories loosely based on the lives of your American parents who lived in Israel during the fifties. You were born in Chadera while they lived there. What have you learned about your parents or yourself while doing your research?

YZM: I can’t say I learned anything factual about my parents or their past; even though my stories are based on real events, I have completely made them over, cannibalized them if you will, in my writing. The stories are more about the search and less about the discovery. I’ve also enlarged the canvas to include some stories about my grandmother as a child and a young woman; one of these stories takes place in Russia, a place I have never been but long to go. And in my fiction, I can.

You edited a highly praised collection of essays about Marilyn Monroe, All the Available Light: A Marilyn Monroe Reader. Why were you initially drawn to this project and why do you think Marilyn has held such a fascination for her fans? Will you go see the new film My Week with Marilyn?

YZM: She is that forever compelling combination of beautiful and damned. Her Cinderella-like transformation from unwanted orphan/abused foster child to Hollywood star fulfills a very powerful fantasy so many of us seem to have. I have mixed feelings about the new movie; MM’s presence was so incandescent on screen that I see no need to watch someone impersonate her. Yet the film will add to the discussion in some fashion and I suppose I will succumb.

What are you dreaming of writing now?

YZM: I’m working on a new novel set in 1947 in both New York and Connecticut. And I have some children’s projects, both fiction and non-fiction, that I’m hoping to get launched as well.

A Holiday Interview with “Gramps” Bricker

Bianca Schulze — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 07:21:47 +0000

Author Showcase

By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: November 30, 2011

“Gramps Bricker” is a story telling grandparent who has seen his children, grandchildren, and now his great grandchildren voice their doubts upon seeing so many Santas everywhere without a beard. He created a story, The Christmas Santa Had No Beard, with the purpose of restoring the magical legend of Santa Claus within every child’s imagination.

TCBR: Can you share a little on your background and how you became a children’s book writer?

Howard M. “Gramps” Bricker: Having seven grandchildren and three great grandchildren led me to create stories that would captivate their attention… Whenever a story captured their imagination, I began writing it down to remember the tale for another time.

Is The Christmas Santa Had No Beard (available in English and Spanish) your first published piece of work?

Yes, I wrote this story down years ago. In 2009 my son read The Christmas Santa Claus Had No Beard to a 3^rd grade class in Ohio. Upon seeing her students’ enthusiasm, the teacher lectured my son and told him to have this story published. My son then lectured me. Thus a teacher’s lecture was the impetus for The Christmas Santa Had No Beard becoming a reality.

I read that the inspiration for this story came from an experience you had with your grandson. Will you share this experience with TCBR’s readers?

I took my grandson to a shopping center to see Santa Claus. What I didn’t realize was that he saw a man dressed up like Santa Claus putting on a fake beard in a separate room. The only comment Sean could make was, “Gramps, look this Santa Claus is a fake. That is not even a real beard!!” At four years of age, this child became a cynic about the Santa Claus legend. Thus the story of The Christmas Santa Had No Beard emerged.

What age group did you write the book for?

Between 5-10 years of age

Your hope is that The Christmas Santa Had No Beard will spark children’s imaginations. What would you say is the most important lesson that readers will take away from reading your book?

This is a special holiday season when parents and children should spend time reading Christmas stories together to reaffirm that magical moment when Santa Claus visits their homes.

The illustrator, John Dall, is a Chicago based Native American artist. How did you select Mr. Dall to be the creator of the artwork?

After writing my story, I was searching for an illustrator. I came upon an article in a newspaper article describing John Dall’s drawings. There was a statement by John Dall that caught my attention, “If I feel it, I can create it.” I sent John Dall the text and was overjoyed when he said,” I can feel it!” John Dall’s artistry not only enhances, but makes this story come alive.

Should we expect to see another book from you soon?

I have written a few stories, and children are going to enjoy next book also. My confidence has been buoyed by the fact that John Dall said he can”feel it.”

What would you say has been the most personally rewarding aspect or becoming a children’s book author?

There is no greater reward than reading my book to children in schools, churches and hospitals and looking up and seeing their smiling faces. I have read my story at hospitals and read at bedsides bringing joy and comfort to the parents as well.

Which holiday books from your own childhood provide you with the fondest memories?

The Christmas Carol, Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and T’was The Night Before Christmas.

Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?

Whenever you see a Santa Claus and you think that his beard might not be real, remember, he just may be the real Santa Claus who received a beard for Christmas.

Add this book to your collection: http://www.grandpabrickerbooks.com/buy.html

For more information, visit: http://www.grandpabrickerbooks.com

The Author Showcase is a place for authors and illustrators to gain visibility for their works. Learn more …

Interview with Angelica Shirley Carpenter Biographer of Children’s Book Authors

Bianca Schulze — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 07:15:28 +0000

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

Angelica Shirley Carpenter

Angelica Shirley Carpenter is the author of many acclaimed biographies written for young people including Frances Hodgson Burnett: Beyond the Secret Garden, L. Frank Baum: Royal Historian of Oz, Robert Louis Stevenson: Finding Treasure Island, and Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass. She also edited In the Garden: Essays in Honor of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Carpenter is the founding curator of the Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at California State University in Fresno.

Nicki Richesin: Thank you for agreeing to do this interview. I know our readers will be fascinated by your writing life. You have established an impressive career as a biographer of many beloved and celebrated children’s book authors including Frances Hodgson Burnett, L. Frank Baum, Robert Louis Stevenson and Lewis Carroll. How did you first begin writing your books?

Angelica Shirley Carpenter: I began about 1988 when my mother Jean Shirley retired and moved from St. Louis to live near me in Palm Springs, Florida. Mother had already published several biographies for children and she arrived in Florida with a good idea for a new one, about Frances Hodgson Burnett. Oh, and she wanted us to write this together. In St. Louis Mother had found and read The One I Knew the Best of All, Frances’ autobiography of her childhood, and she thought that it would make a good starting point. I was running a small public library at this time, and I knew that children still read and loved The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, so I agreed that Frances would make a good subject. We established that the only biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett for young people had been written by her daughter-in-law in 1965. It lacked illustrations and, worse, it omitted certain incidents that were embarrassing to Frances’ family, like her divorce and remarriage. So we decided to write a more accurate account of her life and to try to publish it with photographs and illustrations from her books.

Your mother Jean Shirley was your co-author on three of your books. Could you tell us about her influence on your life and how you collaborated together?

Jean Shirley & Anjelica Carpenter

My mother was always a writer. When I was a child, her stories and poems were being published in magazines. She could type faster than 100 words a minute on her manual typewriter. She couldn’t cook very well (luckily, my father did), so our kitchen was always filled with the clatter of typewriter keys and stacks of papers. This all seemed normal to me. When Mother moved to Florida, she founded the first Florida chapter of what was then the Society of Children’s Book Writers. This effort helped her to make new friends of all ages. At first I resisted her efforts to get me involved, or to write with her, but finally she convinced me that Frances would be a fun project.

We collaborated easily because even though I was inexperienced, she let me take the lead. She knew how bossy I was, and I think that she was grooming me to be a writer on my own someday. When we worked together, we would agree on what should be covered in a chapter; then we each wrote our own version. Then we read them aloud and combined the two. Mother taught me all the writerly tips for writing biographies, or anything else, for that matter—observing the rule of three, ending chapters with cliffhangers, arranging quotations to look like dialogue, putting all five senses into every chapter, foreshadowing, replacing adjectives and adverbs with strong verbs—all those important ideas and more, plus she was a living grammar book. I never had to look up grammar or punctuation—I could just ask my mother. We had a wonderful time reading our work together and we discussed every single word. When the books were published, we had fun doing school visits together, too.

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You have dedicated a great deal of your professional life to studying Frances Hodgson Burnett. I was surprised to learn, having grown up with great admiration for The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, that Burnett’s novel Little Lord Fauntleroy was her most successful book during her lifetime as Americans were quite taken with its rags to riches storyline. Did this come as a surprise to you when doing your research? Burnett led a somewhat unconventional life by Victorian standards. Were there certain periods of her life that you found remarkable?

It wasn’t just Americans who were fascinated with Fauntleroy—the British loved it, too, and it was read around the world, wherever English was spoken or studied. It was the Harry Potter of its day, made into a hit play and eventually a movie starring Mary Pickford. It was marketed with a lot of tied-in products. I read it for the first time as we worked on the biography, and quite enjoyed it. It was written at a time (in the mid-1880s) when society was changing drastically due to industrialization and new methods of travel. After a hundred years of independence, America had developed a national character that was distinct from Britain’s, and the British were curious about what their former subjects were up to. Frances, who crossed the Atlantic 33 times, wrote from both points of view, British and American, and helped to explain the two societies to each other.

She did live a fast-lane life for a respectable Victorian lady. Mother and I eventually met her great-granddaughter, Penny Deupree, who said that her mother and aunt (Frances’ granddaughters) would never even talk about Frances. They were scandalized by her divorce and remarriage. When I tell children this today, they are amazed. Many of the things that Frances did were unusual then—she dyed her hair, wore makeup, smoked cigarettes, and spent a lot of time unchaperoned with good-looking younger men. She married one of these, Stephen Townesend, her second husband, but when he turned out to be an abusive bully, she left him, too. None of this seems shocking today, but the fact that she left her young sons for long periods, up to a year at a time, does seem hard to understand.

I remember reading that Lewis Carroll was inspired by Julia Margaret Cameron’s portrait of Alice Liddell. Some of Carroll’s photographs were considered quite scandalous. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland seems like a psychological study of how children act as adults by playing pretend yet are confused by the narrow rules adults enforce, just as Alice must determine how to navigate Wonderland. Could you briefly explain the role Alice Liddell played in Carroll’s writing and how his photography informed his work?

Alice Liddell was Lewis Carroll’s muse. He met her as he began his career as a mathematics tutor at Oxford University. She was the daughter of his college dean. Oxford in those days was all male, but Dean Henry Liddell was hired, unusually, as a married man with a family. Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, became a family friend. Soon after the dean was hired, Lewis Carroll bought a camera. He learned to use it by taking pictures of the Liddell children in the deanery garden. He told them stories, as he had done for his own ten brothers and sisters. The oldest Liddell child, Harry, was often away at boarding school. Lewis Carroll saw more of the three eldest sisters, Lorina, Alice, and Edith, who were educated at home. The stories Lewis Carroll told the girls were based on incidents from their lives at Oxford—croquet games, boating trips, and tea parties—familiar experiences reinvented with humor and a kind of incomprehensibility that children must experience all the time.

In his youth Lewis Carroll had longed to be an artist, but his talent for drawing was limited. Photography let him express himself visually, using principles he had studied as a would-be artist. Like other Victorian photographers, he sometimes photographed nude children; such photos were considered symbols of innocence in that male-dominated era. Unlike the other photographers, he became a best-selling children’s author and so his four surviving nude pictures are better known. His hundreds of photos of children are now considered the finest ever taken of children in Victorian times. He was a perfectionist in his photography and in his writing, too. Perhaps the earlier control over photography gave him the knowledge and the confidence he needed to exert the same kind of control over his writing and publishing.

You’ve made many literary pilgrimages over the years to Oxford, Kent, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sissinghurst Castle, among many other famous landmarks. Of all the trips you’ve made, which was your most rewarding and/or fascinating for you as a biographer?

It’s hard to say—each trip seems like the best until I start planning the next one. Certainly one of the most exciting days was on my first trip to England, in 1992, when I got to visit the walled garden at Great Maytham Hall in Kent. Frances Hodgson Burnett leased Maytham Hall from 1898-1907. Although she set The Secret Garden in Yorkshire, the garden she wrote about was that garden in Kent. I went there on a dazzling summer day with my husband and daughter, who was a college student at the time. They waited patiently while I ran around crying and taking pictures—I was overjoyed to be there. At the time, Great Maytham Hall had been made into apartments for retirees, who took turns showing guests around the garden. Our guide was Bill Brewin, who became a friend for the rest of his life. We returned several times, but that first viewing was the most exciting.

I had the pleasure of seeing you speak at the Mechanics Institute Library in San Francisco a few years ago. For many years, you have organized international conferences through the Arne Nixon Center where you work as the founding curator. Could you tell us about the annual events that you host and any upcoming events you’re planning?

As founding curator of the Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at California State University, Fresno, I have gotten to try a lot of new ideas. One goal was to put this new Center on the map by sponsoring conferences, which brought people here from around the world. The first one, in 2003, was a Burnett conference—amazingly, the first one ever held about this famous author. It resulted in a book, In the Garden: Essays in Honor of Frances Hodgson Burnett. In 2004 the Arne Nixon Center hosted the Children’s Literature Association’s annual conference. We have had good luck working with literary societies—the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, the British-based Beatrix Potter Society, the International Wizard of Oz Club, and the Friends of Freddy (the Pig). The Center’s annual event is a Secret Garden Party, hosted by our Friends’ group, ANCA, the Arne Nixon Center Advocates. ANCA held the first Secret Garden Party as a fundraiser for the Burnett conference. People in Fresno have lovely gardens, which they like to showcase. So ANCA planned a party, but kept the location secret until people bought tickets or sponsorships. The idea proved so popular that we kept having Secret Garden parties, changing themes, so that we had an Oz Secret Garden Party, an Alice party, a Cats party (to celebrate the acquisition of a collection of 6,000 cat books), and last year a Centennial Secret Garden Party, with a fashion show commemorating the University’s 100^th birthday. You can see photos from all our events at www.arnenixoncenter.org. The 2012 Secret Garden Party will have a Cuban/Spanish flair because we will be honoring authors Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy.

We just hosted a big conference in October, the ninth United States regional conference of IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People. This was coordinated with a major exhibition, “Down the Rabbit Hole with Lewis Carroll and Leonard Weisgard.” So we are taking a bit of a breather, and doing some needed fundraising, before planning any more conferences.

Meanwhile we are working to promote our new collection of LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning) books, which we think is the largest such collection of these books for young people in any library. My colleague, Jennifer Crow, is developing a traveling exhibition of these books that, with suitable funding, we hope to send out to California high schools.

You’re working on a new biography of Matilda Joslyn Gage for young readers. Why did you choose Gage as a subject and what has proved the most interesting about this project so far?

I found Matilda through her son-in-law, L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz books. Mother and I wrote our second biography about him, so Matilda has been on my radar since then. She was a famous feminist and author in her own right, but she is largely forgotten today, due to some skullduggery by Susan B. Anthony. Late in their lives, Anthony ousted Matilda from the organization they had co-founded and co-led for decades, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Matilda Joslyn Gage and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were the main writers of the women’s movement. They co-authored the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage, still the most important history of the women’s movement in the 1800s, and in 1893 Matilda published Woman, Church, and State, in which she attacked organized religion for oppressing women. So she is an interesting and controversial character, who, after she was widowed, spent winters with her daughter Maud and her son-in-law L. Frank Baum. It is fun to think of Matilda and Frank, writing very different kinds of material under the same roof, and I don’t think that it is a coincidence that, when you look at Frank’s 14-book Oz series, you see that Oz is a paradise ruled by women.

As a biographer, I’m sure you come across many enigmatic and captivating historical figures during your research. Is there one person you hope to write about that you haven’t yet had the opportunity to investigate?

The early feminists are interesting me now—I think that we need to know more about them, and not just about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Recently the literature about civil rights history written for young people has expanded to include new subjects, people like Claudette Colvin and Bayard Rustin. I think that women’s history could use a similar expansion, but I don’t yet have any particular new subject in mind. I have to finish the Matilda book first. I’m calling it The Forgotten Feminist: Matilda Joslyn Gage.

Interview with Kathleen Krull about the Magical World of Jim Henson

Bianca Schulze — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 22:38:07 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: November 24, 2011

Kathleen Krull. Photo credit: Paul Brewer

Kathleen Krull is an award-winning author of many, many children’s books, including most recently Jim Henson: The Guy Who Played With Puppets. She specializes in biographies written especially for children. Krull lives in San Diego with her husband Paul Brewer a children’s book illustrator. She once worked a part-time job at a library and was fired for reading too often. Now she can read to her heart’s content- all in the service of research for her wonderful books!

Nicki Richesin: Jim Henson: The Guy Who Played With Puppets is a brilliant depiction of a man loved by the world for his creative genius. I admired how you followed the trajectory of Henson’s career and the paintings captured the various eras- from his humble beginning in Mississippi to the sweet seventies clothes and hairstyles- to the man himself. What was your approach when telling the story of Mr. Henson’s life?

Kathleen Krull: Thanks for your kind words. I wanted to shed light on a person who has done so much for children, a modern-day hero, just unbelievably creative. In his early days, everyone wondered what he was doing, playing with puppets, but he grew into this brilliant magician at making people of all ages laugh.

One of the many things I admired about your book is that you conveyed how Henson continued to pursue his dream of becoming a puppeteer, even when his father disapproved and even when his peers thought it was a little odd. Yet he stayed true to himself and his vision of what he wanted to achieve. I think this is such an important lesson for children, but really for everyone. I understand Henson’s children are running his company now. Do you think they’ve remained true to their father’s unique vision?

The family seems to be quite active in nourishing his reputation, as well as supporting new developments in puppetry with the Jim Henson Foundation, offering grants and other support.

Do you believe Henson’s work bringing Sesame Street to television programming for children revolutionized the way they learn?

I’m a bit past the Sesame Street target audience, but I well remember how progressive this show was when it premiered, how in tune with the spirit of the 60s and 70s. The idea that TV could be used as a force for good– wow– that laughter could help children learn– this was huge. It’s now the longest-running TV show for children ever, seen in more than 140 countries, so this is a major validation of his work.

At the end of the book, of course Mr. Henson tragically dies far too young, but for his funeral he requested a giant party with all the mourners wearing bright colors holding butterfly puppets and a New Orleans jazz band playing ‘When The Saints Go Marching In” and parading down the aisle of the church. I love how you demonstrated that his funeral was a celebration of his life. There seems to be a collective world tribute going on in film and exhibits of his work. What do you think Henson would think of the current fervor for his talents now twenty-one years after his death? Do you think he would be surprised?

Having just been to the ongoing Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of Moving Image in New York, I would say he seems more popular than ever, as more people are realizing his immense influence. Besides his accomplishments with the Muppets, he was always growing and experimenting– were he still alive, he’d still be at the cutting edge. I think he would be pleased at the attention being paid to his work today, maybe not surprised (I did sense a strong ego).

You’re married to an illustrator Paul Brewer and have collaborated on three books together. How did your working relationship develop and how do you find working so closely with your husband?

Paul illustrated two of my earlier books (CLIP CLIP CLIP and HOW TO TRICK OR TREAT IN OUTER SPACE), and we discovered that working together is mucho fun. We have adjoining studios, and he tends to work at night while I tend to work days. Now we’ve segued into writing together (on FARTISTE, LINCOLN TELLS A JOKE, and upcoming projects), and we like that just as well. Paul does the bulk of the research, and we take turns polishing the results.

You’ve written some astonishing biographies for children on timely subjects and historical figures such as Pocahontas, Abraham Lincoln, Cesar Chavez, and even A Woman For President on the amazing life of Victoria Woodhull. You’ve said you’re fascinated by strong women, in particular. Which biography you’ve created has been your most fascinating to work on for you personally?

I always focus on people I think are fascinating, so it’s a tough call. I do prefer the dead– we have more perspective on them, and there is usually more material to work with. The more contemporary the person, the more nervous I am. Will the person turn out to have a secret life, perhaps as a serial killer, will living relatives hate the book.…? I really have to be interested to tackle a live person. Hillary Clinton = very scary. (Fortunately, she liked the book– Hillary Rodham Clinton: Dreams Taking Flight.)

What advice would you give aspiring writers?

It’s all there at www.scbwi.org – the best place to start. Their conferences are excellent.

Which books are you currently dreaming of and writing?

Dreaming of many books, currently working on the seventh book in the GIANTS OF SCIENCE series (on Benjamin Franklin) and the eighth book in the LIVES OF series (on scientists). I recently joined Facebook to post news, rant, and have more fun than I expected.

Thanks for your thoughtful questions, Nicki, and your interest in this book.