Interview: Stephanie Rodriguez Talks Bronx, 00s Nostalgia, and More in Doodles from the Boogie Down

Interview: Stephanie Rodriguez Talks Bronx, 00s Nostalgia, and More in Doodles from the Boogie Down

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When I first moved to New York City I didn’t know the first thing about “boroughs”. Were they like neighborhoods? I’d heard of Staten Island and Queens but I didn’t really understand what the difference was between them. Really, it wasn’t until I started working for New York Public Library that I realized how vital each borough is to the heart and soul of the city. I also learned that while most of the press goes to Brooklyn and Manhattan, it’s the Bronx that commands your respect. For one thing, it’s huge. For another, it covers an enormous strata of socio-economic neighborhoods. Yet how often did it appear in books? Hardly ever.

Now things are starting to change. It probably doesn’t hurt that a Newbery Medal went to a graphic novel set entirely in the Bronx (New Kid, anyone?). That gave me hope, and that hope has been further buoyed by the appearance of a new comic book memoir that was just released last week, Doodles from the Boogie Down by Stephanie Rodriguez.

Here’s how the publisher would like to describe it:

“A young Dominican girl navigates middle school, her strict mother, shifting friendships, and her dream of being an artist in this debut coming-of-age graphic novel inspired by the author’s tween years.

Eighth grade in New York City means one thing: It’s time to start applying to high schools! While her friends are looking at school catalogs and studying for entrance exams, Steph is doodling in her notebook and waiting for art class to begin. When her art teacher tells her about LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, Steph desperately wants to apply. But she’s in the Bronx, and LaGuardia is a public school in Manhattan—which her mom would not approve of. Steph comes up with a plan that includes lying to her mom, friends, and teachers. Keeping secrets isn’t easy, and Steph must decide how far she’ll go to get what she wants.

Doodles from the Boogie Down is a sparkling semi-autobiographical middle grade graphic novel debut set in the early aughts that’s perfect for fans of Sunny Side Up by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm and Real Friends by Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham.”

Are you not amused? You will be when you see my interview with Ms. Rodriguez today:

Betsy Bird: Stephanie! Thank you so much for joining me here today. Now if there’s one thing the kids love these days, it’s graphic memoirs. This one’s just so much fun to read. What made you want to write a comic for kids in the first place?

Stephanie Rodriguez

Stephanie Rodriguez: Middle school was hard for me, I had a face full of pimples, braces, and frizzy hair. I was bullied for being super hairy and for being “weird”. I guess talking to yourself out loud is a social no-no! I wanted to share my experience of being a middle school kid in the hopes that other kids would relate to my characters and maybe help them through tough times in and out of school. 

BB: Yep. Understandable. So while I think I still have to get over the fact that the year 2000 is technically historical, I love that this book is set at that time. How did you balance out the nostalgic elements with a story that kids today can relate to?

SR: I treated the nostalgic elements like a background character. Throughout the book technology, slang, and cultural references are sprinkled into the storyline. I feel like today’s tweens look back to the 2000s, in the same way, I looked at the 80s at that age. I was obsessed with music, fashion, and film from the 80s, I wanted to learn everything I could. Kids are going to have a blast reading Doodles and learning what kind of technology and entertainment was available for kids living in the 2000s. 

BB: Oh, man. I think I just aged 100 years hearing you talk about how you used to look back at the 80s as the ancient past. Speaking of which, how much of the book, would you say, is true to your own life, and what elements did you fictionalize to make it work on the page?

SR: I would say the book is about 50/50. In middle school, I didn’t have a core group of friends I could call my besties. I changed schools in the 7th grade and making friends at a new school was difficult. Because I didn’t have the experience of having besties in middle school I wanted to see what it could have been like if I did. In the book, Steph has two besties Ana and Tiff who are loosely based on friends I made in my adult life.

BB: Aww. So let’s talk setting now. I lived in NYC for about 11 years and worked at New York Public Library. One of my goals in the job was to visit every single library branch in the Bronx, a goal that I failed magnificently. The Bronx is just massive, just teeming with different cultures and personalities. My question then is twofold. (1) What part of the Bronx did you grow up in and where does this book take place and (2) Why do you think the Bronx so infrequently documented in our films, television, and books?

SR: I grew up in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx and the book takes place there as well. The Bronx has been documented in film, television, and books but it’s mostly looked at in a negative light. It seems like the image of the Bronx is still wrapped up with the Bronx of the late 70s and 80s where buildings were set ablaze leaving the borough looking like a war zone. My goal was to show the Bronx in a different light, displaying the beauty of the people, landscape, and sense of community within the borough. 

BB: You succeed. Speaking of NYC, for a lot of kids around the country, the whole process of having to apply for your high school is a foreign, somewhat fascinating process. So this book will feel like a kind of surreal world to a lot of them. I think for some kids it will be a relief to hear that you yourself didn’t go to LaGuardia and yet here you still are with your own GN! What kind of advice would you give kids around this age who place so much importance in doing the “right” thing with their lives?

SR: I was nervous about explaining this process in the book because it can be confusing for someone who isn’t from New York City. The process was stressful for a kid going into freshman year of high school, It’s a lot for a tween. A word of advice I would give to kids this age is that there’s no “right” choice. I didn’t get into the high school of my dreams but that didn’t stop me from becoming an artist with my own Graphic Novel! Don’t stress out it will all work out in the end. 

BB: Sound advice. And, of course, writing with your own life as a guide means you never lack for material. What were some of the elements you wanted to include but just weren’t able to for one reason or another?

SR: In the book, Mr. A is the eccentric 8th-grade homeroom teacher. I wish I was able to include more of him in the book but it didn’t work out for story purposes. Mr. A is based on my 8th-grade religion teacher who had a larger-than-life personality. He was obsessed with everything Broadway and his favorite singer was Barbara Streisand, he always found a way to bring up his favorite topics during our religion lectures and it was delivered to us with lots of drama and sass. 

BB: Aww. Finally, what do you have coming up next?

SR: I’m working on part two of Doodles from the Boogie Down and have other writing projects in the works that I’m pitching for Animated kids’ television ranging from 6-11 years of age and older.

Busy busy busy!

I’d like to thank Stephanie for taking the time to talk with me today about her latest. Thanks too to Kaitlin Kneafsey and the folks at Penguin Young Readers for setting this up. Doodles from the Boogie Down is out now in fine bookstores and libraries nationwide.

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: The Dead Bird by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Remy Charlip AND Christian Robinson

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Kate sez: I want to do a spring book.

I sez: Here’s a dead bird!

Since I just love the Tom Lehrer song “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” so much (which begins, if you’ll recall, with the words, “Spring is here”) I just naturally thought of today’s book. Created both in 1958 and in 2016, I was so lucky to find BOTH editions in my library system. We’re continuing our funeral home theme started by such titles as Duck, Death and the Tulip. It’s our third Margaret Wise Brown book (after Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny), our second Remy Charlip (after Fortunately), and our very first Christian Robinson on this podcast. Notable for the moment Kate asks, “She’s dead, right?” to which I reply, “Oh, she’s SO DEAD!” Also notable for the line, “Have you considered that the bird might smell really really good?”

Listen to the whole show here on Soundcloud or download it through iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, PlayerFM, or your preferred method of podcast selection.

Show Notes:

There’s not a lot of information to be gleaned from Christian Robinson’s version of this tale, but I was able to track down this interview he conducted with Secret Society of Books and it does offer a window into his thought process on this project.

In the original version of this story the bird is large, front and center, and very dead. In the subsequent telling, the bird is tiny and almost hidden. On the other hand, the kids in the original are universally white white white, and in this newer version they show a better swath of racial diversity.

Anybody wanna huff a dead bird?

We kind of like how in the new book the red-haired kid keeps far far back from the bulk of the action.

Note how the bird is placed on a leaf in both cases. This is not a detail mentioned in the text.

Interesting the different expressions on the kids in the old vs. new version.

Both illustrators did choose to put flying birds over the sequence where the kids sing a song during the funeral.

I like the vibe here. “How long do we stand here? Do we go? How long do we grieve here?”

Interested in other books with dead animals? Two that I would highly recommend include The End of Something Wonderful by Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic, ill. George Ermos:

As well as All the Dear Little Animals by Ulf Nilsson, ill. Eva Eriksson:

It was making the rounds for a while but here’s the link to the story about wrestler Maurice Tillet, the man who inspired Shrek.

Review of the Day: Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow

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Simon Sort of Says
By Erin Bow
Disney Hyperion (an imprint of Buena Vista Books)
$16.99
ISBN: 9781368089999
On shelves now

To start us off here, put yourself in my shoes. I’m on a plane headed overseas and I’m going to have lots of time on my hands. I review books for kids, yes, but I also write books for kids and I figured that this copious plane time would be ideal for tightening up this middle grade novel I’ve been working on. But, this being a plane, there are large swaths of time where a person isn’t allowed to keep their laptops open, so I’ve brought along this book Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow to read during the whole take-off proceedings. It was recommended to me by another librarian/author I trust, so I figure it’ll provide some light distraction until I’m able to get back to my own novel. I think you see where this is going. Reader, I devoured this book, practically in one sitting. My plans for working on my own book? Gone! Not least because I realized a mere 10 pages into this book that it was funnier than anything I could hope to conjure out of my own poor, decrepit, jet-lagged little cranium. That’s sort of the ideal way to read, Simon Sort of Says, by the way. I almost fear telling you too much about it, in case you don’t come to it with the same clean slate that I had. The fact of the matter is that Erin Bow has created a masterpiece of tone with this book. Combining a legitimately horrifying situation with humor, heart, and the occasional Jesus squirrel, this is both the funniest book you’ll read this year, and the best-written. Would that I were joking about that. In three words: I am not.

The story that Simon is going to tell the kids in his new school is that he and his family were forced to leave their home due to an incident at his dad’s church involving alpacas. Not entirely true but not entirely false either. And the great thing is, they’ll never be able to double check it because Simon and his parents are moving to the National Quiet Zone. That means no internet (or microwaves for some reason) because the scientists there are searching for signs of life in space. The internet? It interferes. But the more Simon tries to suppress the real reason he and his family have moved, the more dire it may become to tell the truth to his new friends.

So I’m just going to spoil the premise of this book. It’s not giving anything away, since it’s literally in the book’s description, but if you’re anything like me and you prefer to read a book without knowing anything about it, skip this paragraph. We good? Excellent. As I wanted to mention before, the whole premise of this book is that Simon is the sole survivor of a particularly brutal mass school shooting. So much so that as the only kid to survive, his name is synonymous with the event. The job of Erin Bow, then, is to figure out how precisely to introduce this fact. Now, sometimes if I’m really enjoying a book, I’ll write little notes to myself about it along the way. I was flipping back through this book just now and I saw that I’d written this sentence: “All right, students. Turn to page 34 to see a glorious example of how an author drops bread crumbs from chapter to chapter.” I don’t remember writing that, but I was intrigued enough to go to page 34 to see if I could figure out what I meant. Turns out, it was a section where a single off-handed statement intrigues the reader as quickly as it moves on. Agate, new friend of our hero, tends not to be around at lunch because she’s autistic and prefers to go to the school’s “Wellness Room”. Simons says, “It’s dim and cozy which is nice but it also has only one door, which isn’t.” Mind you, there’s a flipside to this kind of foreshadowing. An author has to be very careful with the number of hints and clues they drop before the reader starts to get tired of trying to follow along. Pace is key here, and that author had better play fair or they’ll start losing the readership. In the case of this book, the reveal came about 113 pages, or almost halfway, into the book. That might seem a bit later than in some titles, but in this particular case I thought that it worked.

How the heck is this a comedy then? Because that’s the twist that makes this particular book stand out from all the other middle grade tragedy-soaked sad fests we see in a given year. Balancing something truly horrific alongside jokes that don’t just land but are honestly good and original (so much so that the person next to me on the airplane may have thought I had some kind of congestion issue, I was snorting so frequently)? I mean, you can’t teach that. The trick lies in tone policing. You have to be able to turn on a dime, when called upon to do so, and deliver the right emotion or sentiment at the right time. The funny parts can’t touch the school shooting stuff. The school shooting stuff should in no way get anywhere near the humor. Yet both have to exist in the same book. It reminded me a bit of Dadaism’s response to WWI. When the world offers you horror that trips into absurdism, how do you NOT make a joke?

On that note, I’m going to do that thing where I pluck individual sentences that really liked in the book out of their contexts and make them fend for themselves. These were some of my favorite funny lines:

“I have enough self-consciousness to fuel the robot uprising.”

“The principal’s name is Ms. Snodgrass, and she looks like she’s spent her whole life trying to overcome being called Ms. Snodgrass … On her face she has that look owls always have, like she’s bored but barely suppressing suspicion and rage.”

On having an expensive chair in his room: “My mom bought it for the year I was homeschooled. She said I wasn’t going to be one of those people with widows’ humps who had to have their spines broken so they can lay flat in a coffin.”

On how schools cram in history at the end of the year: “I went to the bathroom during history class and I missed the Vietnam War.”

“Plus, Mom clearly loves coffee more than me.”
“Absolutely true … I would sell you to the fairies for magic coffee beans.”

And, of course, the line I keep quoting to people all the time about the squirrel that ate the consecrated host at Simon’s dad’s church: “That squirrel is now thirty percent Jesus by volume . . . It’s our new god.”

I also detected at least one Suzy Eddie Izzard joke in this book, which I appreciated, as well as a touch of Arrested Development. Maybe I’m wrong, but it sure felt that way anyway.

Craft talk time. Folks like to talk about the first sentence of a given book. They’ll say that it, or the first page, is the make or break portion of any novel. Now how many people say as many sweet things about the final line of the first chapter? Too few, sez I. That may have been the moment I first fell in love with Simon Sort of Says actually. I read through that first chapter and then reached its last sentence: “Anyway, that’s what I tell people.” It’s just six little words but it has the ability to throw everything said before that moment into complete and utter chaos and confusion. Suddenly you have doubts where you didn’t have doubts before (and you’ve only just MET this narrator!). It’s a gutsy little move for a children’s book, and I have nothing but admiration for it. Is Simon an unreliable narrator? Maybe that’s something for child readers to discuss.

And if we’re going to talk craft seriously, let’s talk about character development. The book is written in the first person from Simon’s point of view. That’s great for getting into your main character’s head, but it sets up some natural roadblocks to diving quite as deeply into the heads of his friends and family. Happily, Bow knows how to show rather than tell. First off, there’s Agate. She on the autism spectrum and I was grateful that Bow had the wherewithal to have a fat character where that’s mentioned on occasion, but just so you understand that it’s just part of who she is and not making some kind of a point. Agate is the first friend Simon makes and Bow does a good job of not making her into some kind of magic pixie dream friend, solely there to support our hero. Agate has her own life, her own plans, and she can be darned annoying sometimes. I like that. Bow has a tougher row to hoe with Simon’s other friend Kevin. Kevin’s just a nice dude, but nice dudes can be a little harder to flesh out. Thank goodness for terrible moms then! Or, if not terrible, then at least really really thoughtless moms. It helps to define a guy. Finally, in terms of antagonists, to my infinite relief this book was pretty much bully free. I know that bullies exist, but I also know that they’re also de facto easy villains for lazy authors. It’s easy to make a bully a villain. It doesn’t require much skill in the writing department. Here, there’s a single news reporter who doesn’t even get much time on the page, so we can acknowledge her awfulness without having to see it firsthand. I am down for that.

My co-workers at the library like this book. Of course they do. But they have questions, and I find that when considering books for kids it is generally a very good idea to hear all sides on them. For most of my fellow library workers, the balance between the seriousness of surviving a school shooting alongside the humor of the narration mostly worked, but there were exceptions. For example, at one point Simon says of the goats of Agate, “… it’s making a noise like it’s getting murdered finds getting murdered kind of annoying.” Some folks wondered, not ridiculously, if a kid who was the sole survivor of a school shooting would toss out the term “murdered” quite as cavalierly as Simon has here. It’s a fair point. For other folks, they felt that the ending didn’t work for them. Either they thought it wrapped up far too quickly, or they thought that Simon suddenly had solved his problems in a potentially unhealthy way. Yet even for those folks who had issues with the ending, they loved the book overall. It’s interesting. I rarely see people discuss issues they’ve had with a piece of literature and then throw their weight wholeheartedly behind it anyway. It’s a testament to Bow’s writing. A testament to the book itself.

I’m a librarian by training, so when I read a book I really enjoy I immediately want to pair it with something similar. In this case, it isn’t an intuitive pairing, but one I’d like to make just the same. If you, or a kid you know, hasn’t read, Jennifer Chan Is Not Alone by Tae Keller, this would make an ideal companion novel to Simon Sort of Says. In both cases you’ve an unreliable narrator. A tragedy. Aliens. Science fiction (or is the book realistic fiction?). They’re made for one another.

I read a great deal of middle grade fiction in a given year. Much of it? Perfectly decent and forgettable. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but it does mean that if we want to give our children books that are going to stick in their brains for years and years, long into adulthood, we need to find those stories that grab them and grab them hard. As more and more people read this book they create more and more discussions. I’ll freely admit that not everybody is on board with this title, and that okay. A range of opinions is what make a healthy literary ecosystem. This is for the kid who likes their humor to be complicated, their writing to be scintillating, and to never, ever, know what an author is going to do next. One and all, please be so good as to meet the most memorable book of the year.

Finding Answers: Leonard Marcus Looks at the Creation of Picture Book Worlds and Discusses the Global Children’s Illustration of PICTURED WORLDS

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Sometimes a person finds themself in another country and they want to cast off all connections to their home country. For example, this past March I was in Bologna for the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and while I was perusing the bookstore they have on the conference floor I saw an amazing title. The store looked like this:

The book, like this:

Ist not that beautiful? It may have been American in origin, but for once I didn’t care a jot. A new Leonard Marcus book is, by definition, a happy event (and I have Minders of Make-Believe on almost permanent display in my library’s Staff Picks section, so you know I put my money where my mouth is). And this latest one is a a fascinating encapsulation of 101 illustrators worldwide.

Here’s the official Abrams description:

A lavishly illustrated, large-format reference book highlighting the work of 101 top children’s illustrators

The illustrated children’s book came of age in the 18th century alongside the rising middle-class demand for economic and social advancement. Inspired by philosopher John Locke’s prescient insights into child development, London publisher John Newbery established the first commercial market for illustrated “juveniles” in the West, and the impact of the model he set for books tailored to the interests and capabilities of young readers has spanned the globe, spurring higher literacy rates, cultural enfranchisement, and a better life for generations of children.

In Pictured Worlds, renowned historian Leonard S. Marcus shares his incomparable knowledge of this global cultural phenomenon in the definitive reference work on children’s book illustration. The author of more than 25 award-winning books, Marcus here highlights an international roster of 101 artists of the last 250 years whose touchstone achievements collectively chart the major trends and turning points in the history of children’s book illustration. While some illustrators explored in this lively volume (John Tenniel, Maurice Sendak) have become household names, Marcus’s wide-ranging survey also shines a light on several lesser-known figures whose unique contributions merit a closer look. The result is a sweeping chronicle of a vibrant art form and cultural driver that has touched the lives of literate peoples everywhere. Over 400 illustrations showcase landmark books from Great Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Czech Republic, Russia, Japan, China, Korea, Bulgaria, Argentina, Cameroon, and more.

Each illustrated entry is comprised of an artist’s biography and career overview and a deep-dive look at a pivotal book and its legacy. Featured books include Ivan Bilibin’s The Golden Cockerel, Leo Lionni’s Inch by Inch, Richard Doyle’s In Fairyland, Kveta Pacovská’s One, Five, Many, Helen Oxenbury’s We’re Going On a Bear Hunt, Mitsumasa Anno’s Anno’s Journey, and Zhu Cheng-Liang’s A New Year’s Reunion, as well as the books that introduced such iconic characters as Alice, Max, Struwwelpeter, the Little Prince, and Winnie-the-Pooh. At once a celebration of illustrated children’s books and an essential reference work, Pictured Worlds encapsulates, in the author’s words, “the special nature of the illustrated children’s book as a cultural enterprise that is at once a rewarding art form, a bridge across cultures, and a ladder between generations.”

Leonard was able to sit down and talk to me about the work itself:

Betsy Bird: Leonard, thank you so much for speaking with me about PICTURED WORLDS. You’ve done any number of children’s book retrospectives over the years but with the sheer size and girth of this title I feel you’ve truly created what PW dubbed, “a definitive reference work” on the subject. Could you tell us a little about the origins of this book. How long have you intended to create a title of this scope and how long was this book in the making? 

Leonard Marcus

Leonard Marcus: PICTURED WORLDS was many years in the making. Around 2012, Peter Mayer, the legendary publisher who, after stepping down as global head of the Penguin Group devoted himself to running the art-forward Overlook Press, loved illustrated children’s books and asked me to write a book on the subject. He envisioned a hefty, wide-ranging, heavily illustrated international survey, a book that would look at–and beyond–the Anglo-American tradition and delve into obscure but historically significant achievements as well as the justly famous ones. I could hardly believe my ears but soon realized Peter meant every word of it.  A friend at the time said, “Oh, you’ll be able to write that book in your sleep,” but as I got down to work it felt for a long time as if I could either sleep OR write it but maybe not do both: there was so much to know and understand. Sadly, Peter died in 2018. Abrams acquired Overlook and fortunately my book project made it through the transition, as well as the pandemic and world paper shortage, and was put in the care of my excellent editor Chelsea Cutchens, for all of which I am extremely grateful.

By 2012, I had been to the Bologna Book Fair once or twice and was keenly aware that we in the US never see a large percentage of the children’s books published each year around the world. As big as our publishing industry is, it represents only a fraction of the whole. Knowing this raised basic questions about how the publishing industry works from country to country and, apart from the economics of globalization, what cultural differences may also be responsible for some books “traveling” better than others from culture to culture. PICTURED WORLDS became an ideal opportunity to reflect on these questions and find some answers.

BB: On a related follow-up question, what did your research process look like? 

LM: Over the years, I have written many articles, essays, and reviews about children’s books from other countries, and interviewed scores of artists, writers, and editors in the field whose careers reached back as far as the 1930s. So, I had begun my research for PICTURED WORLDS long before I knew where it was all headed. Happening on to picture books by the Japanese artist Mitsumasa Anno, for example, at the Cloisters Museum bookshop in New York during the late 1970s, and being blown away by Anno’s artistry and originality, was one of the experiences that inspired me to write about children’s books in the first place. I later had the thrilling chance to interview Anno. At one point, when he could not find the words to describe for me an episode from his grade-school years, he even sketched a few drawings as we talked.

Keeping an eye out for special picture books has been a favorite pastime during my travels. I learned about the Cameroon-born artist Christian Epanya during a visit to the Musée du quay Branly in Paris and about the Argentinian artist Isol on a trip to Stockholm. Writing a reference-book entry about Heinrich Hoffmann led me deep into backstory of the German classic Struwwelpeter, or “Slovenly Peter.” (Who knew that Mark Twain had been the book’s third English-language translator?) At ALA one year, Dorothy Briley, Clarion’s long-time publisher and an ardent IBBY supporter, handed me a copy of the Clarion edition of one of Czech artist Kveta Pacovska’s amazing experimental picture books; this was my introduction to another of the artists I later met–and wrote about in PICTURED WORLDS.

For the artists I included from earlier times, there were books to consult (monographs, biographies, and the like) and archives (both here and in other countries) to look to for source material. The internet streamlined many of my searches considerably but of course there were a lot of searches. I enjoy doing detective work, and think I would have made a pretty good sleuth, but research can also be slow-going and frustrating at times.

BB: Well, very much along those lines, you focus primarily on 101 illustrators from around the world, making this book less a question of finding the right names but of cutting them down to a mere 101. I wonder if you could speak a little to the process you underwent to determine what makes any individual artist “essential” in the eyes of this compendium?

LM: I realized from the start that I did not want to stick to just one definition of “essential.” Books can be significant, even history-making, for many different reasons. For instance, in The Diverting History of John Gilpin and companion books, Randolph Caldecott all but single-handedly invented the visual grammar of the modern picture book, showing illustrators from then onward how to “quicken” or animate the images on a page for maximum drama and humor. Caldecott’s greatest contribution was to the form of the picture book, whereas Beatrix Potter’s was to the genre’s attitude to childhood. Potter, who belonged to the next generation and grew up looking at the Caldecott originals her father avidly collected, and in The Tale of Peter Rabbit created what may have been the very first picture book to present childhood mischief as natural, rather than bad, behavior–a huge shift in the understanding of what picture books are there to communicate to young readers.

In the late 1800s, illustrated gift books became a major category of children’s book publishing and I thought it would be of value to let readers follow its development cross-culturally in essays devoted to Ivan Bilibin (Russian), Lothar Meggendorfer (German), Arthur Rackham (English), Edmund Dulac (French/English), Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth (American), and others.

I also chose key examples of changes in genre audiences and definitions. Goodnight Moon was created with children in mind who were thought by many in 1947 to be too young for any kind of book. Chris Van Allsburg’s Jumanji and David Wiesner’s Tuesday epitomized a relatively new kind of sophisticated picture book aimed at readers who were as likely to fall outside the traditional picture book age range as within it.

So, these examples will give some idea of my thinking about the final selection.

BB: To those that note that you’ve not included every nation on this lovely globe, it is worth mentioning that there are a great number of countries that have not yet made children’s literature a cornerstone of their own publishing industries. You allude to this a bit in your introduction but what are the hallmarks of those countries that have discovered the benefits of creating an environment friendly to children’s book publishing? 

LM: The most common pattern is for children’s book publishing to thrive in countries with a rising middle class–where large numbers of parents are ambitious for their children’s future and see literacy as one of the keys. I was fascinated to learn that at almost the same time that eighteenth-century London printer-publisher John Newbery was establishing a commercial market for illustrated children’s books in England, a similar effort was in progress in another great commercial city half a world away: Edo (now Tokyo), Japan. The most spectacular recent example of a children’s publishing industry developing in response to middle-class demand is China, which had nothing resembling a children’s literature of its own until the start of the new millenium, when the door opened wide to Western cultural influence and an intensive effort to “catch up with the West,” as it was described to me on a visit there, began in earnest. I was surprised in 2013 when I learned that my book Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, was going to be published in China the following year but I soon realized why–and found myself on a plane to Beijing to speak to an audience of hundreds of Chinese publishers about America’s visionary publisher for young people and answer questions like, “What was Maurice Sendak really like?” and “What kinds of children’s books are most popular with American parents?”

A second impetus to children’s book publishing has to do with nation-building. Not long after the end of the American Revolution, Noah Webster produced children’s books designed to teach the young citizens of the new republic not only how to read but also how to spell like an American. (It was Webster who took the “u” out of “honour,” arguing that his simplified spelling was less pretentious and therefore more democratic in spirit.) Some of the most graphically spectacular picture books of all time were published in the Soviet Union in the years immediately following the Russian Revolution, their purpose being not only to get young people interested in books but also to feel a sense of excitement about the new society their parents hoped to create with their help.

BB: Aww. I remember going through the archives of NYPL with you, looking at those Soviet Union publications, back in the day. Now in this book’s introduction you make great mention of children’s book art museums that have proliferated around the world after the first museum of picture book art (The Chihiro Art Museum in Tokyo) was established. How many of these have you yourself visited? And what is the value to the American children’s book enthusiast to taking in illustrations from countries beyond our own borders? 

LM: I’m a founding trustee of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art (Amherst, MA) and have been an adviser to both of the other US museums: the Mazza Museum (Findlay, OH) and the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature (Abilene, TX). I’ve been to all three. I have also visited the Chihiro Art Museum (Tokyo) and the Seven Stories National Centre for Children’s Books (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK). I still have several more to go!

As for the value of seeing the work of children’s book artists from other cultures, I think it’s comparable to the value of any form of foreign travel. In a culture other than one’s own, things we take for granted are apt to be understood and presented a bit differently. In the US, where we prize individualism as a value, illustrators tend to keep a story’s main character in the foreground and center stage. But in Japan, for instance, where community cooperation is a higher priority, that might not be the case. It can be refreshing and thought-provoking to realize that there are such different approaches to visual storytelling–and to living. Also, there are a great many illustrators from around the world whose work is so distinctive that it is worth experiencing on its own terms: the whimsical yet convincingly realistic elfin fantasies of Sweden’s Elsa Beskow and England’s Richard Doyle; the ingenious and surprisingly low-tech popup creations of Czech architect turned children’s book artist Vojtech Kubasta; the bell-clear picture book graphics of Russian/French illustrator Nathalie Parain; to name just a few. In recent years, computer graphics technology has pushed illustration toward a flat, graphic style that often reads as culturally neutral and visually bland. For that reason and others, there has probably never been a better time than now for children’s book artists in particular to look to the illustration art of the past, and to the art from other countries, for inspiration.

BB: And finally, I’ll end on an unfair question. The book is of 101 international artists. If the book were, instead, 102, who would have made that last mention?

LM: As you’ve suggested, in an ideal world PICTURED WORLDS would have featured many more than 101 artists both past and contemporary. But even a big book can only be so big and still work from a publishing standpoint. So, I’ll just mention one artist I am especially sorry not to have been able to include, in his case because we were unable to locate the copyright holder: Vladimir Lebedev, who in 1926 illustrated a post-revolution-era Soviet picture book called Circus with a text by Samuil Marshak. Lebedev’s brightly hued, avant-garde building-block graphics are a joy to behold and to me they represent the highpoint of an idealistic moment in book making for children that Lebedev further helped to bring about in his role as one of Soviet-era publishing’s leading art directors. Picture books like his were printed in paperback editions at affordable prices and went back to press often. Lebedev was apparently so passionate about his work that he revised the illustrations of Circus from one printing to the next. Don’t you love that? Picture book people tend to be that devoted to their art and audience, and I think just about any of the illustrators I wrote about would have jumped at the chance to do the same.

I absolutely love that we ended with Lebedev in our interview. What better way to conclude than to invoke an artist so dedicated to the craft of picture book illustration?

I wish to thank, profusely, Leonard Marcus to submitting to my questions today. Thanks too to Gabby Fisher and the folks at Abrams for setting this up in the first place. Pictured Worlds is available now for purchase wherever fine books are borrowed or sold. Take a look. Expand your mind.

Becoming Ezra Jack Keats: Virginia McGee Butler Discusses the Creation of His First Full Biography

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How do you write a biography of an iconic creator? Particularly when that biography, remarkably, has never existed before? It seems unbelievable that no one ever thought to sit down and write a full adult biography of the life and times of Ezra Jack Keats, but until this very year of 2023 no one had. No one, that is, until Virginia McGee Butler decided to make one herself. Filled with stories and facts never collected together before, this is the place to go if you ever wanted to hear about, say, a young Eric Carle learning from Keats that you could make a living in picture books. But don’t take my work for it. Becoming Ezra Jack Keats is already out, and I had a chance to speak to Ms. Butler about what went into creating this book:

Betsy Bird: Thank you so much for joining me today, Virginia. And thank you too for doing this deep dive into the life of Ezra Jack Keats. Could you begin by telling us a little about your own personal journey, discovering the works of Mr. Keats. What first drew you to his work? 

Virginia McGee Butler

Virginia McGee Butler: My introduction to Keats’ work came as I read his books to my children and to my kindergarten and second grade students. We made Snowy Day bulletin boards, complete with our snowflake stamps in Fort Polk, LA and in San Antonio, where most children had never seen snow unless they had grandparents in a more northern state, and in Kaiserslautern, W. Germany, where they might have walked through snow to get to school. After almost thirty rewarding years of teaching, the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg beckoned as I retired to write fulltime.   

On my first visit to that collection, a tribute to Ezra Jack Keats with his work and memorabilia filled the display room. Having just received a contest challenge to write for nine-year-olds about someone who had made a difference in the world but was not widely known, I took out my pencil and paper and began making notes. The piece won fourth place with praise for my original sources and was eventually published in Highlights for Children.

As the 50th anniversary of The Snowy Day neared, Viking planned a special edition of the book. Deborah Pope (Ezra Jack Keats Foundation director) and Ellen Ruffin (curator of the de Grummond Collection) designated me to comb through the Keats archives for significant items to include. On a deadline, I had to discipline myself not to linger on items as I made my way through this treasure.

BB: That sounds like a dream directive. You know, many have admired the man’s work but few have taken that next step and written his biography. What was the impetus for creating BECOMING EZRA JACK KEATS?

VMB: Examining the abundance of material during my research for the 50th anniversary edition, I kept wishing I had known his story when I had shared his books with students. The books were so clearly fed by his own experience. Somebody should write about it! By the time I had finished this assignment, I knew I would be back for a more detailed perusal of the archive and an endeavor to write his story.

BB: Speaking of which, this is the first complete biography ever made of the man, a fact that surprised me considerably. How do you account for the fact that no one has ever buckled down and created a Keats bio before?

VMB: I can only speculate about this, but I think there are three factors that needed to be in place for someone to write this biography – (1) an appreciation for Keats work, (2) a passion for writing, and (3) knowledge of and access to the vast repository of his archives at the de Grummond Collection where Keats saved everything – his diaries, letters, and unfinished autobiography drafts; his awards and original paintings; an insignificant lunch receipt; and the back and forth letters to the editor as he defended himself after Nancy Larrick’s “The All White World of Children’s Books” ran in the Saturday Review.

BB: Was there anything you learned about Mr. Keats in the course of your research that surprised you in any way? Any facts the public might not be aware of? 

VMB: Surprises were frequent as I researched for the book. Some were fundamental to his life story, such as his childhood in a poverty-stricken, unhappy, immigrant family; his obsession with art from preschool days; and the way that the richness of experience in those early years shows up constantly in his illustrations in children’s books. Almost daily, I discovered small gems inside that story like his bewilderment when Ruth Gagliardo called to tell him he had won the Caldecott medal and he had never heard of it, or his encounter with a young artist named Eric Carle that Keats invited to visit his studio where he offered assurance that Carle could make a living as a children’s book author and illustrator.

BB: Oh, I love that fact! You know, the great K.T. Horning once listed you as an “Ezra Jack Keats” expert. What, to your mind, is the enduring legacy of the man and why does his work still resonate today?

VMB: Keats said that picture books should tell about a “happening” in a child’s life. The happenings that he portrayed are universal and timeless — pets, bullies, snow. They still resonate with children today. That is one legacy. A second legacy has come from the foundation that he founded before his death with instructions that future royalties from his books should be used to do social good. The foundation has promoted diversity with many opportunities for children, especially through public schools and libraries that were so important in Keats’ own life. Additionally, the New Writer and New Author Awards given annually encourage that same diversity in those just beginning their careers.  

BB: What in particular would you like people to take away from this book? What do you hope it does?

VMB: My overall goal from the beginning has been that adults who read this book will find a renewed interest in the timeless books that Keats wrote with an added understanding of how his own childhood fed his creations. I would like for them to make associations between that childhood and the stories that he both tells and shows in his books and to share those connections with today’s children. As an example, one spread in Pet Show pictures an array of kids of multiple sizes, with various hair styles, and diverse skin colors bringing an amusing assortment of pets for judging. He portrays himself as a judge and later includes an elderly woman. In this one book, his paintings convey a message of joyful diversity that he found in the multicultural neighborhood of his childhood.

For individual readers, I hope it resonates with others who have a story similar to Larrie King, one of my former junior high students in Louisiana. His background of marginalized poverty as he sat listening and drawing pictures in the back of my class mirrored the image Keats gave of himself as a student. He made the following comment on my blog when he learned of Becoming Ezra Jack Keats:

Keats was SO formative for me. I remember The Snowy Day from as early as kindergarten and how his incredible illustrations (of a BLACK little boy – just like me!?) impacted me. I was determined to live in the snow (and eventually did!) all because of him. And now as an adult and as a design and illustration professor, his works continue to impact and motivate me and my students.

Ultimately, I would like this book to add to and support the momentum for diverse books that serve as both windows and mirrors for all children.

BB: Finally, what else do you have coming up next?

VMB: As I finished the work on this major project, I have been able to pull some other work off the back burner. I have a short story, “That You, Beulah Rose?” coming out in the Autumn 2023 edition of Thema Literary Magazine. My middle grade historical fiction novel set in 1946 when the shadow of World War II meets the foreshadow of the Civil Rights Movement is out for submission. I am also finalizing a fictional picture book featuring a curmudgeon gopher tortoise, an endangered species in our longleaf forest area, whose neighbors keep taking up residence in his carefully constructed burrow.

I’d like to thank Virginia for taking the time to answer my questions today, and also Courtney McCreary of University Press of Mississippi who helped to set us up in the first place. Becoming Ezra Jack Keats is, as I say, available for purchase now. Take a moment, if you like, and get to know him better.

Fuse 8 n’ Kate: Round Trip by Ann Jonas

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What happens when a designer decides to make picture books? What happens when she goes and gets creative with the illustrations? While remembered for many things, I’d say that this 1983 release is without a doubt the best known of creator Ann Jonas. You may remember it yourself. It’s the picture book where you read it one way and then turn it upside down and read it the other. It feels like a dare, and comes off as the number one book I had to produce when I worked as a children’s librarian. Countless adults would come up to me saying, “There was this book when I was a kid and it was black and white . . .” They literally didn’t have to say anything else after that. I have no doubt that this book blew little minds. It may not be the most plot forward of the picture books out there, but who the HECK cares?

Listen to the whole show here on Soundcloud or download it through iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, PlayerFM, or your preferred method of podcast selection.

Show Notes:

I mention a couple books in the course of this podcast. If you like this one, please check out Robo-Sauce by Adam Rubin, illustrated by Daniel Salmieri or the works of Bruno Munari.

There’s no comma but it does look like someone is saying, “Round Trip, Ann Jonas” as the title. Ah, typography.

Some spreads that can be flipped upside down are a little more obvious than others. For example, this is a very judgey street sign. “Oh. You’re gonna drive like that? That’s . . . a choice.”

How was this art done? My best guess is stencils, but I am more than willing to be corrected. Anyone have the info for me?

Which of these flipped scenes is, to our mind, the most effective? Without a doubt it has to be the theater turned diner. Just . . . well done, Ann Jonas. WELL done!

Runner-up most successful? The bridges to telephone poles.

The least successful? The smoky factories. We’re having a hard time seeing them. But for the most part, this is the exception rather than the rule.

Betsy Recommends: The If Books Could Kill podcast

Kate Recommends: The morathanenough Instagram account

And finally, the spring book I referenced that I absolutely adored was, for the record, The Boy Who Didn’t Believe in Spring by Lucille Clifton. Check out our episode on it, if you have a chance.