A letter from Nancy Elizabeth Wallace, author and illustrator

A few weeks ago I reviewed a board book called Planting Seeds by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. The pictures in the book were created using cut paper and other materials, and I thought they were charming. Being a curious sort of person (always!) I decided to write to Nancy to ask her about how she got interested in creating children's books, how she creates her art, and what inspires her. This is what she wrote.

Dear Friends, I’ve never met,

Hello! So, how did I become children’s book author and illustrator?  I gave up my day job and found out, too late, the CW about writing children’s books is – Don’t give up your day job! My day job had been working, for many years, with hospitalized children.

So, I signed up for 2 adult education courses that fall.  One was a 3 session traditional scherrenschnitte (you have to say that carefully) and the other was a 10 week children’s book writing and illustration course, that turned out to be 3 writing sessions and 7 illustrating.  Everyone in the class had art backgrounds, except me! The artist teaching the scherrenschnitte class brought in origami paper and said, “have fun!”  I did.  And then I thought, OK!   I’ll cut paper illustrations for the other class.  The instructor said, “You’ve found your medium!”

I use origami paper for my collage illustrations. The colors are so beautiful and vibrant. I use art papers and recycled paper - envelopes, bits of wrapping paper and doll house wall paper, brown paper bags and cardboard coffee cup holders, onion bags and even … dryer lint!  I use a glue stick, tiny scherrenschnitte scissors and very pointy tweezers to pick up the tiny pieces, rub them on a glue stick and place them.  The hardest things to cut are eyeglasses and snowflakes!   I also use photography in some of my books - real shells and seeds and real works of art in the LOOK books, NASA photographs in the STAR book and real objects for the sets in Ready! SET! 100^th Day.

Where do I get my ideas?  I’m inspired by SNOW, walking on the beach and finding SHELLS, taking LEAF WALKS in all seasons,  going APPLES APPLES APPLES picking,  gazing up at the night time sky at the STARS  STARS  STARS.  Out in nature, looking …listening… touching… I am filled with WONDER and questions. I love doing research and learning and having those  WOW!  I didn’t know that, moments!

The idea for POND WALK came not from a pond WALK but from a pond KAYAK… One summer day, my husband Peter and I carried our kayaks to the beach at Grout Pond. There were two boys scooping up salamanders, so we did too. We looked and touched and took photographs of them, then let them go. I tracked down a croaking frog sitting in a forest of cattails along the shore and he posed for his photo.  Floating on the pond were ducks and geese, quacking and honking.  There were dragonflies and damselflies flitting in the air. The damselflies, with their bright turquoise bodies, landed on our arms and hats. During our circumnavigation, we paddled by water lily pads with lovely white blossoms. Four turtles sunned themselves on a partially submerged log. As we approached they plopped into the pond and I knew this would make a great Buddy book!

 My Mom’s life-long role modeling of caring for others and our environment inspired me to write The Kindness Quilt, The Valentine Express, Recycle Every Day! and Count Down to Clean Up!  I guess I have BIG hopes for my books - that children will make mindful choices to be kind to others and the environment;  and that they will spend time outdoors in Nature and be filled with WONDER!

Happy spring!

Sending my warmest and best,

Nancy Elizabeth Wallace

A letter from Joyce Sidman, poet extraordinaire

A few weeks ago I reviewed a book of poetry called This is just to say. The book was so unusual and interesting that I asked the author, Joyce Sidman, to tell me about how the book came to be written. I know what it is like to turn an idea into a story for a picture book, but how does one go about about writing a collection of poems? This is Joyce's response to my questions.

Dear Marya:
In addition to writing, I work part time in Minnesota schools as a writer-in-residence.  My job is to introduce elementary-aged students to poetry writing in an intense, one-week period—in which we play with metaphor, use sensory details, and look at the world with a poet’s eyes.  We also sometimes look back into our own sordid pasts.
   This Is Just To Say began with a poem I wrote with a room full of fourth graders. The lesson for the day was “apology poems” based on W.C. Williams’ poem “This Is Just to Say.”  We’d read and talked about the poem, and I was leading them into writing a group poem by talking about an incident from my childhood: breaking a tiny glass deer that my mother put out at Christmastime—and expressly forbade us children to touch.  Together, we re-imagined that long-ago sequence of events: irresistible temptation, clumsiness, abd disaster.  The worst, I told them, was when my mother started to cry.  The students helped me explore and write down all those feelings on the board in the form of an apology poem called “The Glass Deer”.  Then, as they began writing their own poems, one of the boys piped up: “So, are you going to send that poem to your mother?  You know, to apologize?” 

   I felt a brief clutch of child-like terror.  Had I even told her I’d done it, all those years ago?  Did I really want to bring it up again?  But I swallowed my pride, and I sent it to her; I felt I owed it to my students.  And she wrote me back a lovely letter about how she'd felt all those years ago, and what made her cry (losing a bit of her childhood). 

   This incident made me think about apology and forgiveness, how one deserves the other.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought, if apology poems could be answered?  Wouldn’t it be great if a whole classroom of children wrote poems and then got responses to them? 

   Once I sat down to write, This Is Just To Say poured out of me in a way that few books have. The characters in this book spoke for themselves, but they also spoke for me, for my heart.  There was so much to apologize for!  The goodies I’d filched; the stupid, thoughtless things I’d done; the feelings I’d hurt.  My students’ voices echoed in my head as well: children who’d felt sorrow over minor transgressions, as well as helplessness in the face of tragic events. One of poetry’s goals is to unbundle the heart and let it expand, and believe me, I did a lot of unbundling! The forgiveness poems were just as rewarding.  In a perfect world, apology and forgiveness should go hand in hand.  This may not always happen in real life, but it was deeply satisfying to create a world in which it does.

Thank you so much Joyce. You can find out more about Joyce and her books on her website.

What it is like to start a new book - A letter from Roxie Munro

Last week I asked children's book author and illustrator, Roxie Munro, to tell me what it is like for her to start a new project. I know from personal experience that facing a blank page can be rather off-putting, to say the least. If the first sentence for a picture book is in my head already then I am alright, but if there is nothing there, then I stumble around trying to find a way to get that blank page to become less blank. I suddenly find a million and one little jobs that need to be done, and I start tidying things that really don't need tidying!

This is what Roxie had to say about her 'getting started' process:

Dear Through the Looking Glass:

I’ve been asked to write about how it feels to start a new project, in my case, a new nonfiction picture book about bugs, kind of a follow-up to “Hatch!” (out from Marshall Cavendish in Feb 2011). The new book is due in April 2011, and will be out spring 2012.

Well, as Hemingway once said, when asked how to write a novel, “First you clean the refrigerator.” In other words, even the most disciplined writer procrastinates. Maybe that’s why one is given deadlines and financial incentives.

But in my case, I kind of do first clean …that is, my studio. I really do a thorough job, because as my project - be it a series of oil paintings for a show or a book - progresses, my studio gets messier and messier, with uncleaned brushes and dirty palettes, stacks of notes and books and drawings, boxes from supplies shipped, etc.

I have already spent a couple of months this summer working on the proposal, sketches and dummy, so have done quite a bit of research, and bought books or checked them out (renewed several times) from the NYPL Science Library. But until I get the okay, and then the contract, it isn’t officially a project. So, got and signed contract, and spent a week wrapping up a couple other small jobs. Gave myself a starting date.  On that day, I actually did start - cleaning the studio that is.

Sports, or even military, metaphors occur to me - I’m “in the trenches”; “getting to first base”; even, “shifting into first gear.” Because it is a slow warming up. You feel guilty that you’re not plowing ahead full steam. But, knowing oneself, that accelerates toward the end of the book. And not necessarily because of deadline pressure, but because of momentum - you’re then in 3rd and 4th gear, warmed up, in the “flow.” I start dreaming about the subjects in the book - colors, images, patterns - about the dinosaurs, the birds, the bugs.

For me, images come first, the writing second.  So, although I do make notes about the text all along, only after the sketches are okayed, and the art well on its way, do I write, shape and refine the text.

The hardest part is now, beginning - creating the approach, solving visual problems, research.  I do rough, and then increasingly detailed, sketches. Each page may have 3 or four stages. Midway through I show them to the editor and art director, and make whatever changes we decide upon. Usually there are few, because I spend a lot of time on the final detailed pencil sketches.  The EASIEST (and most fun) part is actually executing the paintings in ink and colored inks. Although I often have to go through another round of more detailed research to find out everything about the subject (angle of hind toe on a particular bird, exactly where color may shift in the tail feathers), the major conceptual and artistic decisions have been made in the earlier sketches.  There’s still plenty of unknown left though - each painting must “sing” - be elegant, beautiful, informative, fun, and one hopes, a little surprising.

Then, I get serious about writing. Research mostly done, everything gets rewritten/edited by me, and my writer husband Bo, many times before I send the first draft to my editor.  She does her thing - queries, grammar, more explanation, info we can cut - and then I get it back. We usually go back and forth at least half a dozen times. Then the copy editor gets it and that too takes several passes between me, the editor and the copyeditor. Same with design - the art director sends a preliminary concept, which I weigh in on, and that continues for a month or two.  BTW, the cover comes last, although sometimes they need it halfway through for the catalog.

Then, as with most nonfiction, we send art and text to an expert, well known in the field, to vet it. I rarely have to make changes, but do them now, with the editor’s input.

So - all of this is ahead of you, when you sit down on designated day one, to start a book. No wonder we sometimes find many other things to do - answering e-mail, checking Facebook, paying bills, dash to the gym, writing this piece - before we actually sit down and attack it!

Thank you so much Roxie. It is always a pleasure to have you as a guest on Through the Looking Glass. To find out more about Roxie and her splendiferous books take a look at her website.