Interview with the creators of THIS IS THE BOAT THAT BEN BUILT: Jen Lynn Bailey and Maggie Zeng3/25/2022
It might surprise you to know that authors and illustrators of picture books don’t often collaborate directly on their stories, and that many of them are only given the green light to communicate after the book is considered complete. This was also the case for author Jen Lynn Bailey and illustrator Maggie Zeng who each worked directly with their editor, Erin Alladin, at Pajama Press, but only officially “met” each other via a Zoom call recently! Today on the blog: a look at some highlights from their conversation, and some additional thoughts for writers and illustrators just breaking in. This Is the Boat That Ben Built’ by Jen Lynn Bailey illustrated by Maggie Zeng © 2022 published by Pajama Press. JEN: It’s so great to finally meet you, Maggie! I was so thrilled when I saw the illustrations in This is the Boat that Ben Built, and I’m so glad we were matched up to work on it together!
I have so many questions… what was your path to publication like? MAGGIE: It’s great to meet you too, Jen! Your story was so fun to illustrate! My path to publication started after graduating Dawson College’s Illustration program in 2020. Pajama Press reached out to me with a manuscript because they had seen my work during the school’s virtual exhibition. This 3D, game-like portfolio showcase was designed by Studio Syro as an innovative substitute to combat the pandemic’s halting of in-person gatherings. Although that first manuscript was eventually dropped, editor Erin Alladin contacted me a few months later with your story, and the rest is history! How about you, Jen? JEN: I started querying this story to publishers in 2013, right after graduating from Vermont College of Fine Arts’ (VCFA) Writing for Children and Young Adults MFA program. I got a big list of Canadian publishers and sent it out pretty haphazardly. No luck. I put the manuscript away for a couple of years and worked on other stories, and when I came back to it in 2017, I saw it with fresh eyes and could tell that there were issues with its cumulative elements. So, I worked on it some more, then sent it out again, this time being more targeted in my selection of publishers after reading broadly and studying the kinds of books each one was acquiring. When I heard from an editor at Pajama Press that she was taking it to acquisitions, I was so excited! Unfortunately, it wasn't a great fit at the time, but she said they would keep it on file... and a year later, they reached out and asked if it was still available. I signed the contract in 2020, after they had found the perfect illustrator for the project (that illustrator was you!). Maggie: I’m so glad it was! What inspired you to write the story? What was the inspiration behind Little Seed? I wanted to tell a story about different ways to hug. Some people love hugs. Some don’t. Some love many and some only want a few. But the challenge was how will Little Seed hug when their arms are so small? How can Little Seed hug the whole world? Animals come in all shapes and sizes and I wanted to play with their personality and how they feel about hugs. Is there a difference in making board books vs picture books? I originally wrote this story as a picture book. When my editor read it, she saw it as a board book. And I agree. The concept fits better as a board book than a picture book. But we actually kept the same amount of pages as a picture book, 32 pages. Which was surprising, as board books are usually 24 pages. I’m glad we got to keep those extra pages so we get to spend more time with Little Seed. How did the designs come together? Little Seed was at first a humanoid character. Kinda like the little green giant. I still love this character, so it may make a way into some story or another in the future. But changing the design to an actual seed was the right choice for the story. It made it more clear, especially for the board book age. The art director suggested a bigger trim size then your typical board book as well. And she created an amazing font for the title which fit perfectly. I’m so grateful to work with the whole team at Little Simon. What are you working on these days? I’m wrapping up on Anzu Book 2 (ANZU THE GREAT LISTENER), a sequel to ANZU THE GREAT KAIJU, which came out Jan 11th, 2022. I’m really excited to go on another journey with Anzu. I’m also working on another picture book called FIRST NIGHT OF HOWLERGARTEN with Penguin Workshop. Thank you for listening to me ramble! Benson Shum is a children's book author and illustrator. His book, Anzu the Great Kaiju received a starred review from School Library Journal, and was selected for the Kid's Indie Next List recommended for Jan/Feb 2022 by ABA, American Booksellers Association. Benson is also an Animator at the Walt Disney Animation Studios, where he was a part of such films as Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, Moana, Frozen 2, Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto. Originally from Vancouver, BC, Benson now lives in sunny southern California.
Visit Benson at: http://bensonshum.com/ Twitter: @bshum79 Instagram: @bshum79 Facebook: @bshum79 Tiktok: @bshum79 This article was first published in Canadian Children's Book News, Fall 2021 A few months ago, my sister made her way down to the basement, where her 8-year-old son was playing with his Hot Wheels, sending cars flying along an elaborately constructed track and making sounds like a rocket blasting off. “Hey sweet boy,” she said. “Can I tell you something?” He laid aside the Corvette in his hand, suddenly curious. My sister knelt down. “I think nobody tries harder than you to be good. People don’t see how hard you’re trying, because you get in trouble more than other kids. But you try so hard.” Tears sprang to her son’s eyes. He threw his arms around her. “Mommy! I love you soooo much!” For my sister, the road to this moment had been a long one. And she knew there would still be many challenges ahead. “I rarely feel like I can read his heart,” she told me recently. But right then, at least, she seemed to have found the words he needed to hear. “I think he often feels very misunderstood,” my sister said to me. “So when he does feel that someone gets him, it can make a big impact.” * I started writing I Just Want To Be Super! because I wanted my nephew to have a book that made him feel understood. At the time he was 4 years old, and my sister and her husband were growing increasingly concerned by all the negative feedback he was receiving––from his daycare, from his day camp, from other kids, and, despite their best efforts, from my sister and her husband themselves. From all sides, people were expressing exasperation, irritation and outright anger towards him. Not that his behaviour was commendable. He often disregarded rules and instructions, bounding around the classroom when he was told to sit down and insisting on doing his own thing when the rest of the group was assigned another activity. He could also be physically aggressive, getting into occasional fist fights and, once, wresting a tricycle away from a child so abruptly that he knocked the other kid to the ground. At home, it was a similar story: he switched back on his light after bedtime to play with his toys, stomped off yelling and slammed his door if he lost at a board game, and sometimes kicked or punched his older sister. My sister and her husband tried the same approach to discipline that had worked with their daughter a few years earlier: explain the consequences for certain actions and reinforce those consequences in a consistent way. But with my nephew, no consequence seemed enough to alter his behaviour. One time, after an especially difficult day together, my sister found herself having taken every toy out of his room, including his favourite fire truck. Behind his door, my nephew only became more upset, his cries echoing throughout the house. My sister felt like the worst parent in the world. She also felt out of control herself. She had spoken to him more sharply than she had meant to. And it had only escalated the conflict. This wasn’t the relationship she wanted with her son. And she was sure this was not the relationship he wanted with his family or with others. Everyone rolling their eyes at him, sighing at him, telling him over and over “Why can’t you do this? Why didn’t you do that? All I’m asking is this one thing!” She worried, too, about what this constant criticism might be doing to his budding sense of self. He took everything to heart, and she did not want him forming the idea that he was a “bad kid”. She thought about all the wonderful ways in which his high energy could express itself. He was deeply curious, eager to understand how everything worked, from air conditioners to the sun to time travel to how skunks spray. And he was passionately creative, always making things, such as the time he worked meticulously for hours with paper, tape and string to build a model of the human digestive system, complete with moving parts and pretend food that you could pass through it. He wasn’t simply high-energy, either. He also loved to snuggle, wanting his mom and dad and sister to curl up with him inside his pillow forts. He could spend whole afternoons drawing spaceships, robots and imaginary planets. And he was super gentle with animals. When he caught frogs, he crouched down very slowly and eased his hands into the water, closing them in a loose cup around the frog just before it could hop away. He named every frog Emerald and kept it for no more than a few hours in a tank carefully lined with grass, leaves, rocks and a little water, respectful of the fact that he had to return it to the wild a short time later, for the sake of the frog. Once I was walking with my nephew along a beach. A grasshopper alighted on his sleeve. As we kept strolling, my nephew held his arm steady for his tiny passenger and spoke softly to it. The grasshopper never left its perch, as if sensing that no harm would come to it there. * Canada is lucky to have so many talented authors and illustrators making quality books for kids. And here at Picture Books, Eh! we are lucky to have 22 of them who have signed on to share not only their 2022 picture books but also their experiences and insights. Both on our website and on our Twitter and Instagram pages, you'll find interviews, reflections and behind-the-scenes glimpses by Canadian picture book creators as well as news on upcoming picture books by a broad range of Canadian picture book makers. Oh, and also giveaways! To launch us into 2022, Picture Books, Eh! is excited to offer two manuscript critiques––something many of us have benefited from tremendously over the years––and a whole bunch of books. Our 2022 launch giveaway includes:
* = Canada addresses only. Otherwise Canada and US addresses only. Whew! What a list! And that's just for the launch! Stay tuned for more giveaways as we approach the book birthdays of other 2022 picture books. To enter our launch giveaway, simply: - follow @picturebookseh on Twitter and/or Instagram - like and re-tweet our launch giveaway Twitter post and/or like and re-post our launch giveaway Instagram post - Winners (chosen at random) will be announced here on our website as well as on Twitter and Instagram in exactly two weeks, on Friday February 4 at 9 am EST Critique details: If you win the critique giveaway, you will be invited to submit a picture book manuscript of up to a thousand words, with up to two questions about your manuscript. Loretta Garbutt or Karen Krossing will then give you one-time editorial feedback focused on your questions. The edits will be done in a Word Document and will be returned to you within six weeks, with both comments alongside the text and suggested edits within the text (using Track Changes). Picture Books, Eh! is glad to be able to offer a platform for Canadian picture book creators of diverse backgrounds, including creators who have been historically marginalized from children’s publishing, to share their voices. We are still open to new members for 2022, so if you are a Canadian picture book creator releasing a traditionally published book this year, feel free to get in touch with us!
Even once the group is filled up for 2022, Picture Books, Eh! welcomes any Canadian picture book creator to get in touch about writing a guest post for our blog or Instagram page. Whether you are publishing this year or not, traditionally published or self-published, and even if you are simply working towards publication one day, if you have insights to share, we’d love to hear them. Happy reading in the year ahead, eh! Picture Books, Eh! 2022 Alison Johns is a Speech-Language Pathologist from Calgary, Alberta. She works with children with a variety of communication needs, including the need for augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Just in time for International AAC Awareness Month, Johns has released a book about AAC: Eddie the Elephant has Something to Say, illustrated by Tara Put. This is Johns' first book. What is the book about?
Eddie the Elephant has Something to Say is about an elephant, named Eddie, who has trouble communicating using speech. Eddie has lots of ideas, but sometimes his friends don’t understand what he’s trying to communicate, and this makes Eddie feel frustrated. So, Eddie decides to make himself an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device to help him communicate his ideas more clearly! What is AAC? Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) refers to any mode of communication that can be used in addition to or instead of speech, and it is used by individuals who have disabilities that impact their communication. AAC encompasses a wide variety of tools and strategies that can help individuals communicate their ideas. In this story, Eddie uses a communication device. AAC may also include communication books, pages, partner assisted scanning, sign language, gestures, etc.!
My Love For You Is Always is six days old and it’s been an exciting week so far! I’m so warmed by its reception!
This past weekend was eventful: a special storytime with illustrator Michelle Lee on Saturday (kindly hosted by Vroman’s Bookstore) and then a live Instagram chat with book-lover Maya (of MaiStoryBook) the next day. If you missed out on any of these events, they have been recorded and can be accessed here: Saturday’s storytime: https://crowdcast.io/e/b9fd0w3m/ Sunday’s IG live chat: https://www.instagram.com/maistorybooklibrary/channel/ One spread that has been receiving a lot of attention is of this gorgeous dragon. (If you peek into Saturday’s recording, you can fast forward to Michelle’s drawing demo on how to draw a dragon!) This illustration was inspired by the mother’s comparison of her love to sweet, spun sugar – an Asian confection we call dragon’s beard candy (one of its many names!).
So what IS dragon’s beard candy? This is a hand-pulled candy made of fine strands of sugar. It can be filled with crushed peanuts, chocolate, and a number of other things. The strands can get stuck to your chin as you’re eating, making you look like you have the beard of a dragon. (What a great name for a candy with so many intriguing and magical associations!)
Here’s a mesmerizing video of someone making it fresh! Yesterday Maya asked me what I hoped readers could learn from the book. Great question. I want to share foods that are special to me and particular to my culture, but I hope that the book can also open up conversations for readers everywhere about foods that are special to them! What does love feel like for you? How is love expressed, sensed, felt, and seen through the many textures of food? Before I go, I would be a bad Montrealer if I didn’t mention this lovely little shop in our city’s Chinatown! If you're ever in town, please check out Dragon’s Beard Candy on 52B La Gauchetiere. They make dragon’s beard candy every day of the week! I feel more comfortable with a knife in my hand than I do with a pen or a brush. I’m not sure what this says about me, but I think that something about cutting intimidates me less than drawing – even though it’s clearly final. You can’t erase a cut. As a printmaker, I cut out colour blocking shapes using my knife to create the forms that will be translated in print. In The House Next Door – the backgrounds involved cutting paper stencils, carving rubber stamps and making pattern “plates” from leather shapes. Paper stencils were used to screen print, rubber was carved to stamp details, and leather was coated with oil-based ink then hand rubbed onto the paper. It was all very low-tech – and an extremely messy operation. The houses themselves are also knife driven. Cardboard, matte board, cork and other finds from the recycling box were transformed with this favoured tool. Add glue and some paint and you have a neighbourhood. Anna Lazowski wrote her first picture book for a class assignment in the sixth grade and has been creating stories ever since. Now an award-winning radio producer, Anna has an MA (Journalism) from the University of Western Ontario and a BFA (Hons.) from the University of Manitoba. Her debut picture book, T. REXES CAN’T TIE THEIR SHOES (Doubleday Books for Young Readers), illustrated by Steph Laberis, is being released on June 29, 2021. Visit Anna’s website: https://www.annalazowskibooks.com/ What made you decide to write an alphabet book? I always loved reading ABC books with my kids. A couple I remember well are Lois Ehlert’s EATING THE ALPHABET, and Andrew Zuckerman’s CREATURE which has gorgeous photographs of animals for each letter. T. REXES was the first picture book manuscript I wrote, and I wrote it purely for fun based on a silly game we used to play with our kids. It started with coming up with things T. rexes wouldn’t be able to do because of their tiny little arms, and when we ran out of those, we branched out into other animals as well. What was the biggest challenge with coming up with a unique spin on a well covered subject? I wasn’t deeply entrenched in the publishing world when I wrote this, so I hadn’t really thought about what would make a new alphabet book stand out. But I knew I wanted there to be an underlying message that was positive hidden in a book that uses the word “can’t” 26 times. I also thought it would be fun to play around with a series of negative statements in a book for kids, because that’s not something I came across in all the books we read when my kids were little. In one of the first calls with my editor, Frances Gilbert at Doubleday, she said after she read it, she immediately went looking to see if there was a similar text out there because she couldn’t believe this hadn’t been done before. When she couldn’t find one, she offered on it just over an hour after I sent it to her. What was it like to see the illustrations for the first time?
The first illustrations I saw were black and white, and even then I could tell that Steph Laberis was the perfect person to bring the silliness out in this book. The final images absolutely blew me away, the colours really pop in the book, and the design of it all works so well. I think kids will love looking at all these ridiculous animals as they try and fail to accomplish all their tasks. Did you have any input into the illustrations? None at all! Despite that, Steph somehow drew a dog that looks like my dog for the D page, and my bike looks a lot like the one the bee is sitting on, right down to the pistachio colour! What do you hope kids (and parents) will take away from T. REXES CAN’T TIE THEIR SHOES?I hope it’s a book they can go back to and keep laughing! I also hope it reinforces the fact that no one is good at everything, but there can be fun moments as you continue to try. What are you working on these days?I have a whole bunch of different projects on the go and am hoping to find homes for a few of them. I am also extremely excited that my second book, DARK CLOUD, will be coming out with Kids Can Press in spring of 2023. The illustrator hasn’t been announced yet but I can’t wait to tell everyone more about it when I can. Want to read more about Anna Lazowski's journey to her first publication? Check out her article on her website, "My 'instant' success' by the numbers". Melanie Proulx and Ashley Lanni are the authors of The Bum Drum Conundrum, a picture book about consent published by Tiny Tree Books in 2019. Malina loves to play with her friends, but she doesn’t like their new game, the Bum Drum. She is uncomfortable when her friends pressure her to play. However, with the help of her mom, Malina learns to say no, and her friends learn the importance of respecting people’s boundaries. Visit Melanie and Ashley's website at www.melanie.ashley.books.com. Why did you decide to write a picture book about consent?
We started our picture book journey by reimagining classic fairy tales with a feminist twist. In the process, we came up with a few original ideas of our own, one of which was The Bum Drum Conundrum. We quickly realized that publishing an anthology was not feasible and that we should try to publish our work as individual pieces. We thus decided to focus our efforts on The Bum Drum Conundrum because we felt it had the best message. Consent is an issue that is really important and personal to us. As educators, we firmly believe that the key to social change is education. Seeing as how there were few resources available to parents and teachers to discuss consent in a way that is appropriate for children, we felt we had an opportunity to make a real difference. We were also writing at the height of the #MeToo movement. Seeing how others were trying to bring about change, we wanted to our part too. What is your writing process as joint authors? We are fortunate to be friends who are passionate about a lot of the same things, like social justice, which helps us get our work off the ground. Typically, one of us gets an idea and bounces it off the other person, who becomes equally excited about the project. This initial exchange leads to a brainstorming session where we riff off of each other. After we have a general idea of the plot and what the story is about, we craft the manuscript together, side by side, almost line by line. We like to work in person because it generates a balanced atmosphere of exchange, which is sometimes hard to replicate online. We also typically go through several drafts. The editing process can take us several weeks or even months. Strong writing requires mulling over your ideas and being comfortable with rewriting your work until your intuition tells you that your manuscript is complete. Andrea Curtis is the author of numerous books for children, including City of Water, A Forest in the City (Groundwood), Eat this! and What’s for Lunch? (Red Deer Press). Her latest book is Barnaby, illustrated by Kass Reich (Owlkids Books). It’s the story of a blue budgie who’s got it all: a golden cage, yummy treats and an owner who gives him all the snacks and attention he wants. Until one day she brings home a friend for him: a little yellow canary. But Barnaby is not happy. When his tantrums don’t convince his owner to get rid of the new bird, Barnaby flies away from home and ends up hopelessly lost. Visit Andrea’s website: www.andreacurtiskids.ca What inspired you to write Barnaby? One day I was walking my two boys to our neighbourhood school, and I saw a flash of blue from the corner of my eye. I thought I was imagining it until I realized it was a blue budgie flying around our urban schoolyard and hanging out with a bunch of chickadees and sparrows. I started to wonder how this tropical creature was handling the outside world and what he made of the other birds—and what they made of him! If you live in a city, you’ve probably seen posters like this heartbreaker about Bobbin the parakeet that popped up in my neighbourhood. I sometimes think there should be a requirement that people who post missing pet signs update everyone when the creature is found. It’s almost too much to bear to not know. And, in fact, there was a recent update in The Toronto Star. Spoiler alert: Bobbin did not make it home. It’s not the ending any of us would have hoped for, but there’s a nice twist because the owner received a lot of support and love from her community. My spotting of that blue budgie was actually quite a long time ago. I have files for Barnaby (who does make it home) on my computer dating from 2012! My kids have long since graduated from that little urban school and are now in high school and university. But I think that’s sometimes that's how things go with books. They may start with inspiration but take a really long time to find their proper form. They need to be imagined and reimagined. Over those years of thinking about the book, I even started doodling blue budgies and I’ve created quite a cast of them by now. Every year I make a calendar for my closest friends and family featuring a blue budgie doing all sorts of silly things (climbing mountains, skateboarding, dancing). This year my budgie is doing everything that we haven’t been able to do under lockdown: HUGGING and gathering closely with friends! |
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