What inspires you to write for young readers?
I admire them. They’re important, imaginative people, and yet they have such little agency in the world. Because of that, I want them to be able to experience lots of vicarious living (and agency) at their own pace.
I want them to know the world is bigger than their home, or city, or country. And to do that, you don’t have to create books that are nonfiction guides to the world (although there is a beautiful place and need for those). You just have to show them someone – anyone—who isn’t them. And you have to make them care about that someone who isn’t them—or who isn’t like them. And here’s the thing: children are ready to care. They care by default. They’re open to others by default. I want to fortify that openness, knowing the inevitable exposures to -isms in our society that cause so many to close down, to judge, to hurt, to hate.
On top of that, I also want to give them something artful that might resonate in a budding creator—to plant the seeds for future artists who will continue to encourage seeing and opening and exploring the wonder in the world. It’s an ambitious goal, I know. But it’s a goal that is so easy and heartful to live with—one I already know I’ll never regret having had at the end of my life.
On an even more personal note, I think people who create often create in the genre that saves them, if that makes sense. Picture books save me again and again. What they demand from me as I write them is really a balanced “seeing”—because they demand that I acknowledge both what the world is, and what it could be—not shying away from an honest look at sadness and pain, while also offering all the things in the world that are worth our love and attention—the beauty that is right here, right now, in the midst of fear and often horrible headlines in the news. Life will always offer us genuine opportunities to fall in love with the world. Picture books offer that too.
What do picture books allow you to do as a storyteller?
What is both exciting and challenging about writing picture books is that they are akin to a theater experience. They’re a dance between word and art – so writing them allows me to write with that dance in mind (as opposed to just thinking of text alone). I’m not an illustrator, and I can’t predict what an artist’s vision will be for a text—but to write a picture book, you have to know it’s a dance. That knowledge, while writing, leads to different choices, different considerations, and different joys that depart from genres of writing that exist without art–or without a relationship to another artist.
Because picture books are consumed by all ages, they also challenge me to create works that all ages can enjoy since adults and children often read them together. I want everyone to get something out of it – something hopefully surprising, or moving, or evocative. I want people of all ages to feel something. It’s beyond hard–to write like that–but so rewarding, and picture books are so capable of that universal heart-play.
Please tell us about your creative process and collaboration.
I take my time writing (takes me a long time!). I often wish I was faster, but I’ve also come to realize that my pace is simply my pace, and I can’t hurry myself. I shouldn’t. I’m writing thinking about that dance—even though I’m providing just one part of that dance. Sometimes, I leave a few illustrator notes, but I don’t mean them as controlling directives. Illustrators are equal storytellers who deserve to make their own decisions and who make texts come alive in ways I couldn’t imagine. Really, those notes are simply a trail of bread crumbs—of what I imagined the dance between text and art might have been as I wrote the line—but they’re not “commands.”
When illustrators sign on, they spend their own uninterrupted time with the text and complete that dance (in ways I couldn’t even dream of – above and beyond). They do this over time, in multiple iterations that the team looks at. After looking at the art in a dummy version, I then go back to the manuscript and adjust or change lines–because the dance has now visually taken shape and I know what it will be, so I can then revise in more informed ways that might heighten that dance. (It’s sort of like when a hair stylist says (after a cut), “I’m going to check your cut again once your hair is dry.” You check the cut again each time – as each book dummy version is created.
I think the collaboration is magical because of trust. I’ve been able to work with artists I trust – and I’ve had the great fortune to work with phenomenal editors and art directors who have keen eyes and who trust us to do that dance, after offering us smart insights, and comments, and suggestions.
Picture books (and art in general) are bids for connection, I think. And the way picture books are created – with cooperation and collaboration, and in trusting teams – adds to that magic. We’re answering bids for connection even as a story is under construction.
Any message for children who want to write and create when they grow up?
Simply put, do it. Doing what you love will make you feel love IN the world – and FOR the world.
And try to keep the “am I good enough?” out of your head (it’s hard to do). That question has no place in creating. The question to ask if you want to create is simply “do I love creating?” Go from there.
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