Every Story Has Its Season: Truth and Inspiration in Picture Book Writing, by Jennifer McGrath2/6/2025
One question I get asked a lot as a children’s author is: “Is that a true story?” And my answer is always, “It’s inspired by a true story.” The truth is the seed. The story is the blossom. My picture books tend to have a long incubation period, like seeds waiting underground beneath the winter snows. I try not to examine them too closely at this stage. It is enough knowing that they are there and that they will reveal their shape when the season is right. Sometimes that season is grief. The story seed for The Pony and the Starling had been incubating for several years before it finally germinated during the second year of COVID. That spring I lost my heart dog - a border collie named Danny who had been my constant companion for over a decade through several major life changes and upheavals, including divorce and three moves. He was fine one weekend, and gone the next, victim of a cancer I didn’t know was there. That loss, on top of all the cumulative losses of the past few years, compounded within the crucible of COVID, struck me harder than I would have ever imagined. (Right about now you’re probably wondering what a dog has to do with a book about a pony and a bird. I’m getting to that, I promise.) The border-collie-shaped hole in my heart left me breathless. I needed to fill that emptiness with something. Something beautiful. Something bright. I reached deep inside and found the story of The Pony and the Starling ready and waiting for me. Years earlier, before my life shape-shifted so dramatically, my grey pony, Fiona, lived in a paddock that I could see from my kitchen window…a paddock with a small barn for wet, windy days, and a big, old maple for hot, sunny days. The seasons shaped themselves around the comforting routine of barn chores, of waking before the rest of the household, and walking out into the pre-dawn as the birds were just starting to stir. And who kept me company on every walk down to the barn? Danny, of course. He is there, in all my memories of Fiona from that time and place.  Danny and Fiona The seasons ticked over, a pinwheel of changing colours, foliage furling and unfurling, birdsong muted and orchestral, snow, mud, grass, and repeat. Until the summer the starling appeared. Starlings were no stranger to our yard, of course. Arriving in twittering, flickering flocks, they would promptly empty my birdfeeders, hang around for a day or so, then move on – usually up the hill to my father’s prized grapevines. But this starling was different. This starling stayed. Most interestingly of all, it stayed with Fiona. I would look up from washing dishes or making dinner and there – almost without fail - would be the starling perched on the paddock fence. Or in the maple. Or more often, on the ground beside the pony. Before long it was hopping along between her hooves as she grazed her way across the paddock. This is a story, I thought as I watched them. The weeks slipped by. Summer tilted into fall and still the starling was there. This is definitely a story, I thought. But I didn’t know its shape. Not then.  Fiona and Danny It wasn’t until sometime after the first real blizzard blew in that I registered the starling’s absence. What followed was a long, cold winter of wet woolen skies and empty branches. The next spring, the flock returned. Two birds in particular seemed to favour Fiona’s paddock. I like to think it was Fiona’s starling, come back to introduce his new bride to his oversized bestie. A half a dozen years would go by before my aching heart grasped for the memory of that golden summer – the beautiful season of the starling. The story knew its own shape by then. All I had to do was clear a few weeds and watch it bloom. The Pony and the Starling is not an exact re-telling of what transpired. Of course not. It is an impressionist’s montage of overlapping memories and images and emotions. Fiona and Danny are both in there, although not by name. The girl is me – with nuances of my own children. The mother is also me – but she is my mother, too. The farmhouse is the one where I raised my children – but it’s also the one where I was raised. And the pony is both Fiona and my childhood pony, J.D., who was not grey but equally beautiful and beloved. And that is only my side of the story. Kristina Jones, whose gorgeous artwork gives this book wings, brings with her the ponies, birds and landscapes of her experience. Their lives and colours and seasons animate these pages, too. I hope, if you read The Pony and the Starling, you will see flickers of places and people and pets that reside in your heart as well. Their truths – your truths –inhabit this story, adding highlights and shimmers to its layers that are just for you. Such is the magic of picture books. Every truth has a story, and every story has a season. At the end of the day, as Thomas King tells us, the truth about stories is that’s all we are.  Fiona and Jennifer Jennifer McGrath is an award-winning author whose books include The Pony and the Starling, illustrated by Kristina Jones, The Snow Knows, illustrated by Josée Bisaillon and winner of the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award; Pugs Cause Traffic Jams, illustrated by Kathryn Durst and middle grade adventure novel, Chocolate River Rescue, winner of the Hackmatack Award. She lives in Hillsborough, New Brunswick, where she is currently owned by a 3 ½ year-old border collie named Robbie, and a very fuzzy, 2-year old pony named Thorin.
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