Tentacles!! I Talk Hilarity and Board Books with Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham

The current Supreme Court case Mahmoud v. Taylor has been on a lot of our minds lately. It is rare that the Supreme Court itself rules on picture books and whether parents can “opt out” of them, but here we are. And since we’re dealing with broad broad terms, you know what book could be included in this ruling? Why, Itty-Bitty Kitty-Corn by Shannon Hale, illustrated by LeUyen Pham, of course! After all, in 2023 it was flagged in Texas as being “sexually suggestive.” Mmm hmm. Yup.

Credit where credit is due, Hale & Pham AND their publisher (Abrams) have doubled down. You gotta problem with a picture book? Well, try these BOARD BOOKS in the same series on for size! Ha!

When I was asked if I was interested in interviewing Shannon and LeUyen about Kitty-Corn Club: Parts of Us, a debut board book in the new Kitty-Corn line for the youngest of readers, I leaped at the chance. Not simply because I like the books, but also because this book? It’s legitimately hilarious! Just watch and see.

[Note: I don’t usually mention this, but just as a hint, the longer my questions in a Q&A with someone, the more I like that person and their book.]

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Betsy Bird: Well, hello, Shannon and LeUyen!! Thank you so much for answering my questions today. I’m so incredibly happy to be talking about PARTS OF US since this book is, quite frankly, board book comedy gold. The readaloud potential alone, my god! So let’s get the origin story. How did Kitty-corn and friends end up in a board book at all?

LeUyen Pham: Ahhh, thank you Shannon for letting me take this one, because I’M TOTALLY GOING TO TAKE CREDIT FOR THIS ONE! It wasn’t long after the first couple Kitty-Corn books came out that Abrams approached us about doing something on the side of the picture books, suggesting perhaps early readers or the like?  And I just remember saying to Shannon, “BOARD BOOKS WOULD BE SO MUCH FUN!”  I was always a huge fan of Sandra Boynton and Taro Gomi, and read these books to my babies all the time.  I remember when my first child was born, publishers sent me gifts of many MANY board books, and my kid would lay in the center of these piles of board books and proceed to play with, chew on, and eventually flip the pages with their chubby little hands.  And the ones that would provoke the biggest smiles and gurgles would be the ones that were fun for ME to read as well.  Short, precise, with the humor absolute nailing it, in both the words and the pictures.  I know that most board books are perceived often as a way of introducing concepts to kids, but the ones that I admire most are the ones that can do that AND suggest the subtlest of stories.  When I suggested it to my fellow kitty-corn (I’m being deceiving here, once again I basically screamed at her “BOARD BOOKS!” and probably shook her enthusiastically til her brains rattled), Shannon responded with equal enthusiasm, and that was that.  I think we both understood the challenge of making board books with brevity and precision would also be part of the joy in making them.  As always, our goal is to get the other one to laugh.  And these were FUN!

BB: Oh man. You are singing my song. Boynton! Gomi! I too surrounded my children with books so that they literally fell asleep in piles of them. Shannon, this next question’s for you. I think you may be one of the rare authors to write almost every kind of book from board books to titles for adults. And if we were to grade different types of children’s literature by levels of difficulty, I would put writing successful board books right up there with full-blown YA novels. This book is so legitimately hilarious that I cannot WAIT for my baby niece to grow up enough to be able to read it. You do this incredible thing with page turns where the book is bobbing about, rhyming nicely, and then you WHAMMO hit the reader upside the head with the hilarious word “tentacles.” So that’s just my long-winded way of asking, how did you realize that “tentacles” was such a funny word? 

Shannon Hale: Betsy, I’m eating up all your compliments with a spoon. I ADORE board books. I have four kids, and I’ve spent surely thousands of hours reading hundreds of them over and over again. When Uyen pitched the idea of board books, I was both delighted and intimidated, because I have such a reverence for the ones done well. Uyen and I come up with all the Kitty-Corn books together, from concept on. We sat together in airports and coffee shops and in her living room rolling ideas back and forth between us. For the body parts book, we wanted to find several body parts that our four main animals all have, though each in their own style. Then we thought we’d introduce a new animal who had a body part that none of our other critters had.  [I found a list I sent to Uyen of potential parts if you’re curious:] 

trunk

shell 

spines

Needles

Quills

Snout

antlers

tusks

humps

flippers

Antennae

Spots

stripes

Fins

Udders

pincers

thorax

stinger

Proboscis

wattles

carapace

Prehensile tail

I loved the idea of introducing a new, big, crunchy word in a board book that kids could shout. I tried it out myself, alone in my office shouting “TRUNK!” Or “SNOUT!” Or “PROBOSCIS!” Uyen drew a bunch of new animals with these parts, and I remember loving a walrus with tusks, for example, but with apologies to Fleetwood Mac, “tusk” just isn’t as fun to shout as “tentacles.” I mean, try it out. Right now, wherever you are, shout out: TENTACLES! It’s just fun! If we used an octopus, not only would kids get to shout TENTACLES, the concept worked perfectly, because the octopus wouldn’t have any of the other body parts: tail, tongue, back, etc. And of course, once I saw Uyen’s Octopus, it was a no brainer.

BB: Sorry, I’m still mourning the fact that you didn’t go with the equally amazing “wattles”. I think I smell a sequel… Now, LeUyen, I do believe you must have had a lot of fun figuring out how to draw a bespectacled octopus. When you’re creating a new character like this, what does your process look like? For example, did you have a clear picture of what the octopus would look like right from the start or did you do a fair amount of putzing about before you landed on the right look? 

LeUyen: You know, I absolutely love coming up with characters. It’s one of the things that comes easiest to me, and I’m not sure why.  Lots of imaginary friends as a kid?  Let’s go with that.  At any rate, usually when I come up with a character, I’m working off the mold of someone I already know, or a phase of my children’s lives, or even myself.  Meaning, the first part of designing a character is understanding their personality. This case was a little different, because we didn’t have a personality for this one yet.  We had decided on tentacles as the funny word, and this little octopus came, fast and furious, like Athena from the head of Zeus, almost fully formed.  I remember Shannon and I were at a hotel during a tour or book event or something, and were sitting poolside, and Shannon was listing off some of the word pairings she had come up with. The ones that made us laugh were the ones that she noted.  And somewhere in her recitation, I started drawing this little red octopus.  I remember showing it to her, and her eyes lit up and she said “THAT’S IT!” I can’t figure out if Shannon is either incredibly kind and says she likes everything I make, or whether she actually DOES love everything I make, but either way, her enthusiasm feeds my own, and Octopus was born.  But I’ll tell you the truth about designing characters — we put all we have into making them look cute and or funny, or whatever it is, but in the end, what brings the character to life is the acting.  And in board books, you don’t have too much real estate to develop character.  So the pattern of the words that we chose had to precisely fit with the growth of the story of this little Octopus, trying to fit into the world of Kitty-Corn, and ultimately finding acceptance in her own world of tentacles (arms, tentacles, I agree with Shannon — tentacles is FUNNY).  

Total side note — one of the things you use when visually acting is body language, and in particular, hand gestures.  Octopus provided PLENTY to go on there!

BB: Okay. You just alluded to it, LeUyen. The elephant in the room. For whatever reason, octopuses have been VERY hot in children’s nonfiction books lately. And the one thing those books stress time and again is, alas, that octopuses have arms and not tentacles. So initially, when I was reading your book, I was sad that this wasn’t mentioned… but wait! Right there on the back cover you DO mention it yourself! Hooray! So my curious little mind has to ask… at what point in the process did that particular note make it onto the book? Did some sharp-eyed copy editor bring it to your attention or was it always the intention to put the note at the end like that? 

Shannon: Betsy, let’s get raw and real. I mean, we’re talking board books, the most punk category of children’s lit, so no holding back. I HAD NO IDEA ABOUT THE ARMS THING. Here we were, doe-eyed kid lit creators, having just spent a couple of years creating a board book, and we’re at final proofs when suddenly a rogue copyeditor jumps out from behind a large shrubbery, wiggling her technicolored appendages and shouting: “THEY’RE CALLED ARMS! ARMS!!!” Honestly. The nerve. I, being both a pragmatist and a linguistic descriptivist, replied with an emphatic “STET!” But also, with a soft spot for the tiniest nerds among us (having raised four such sharp-eyed nerds myself) I asked if we could add the disclaimer on the back. I want to support Science. And I also want to support the right to yell TENTACLES. You can tell by looking at this little Octopus that she likes calling her limbs “tentacles,” and that is her right. It is similarly my right to refer to my fifty-year-old hips as my “majestic haunches.” Sometimes the best word is the funnest word.

BB: Brava! My forty-seven-year-old hips salute you! And it’s unpleasant, but due to the state of the world in which we live today, I probably have to mention that much like many other children’s books in the country, Kitty-corn has also been a victim of the book banning wave. I wonder if you could say a word or two about this, and what it’s like to create book for kids in a country where a little horned kitty can be untimely ripped from the hands of kids in this manner.

LeUyen: Yup, book banning.  It’s unbelievable in this day and age how much this has been taken up as an issue, and has been weaponized so effectively.  Everything we talk about concerning book banning seems to come with a military suggestion — librarians are “on the front”, we’re all “warriors”, “the battle” for our children’s minds and hearts — it’s hard to imagine that a cotton candy pink horned kitten could be at the root of any of this.  There’s simply too much to say here in regards to the damage it’s doing to our kids, to our communities, to the good librarians and teachers who find themselves in the cross hairs of what, let me emphasize, is coming from a SMALL MINORITY OF PEOPLE WITH VERY LOUD VOICES.  But in regards to Kitty-corn, I do have a lovely story about what can be done to fight this oppression.  Last year, the lovely hamlet of Abilene, TX (known as the Storybook Capitol of the World) featured me as their guest artist for the NICCL.  As part of the celebration, there was a parade, a costume party, multiple dinners, a featured gallery, and best of all, a life-size bronze statue to be made based on one of my characters.  And they selected Kitty and Unicorn, because, you know, WHO DOESN’T LOVE KITTIES AND UNICORNS?  Unfortunately, as has been proven, a few people don’t.  Suggestions that the book promoted transgender values, improper use of pronouns, etc etc.  Shannon and I are pretty baffled by this, as again, we’re writing about KITTIES AND UNICORNS.  And the power of friendship.  And the power of seeing one another. And the power of acceptance.  In the case of Abilene, a complaint was registered at the city council meeting about the statue should be allowed to go up in a public garden.  Once again, let me say, we’re talking about a bronze statue of a KITTEN AND A UNICORN being considered as TOO CONTROVERSIAL.  For a CHILDREN’S STORYBOOK GARDEN.  

But here is where the story gets interesting, and to me, provides the perfect example of how to address book banning.  The citizens of the town itself came forward, writing in letters of support and denouncing these attempts to control what went into their garden.  Lynn Barnett, who was in charge of the festivities there, let me know in no uncertain terms how much the community was supportive of the books and the statue. In fact, she said that the committee had seen an uptick in donations for the festival in light of this banning, with letter after letter emphasizing the importance of letting children be children, or allowing parents to decide what was best for their own children, of emphasizing the positive messages of love and friendship that the books espouse.  In short, the community spoke up for themselves, and overwhelmingly voted the statue into the garden.  That summer, both Shannon and I attended the statue ceremony, and saw that the small handful of protesters (handful sounds like a lot — I’m thinking it was more like three people?) were camouflaged by people who also held signs, but with a different message.  “WE LOVE KITTY-CORN”, “WE LOVE OUR GARDEN!”, “WELCOME KITTY-CORN!”  I found it to be the most moving moment of my entire time in this sweet little Texas town. It shows that while our teachers and librarians and book creators are calling out the injustice and damage being inflicted upon our children, it takes the community itself to right that injustice.  

BB: Shoot! I had no idea about any of this! Now I need to add your statue to my round-up of A Complete Listing of Children’s Literature Statues in the U.S.! Well, finally, here’s hoping we see more of Kitty-corn in all sorts of formats (easy book, early chapter, graphic novel, you name it). Until she gets there (and maybe that’s already in the works?) what else do you two have coming out these days? What can we look forward to?

Shannon: So much. I’m excited about my very first holiday book! HOLLY JOLLY KITTY-CORN is so festive, you’ll want to celebrate Christmas in September. This year is also the 20th anniversary of PRINCESS ACADEMY. The novel series has beautiful new covers by Dung Ho, and a graphic novel of PRINCESS ACADEMY comes out spring ’26 illustrated by Victoria Ying. And this August I have a new middle grade graphic novel DREAM ON illustrated by Marcela Cespedes.

LeUyen: Oh boy. Lots coming up. Between a new Princess in Black and our holiday Kitty Corn book, just the books with Shannon alone should be enough.  But you know us — we’re conquering the world one genre at a time.  I’ve got a young adult graphic novel coming out with the amazing Jen Lee, the creator of Disney’s Frozen and Moana.  It’s called AS I DREAM OF YOU, a star-crossed lovers ghost story, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever done before.  That one should be coming out next year sometime.  As well, I’ve got a picture book coming out with my dear friend Laurel Snyder, called SHRINKING VIOLET. It’s the first time in a couple of years where I was painting in gouache, and it’s been lovely to feel that brush across paper.  I’ve also got an adaptation of the Madeline books in graphic novel form coming out, with John Marciano writing and my husband Alex Puvilland illustrating with me.  And a book coming out with Meg Medina! 

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Are you not ENTERTAINED?!? Man. Big thanks to Shannon and LeUyen for all these answers. I’m almost left with even more questions after these answers, and it’s glorious. Thanks too to Mitch Thorpe and the team at Abrams for helping to put this all together. Kitty-Corn Club: Parts of Us is out now, so no need to wait. Find it. Read it.

TENTACLES!!

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2025, Interviews