Creative Lab: Emily XR Pan - Storytelling Structure: Lining Up the Bones of a YA Novel

 

Sunday brings more excellent deep dives in the Creative Labs. 

Emily XR Pan explores storytelling structure with an engaged group of attendees who dive into a new structure for the classic Cinderella fairytale. 

A fantastic takeaway from this lab is the question: 

What am I reading for? 

We want our readers to always have an answer to that question. I'm reading to find out if they kiss. I'm reading to keep laughing. I'm reading to find out who did it. Etc. 

...

Emily X.R. Pan is the New York Times bestselling author of THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER, which won the APALA Honor Award and Walter Honor Award. It was also a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize, longlisted for the Carnegie Medal, and named by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 Best YA Books of All Time. Her latest novel, AN ARROW TO THE MOON, was an instant national bestseller, a Locus Award finalist, a CALA Award nominee, and featured on NPR’s Best Books of 2022. Emily is currently on faculty in the creative writing MFA programs at The New School and Vermont College of Fine Arts. You can find her on social media: @exrpan.

Closing Keynote: Donna Barba Higuera

Our SCBWI Summer 2022 closing keynote speaker is the delightful Donna Barba Higuera whose The Last Cuentista won the Newbery Award. Her middle grade and picture books reinvent history, folklore, and or her own life experience into compelling storylines and today Donna shares some of those stories.

But first, SCBWI has been a huge part of Donna's journey and she has heard a lot of keynotes throughout the years. So as excited as she was to do one, she looked to past speakers for guidance. Dan Santat’s How To Give a Keynote advice states that you should open with a joke, so Donna baked up one for us:

Two muffins walk into an oven. 

One muffin says to the other, "Ahh, this oven is hot!" 

And the other muffin replies, "Ahhh, a talking muffin!"

THANK YOU DONNA, and DAN.

Donna talks about her family, her wonderful parents and grandparents and the wonderful stories they told her. So many of the stories in Cuentista she heard in her grandmother’s house. They were different from other stories Donna’s peers were being told, Donna’s grandmother cooked differently from other grandmothers, she drove a rusty truck, didn’t have fancy dresses. But it's all of these differences that make Donna's voice today so exemplary. Besides her family folklore, these are some of the books Donna remembers loving as a kid:

Plus this book(?!?) (plus adorable school photo of Donna at that age she was really into that book)…

So not a big surprise that Donna loves the Twilight Zone, Star Wars, The X Files, and more recently the Dr. Whos. Donna is also a huge Trekkie: “These people had a huge influence on my childhood. I saw situations with people and actors that I’d never seen before.” 

In addition to sci-fi, Donna loved Mexican folklore, like Popocatépetl and Iztaccîhuatl the story of a princess and warrior that fell in love and in a pre-Romeo and Juliet fashion have a tragic ending but become neighboring volcanoes. Quetzacoatl and El Conejo is about a god who comes to earth and meets a selfless rabbit who is rewarded for his selflessness by becoming part of the moon (look for it tonight!)

Is Mexican folklore too strange or weird? Donna says no, look at all the strange and weird stuff we have in our current and favorite stories as mentioned above. Donna took those parts of herself, her love Mexican folklore stories and her love of sci-fi and combined them into her own work. 

Donna feels like she’d have no books in the world if it weren’t for her writing family: Donna is also an optometrist and one of her patients happened to mention her local Western Washington SCBWI. Soon after, Donna went to a local event and happened to have her first pages with her now editor, Arthur Levine. Arthur may not even remember having this meeting but Donna does! And that the advice was a little brutal, but from it she learned to slow her story down and she now always makes sure her young readers love her main characters within the first few pages before giving them all the dramatic plot 'goods'. 

Donna talks about meeting her husband at another SCBWI first pages event, and at ANOTHER SCBWI event she met Lin Oliver as well as editor Nick Thomas, who loved the first pages she shared there that eventually became Lupe Wong:

Donna touches briefly on book bans: 

I have something to say to people who want to erase these stories. You are challenging those with dreams of escape or who want more. You are challenging them because you don’t understand them. We are all people with folklore and cuentos of our parents, grandparents and ancestors. For those of you who are trying to remove books from our schools... I dare you to erase those from children’s imaginations, no one can steal our imaginations...

Donna's advice to book creators this weekend: 

Slow down, take your time, it’s an amazing journey. Some of you are going to meet people today, even virtually, who will become your friends for decades. Help each other along the way, and keep nurturing your dreams and the child in yourself. 

And if you ever see Donna at an event, please say hi:

Feeling Stories with Kelly Starling Lyons

Kelly Starling Lyons is a founding member of The Brown Bookshelf, teaching artist, and award-winning children’s book author. She has written more than 20 books for young readers that span from easy readers to picture books and chapter books. Among her acclaimed titles are My Hands Tell a Story, Caldecott Honor winner, Going Down Home with Daddy, Christopher Award winner, Tiara’s Hat Parade, and Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People, Sing a Song: How Lift Every Voice & Sing Inspired Generations. She’s also the author of popular series including Jada Jones, Miles Lewis and Ty’s Travels which won a Geisel Honor Award for Zip, Zoom. Kelly lives in Raleigh and was named to Good Morning America’s 2021 Inspiration List: Who’s Making Black History. Learn more about her at www.kellystarlinglyons.com. 

Kelly Starling Lyons presents her session on Picture Books

The full title of Kelly's breakout session is "Feeling Stories: Creating Picture Books That Pack an Emotional Punch."

Kelly opens with some tips on writing picture books, including:

- There are no absolute rules

- Child main character should solve problem on their own (but elders can be important - they are in Kelly's work)

- Leave room for the art to tell the story, too

- Craft each page turn like a mini-cliffhanger

- It needs to stand up for repeated readings

With mentor text examples and exercises, Kelly walks us through ways to create emotion. Mining our memories and experiences. Keeping a journal or file of ideas. Looking at our life with a "writer's eye."

She suggests that #1, we make a list of:

Best and worst school or family memories (from when you were 4-8 years old)

and/or

Experiences or relationships that inspired you or changed you

An example Kelly gives is girls at school making fun of her outfits.

Next, #2, she asks us to write down, for each item on our memory list, our emotions -- how did we grow or change?

As an example, Kelly tells us about those mean girls at school - and how she experienced embarrassment at first for being picked on, then fear because some of the girls were tough, then anger at being picked on, then relief when she figured out how to deal with them, then finally empowerment in being able to stand proud in the outfits she chose to wear.

Kelly quotes Jacqueline Woodson's inspiring words:

"...when I write, I go back and I remember who I was, and I start crafting my characters from that place. My writing starts with something that I know deeply, and then put it onto and into my characters." –Jacqueline Woodson

Show emotion with Touch, Dialog, Smells, Sounds, Taste  - think about how you can bring emotions to life. "It's really important to use sensory detail..." Keep in mind the illustrator will be focusing on what the character sees, and you can focus on the other senses!

#3, Kelly has a write a scene, 

and then #4 asks us to create a character who is dealing with the emotional truth of our memory. 

Consider: What does our character want? And what is standing in our character's way? "We have to feel that longing." And raise the stakes. Why does it matter so much? How do you make the reader feel how much it means? What's at stake if the character doesn't get it?

There's lots more, with Kelly answering audience questions, talking about self-publishing and how there are no shortcuts, her own publishing journey and being published by multiple publishing houses, and many more examples, from Kelly's own books and other mentor texts, too.

Final gem of advice:

Write from your heart

Writing Queer and Trans Identity with Lexie Bean

Lexie Bean (they/he) is a queer and trans multimedia artist from the Midwest whose work revolves around themes of bodies, homes, cyclical violence, and LGBTQIA+ identity. They are a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, member of the RAINN National Leadership Council with 10+ years of facilitation experience, and a Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Written on the Body for their work with fellow trans survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse. Their debut novel The Ship We Built is noted as the first middle grade book at a major American publisher centering a trans boy to be written by one. Their work has been featured in Teen Vogue, the New York Times, The Feminist Wire, Ms. Magazine, Them, Logo’s New Now Next, Bust Magazine, and more. www.lexiebean.com

Lexi's debut MG novel, "The Ship We Built"

Lexie's breakout session is called "Writing Queer and Trans Identity: Going Beyond the Binary of Victims and Perfect Heroes."

Lexie Bean (top) presenting, also shown is Lucy, the session's ASL interpreter.

Lexie opens with a question, what does each of us consider child appropriate?

Lexie explains it's a question they get a lot - their novel has a ten year old Trans protagonist. The story includes child sexual abuse. It's also set in the 90s... Their book has been banned, and that, as well as the rash of anti-Trans legislation happening in the US, as well as the media and our publishing industry's portrayals of Trans people, all feed into their presentation.

He asks us to consider the first examples of Queer and Trans storytelling we encountered in our lives. For them, Lexie remembers the show "Cops" in the 1990s was their introduction to Trans women - “someone blurred out and arrested.” They didn't know Trans boys existed until college. Their first exposure to gay people was on the news, news about AIDS and the fights for Gay marriage. Those exposures influence storytelling, and memory...

Something that makes Queer and Trans literature for youth, for those of us who create that literature, is that so many of us are raising ourselves in different ways now.

Lexie's book, "The Ship We Built," was the first middle grade novel about a Trans boy to be written by a Trans author from a major publisher - and Lexie speaks to the meaning of that.

On the false binary of the Victim vs. the Perfect Hero:

If you're going to tell a Queer or Trans story from a first person perspective in YA, there's the idea that there needs to be trauma, trauma, trauma... “Sometimes trauma is put forward as a strange attempt to humanize us.”

On the other end, especially for young readers (MG and picture books) everything needs to be perfect at the end, and the Trans child is the one who saves everyone. “That can be dehumanizing, too.”

The lack of nuance is often so far from people's lived experiences, it makes it hard to connect. Like “we can only speak to our experiences if they've been resolved already.” A lot can be lost in that strive for 'perfection'.

“Falling in either road can be dehumanizing. This is a call asking for something in-between.”

As to the books for kids that already are out there, there are lots of stories about Trans girls, though they are often written by cis people and the 'happy' resolutions convey that the Trans experience needs to be understood and fall within the binary. “Not everything about being Trans is visible.”

There are not many stories about Trans boys.

There's a difference between “Trans people are here to save us all” vs. empowerment. There's a lot going on for Trans kids - “Where are the adults who are helping them? We need to see examples of this. And kids not always knowing how to save others and themselves. It can be a great service to our community to know it's not always on us.”

On ideas of marketability and the role of the publishing industry:

Lexie speaks to the pressure put on them to either take the childhood sexual abuse out of their novel completely or to heighten it so it would fit better into the victim/hero binary.

The specificity of having their book include both actually meant they were not narrowing their audience, but expanding it by including people who have other ways to enter the text. “It is not limiting.”

“Children are really freakin' smart, but they also have feelings deep enough to want to die. They have experiences that need to be reflected.” Lexie's answer to the opening question, as a trans survivor of childhood sexual abuse themself, is:

“As long a child is experiencing something, it is child appropriate.” 

Letting children know can help them by leading to resources that can point them to hope, and letting them know they're not alone.

There's lots more shared, on Lexie's experience of having their book banned for multiple reasons, the pressure they felt about the ending to their book, and advice for authors to follow our instincts – and know what parts of our story we want to protect as we go on our publishing journey. Lexie reads their author's note from "The Ship We Built" and finishes the session with a Q&A.

Brian Selznick's Opening Keynote: Everything Changes, Nothing Ends: Telling Stories

Brian Selznick broke open the novel form with his innovative and genre-breaking books creating an entirely new reading experience. He is the Caldecott Medal-winning creator of the #1 New York Times best sellers The Invention of Hugo Cabret, adapted into Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning movie Hugo; and Wonderstruck, adapted into the eponymous movie by celebrated filmmaker Todd Haynes, with a screenplay by Selznick; as well as the New York Times best sellers The Marvels and Baby Monkey, Private Eye, co-written by David Serlin. Most recently, he illustrated the 20th anniversary paperback edition covers of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. His books have garnered countless accolades worldwide, and have been translated into more than 35 languages. Selznick's latest novel is Kaleidoscope, a multi-layered story about love and loss told over the course of twenty-four chapters, each featuring an iconic black and white graphite illustration.

What an exciting way to start off the 2022 Winter Conference - with Brian Selznick!

What is this? Brian tells us it's not an apple. It's a picture of an apple.
(Brian Selznick at bottom right, ASL Interpreter Brian Truitt top right.)

Do you write the word "apple" or do you illustrate it? Citing wisdom from one of Chip Kidd's TED talks, Brian tells us "don't do both." (Doing both means you don't trust your audience.)

Brian shares that the title of this talk, "Everything Changes, Nothing Ends" is from Ovid's Metamorphosis, and is the epigram of his book Kaleidoscope.

Just a few resonant quotes from Brian's talk:

"As story makers, as book makers, we are always talking to the future." —Brian Selznick

and

"The act of turning the page makes a book a machine." —Brian Selznick

and

"Figuring out what to draw is important. Equally import is figuring out what not to draw." —Brian Selznick

and on writing a book about silent French cinema (The Invention of Hugo Cabret), whose success was a "wondrous" surprise:

"I know it's important to pursue what it is you love...what you feel is important." –Brian Selznick

Among the amazing photos and illustrations shared is this interior view of Brian's studio when finishing one of his books!

And this illustration from Kaleidoscope:

Brian discusses the evolution of his creative process during the pandemic, inspiration he pulled from books including Fortunately by Remy Charlip, and Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, and so much more...

What a storyteller!

#SCBWIdigital Workshop: Linda Sue Park presents "Using Scene To Build Story"

This is the 7th #SCBWIdigital workshop, free to SCBWI members in this time of global health crisis.

Linda Sue Park is a master writer and teacher of writing. She is the author of many books for young readers, including the 2002 Newbery Medal winner A Single Shard and the New York Times bestseller A Long Walk to Water. Her most recent title is Prairie Lotus, a historical fiction middle-grade novel.

Today, for the SCBWI community, Linda Sue is sharing "Using Scene To Build Story." She cautions us that this is how she writes fiction, and that it's not the only way to do it. "Writing is so personal," meaning that everyone's process is different. She hopes we might gain a tip or two, add our own spin, and eventually we'll develop our own process for writing a story - different from Linda Sue's process, and different from everyone else's process, too.

Linda Sue shares her definition of story, in a graphic:

Linda Sue Park (bottom right), the slide showing her definition of story, and ASL interpreter Jennye Kamin (top right)

"Before I start, I need to know" what the character WANTS (external quest), what the character NEEDS (internal quest), and the setting.

"Most of the time, the character doesn't know what they need" at the beginning of the story.

Linda Sue shows us how she applied this story definition to her latest book, Prairie Lotus, also in a graphic:

Hannah WANTS to graduate from high school and work as a dressmaker in her father's shop. Hannah NEEDS to learn to stand up for herself against bias, racism, and sexism. The setting is 1880 Oceti Sakowin homeland (what is now South Dakota).

Linda Sue speaks of how she thinks in scenes, not chapters. In fact, she explains that it's a few drafts in before she figures out the chapter breaks.

She suggests we do this exercise:

What’s your character’s external plot (what they WANT), their internal plot (what they NEED), and the setting?

There's a great demonstration of how, when you compare a book to a movie, a half-page of text is about 15 seconds of film... Linda Sue illustrates this (simply and dramatically) and has us consider, if we've spent half a page to describe something, or to have our character's internal dialog, that's like 15 seconds of a movie not moving forward! Seriously, count out 15 seconds... that's a long time for a reader to get distracted.

Using her novel, A Single Shard, she demonstrates how a single sentence should be able to encapsulate what a scene is about.

Linda Sue advises us,

With every scene, your character is going to make progress or face impediment to one of their quests (external or internal).

She keeps this in mind as she writes, looking at her character's internal and external quests, and asking herself "is this scene progress or impediment?"

There's so much more, with discussions and examples from Linda Sue's Project Mulberry, and Keeping Score, her distinction between middle grade and YA, and her technique for developing depth in a story - in every scene - along with an exercise to get more depth in our own writing.

And an explanation of how the story's ending should have "unexpected inevitability."

Linda Sue Park (at bottom, in pink) - ASL interpreter Jennye Kamin (at top)

It really is a master class, with so much to learn and apply!

Thank you, Linda Sue.

Stay safe, all.
Lee

Brandy Colbert: Surviving the Sophomore Novel

Brandy Colbert is the Stonewall Award-winning author of Little & Lion, Pointe, and the forthcoming Finding Yvonne.

Her essays and short fiction have been featured in several critically acclaimed anthologies for young people. Her work has been named a Junior Library Guild selection, a Book of the Month Club selection, and has been included on ALA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults list, as well as best-of lists from Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, Vulture, and more.

**

Brandy's third book, Finding Yvonne, comes out Tuesday, and she speaks of the fears of writing the second novel, including not living up to the first book, or letting down readers, or having new characters feel too similar to the characters in your first book.

She shares her tips for navigating these waters, including:

Leverage the relationships you've built from publishing your first novel.

and

Remember that "each book is different, and each book will be written differently."

and

How it's important to block out the noise of publishing.

Brandy recounts how advice from her editor both worked and inspired her for the next book, shares how insecurity is part of this journey (when your book doesn't make this list, or get some cover reveal, or win that award), and so much more.

One last tip/insight from Brandy to share here:

Don't forget why you write. As Brandy puts it, "I love writing and would continue to do it even if I never got published again."

Stephanie Garber: Five Tips on How to Write a Five Star Ending

Stephanie Garber, author of CARAVAL, garnered wild, breakout success for her YA fantasy which has been on the NYT bestseller list. She's also a creative writing teacher who knows a thing or two about spicy endings. She knows at least five things, actually, but the blog will only share one exercise.

First, Stephanie has us think about the sorts of books we love to read, and FINISH reading. She says you'll read a book with a slow beginning as long as the rest of it picks up, but you'll ask for your money back for a book with a bad ending. Or if not bad, a mediocre or forgettable ending you may not bother to finish, which is just as upsetting. A bad ending in this instance means it's got plot holes, or unanswered questions, or a nonsensical resolution or is overly tragic or is a combination of all of the above.

Stephanie is a 'discovery' writer vs. being a 'plotter,' and she struggles with the adage that a good writer knows their story's ending before they start writing the beginning... Her compromise, which may work for you, is that you may not know exactly WHAT will happen in your ending, but at least know what TYPE of ending you want so you can steer yourself in that correct tone and direction.

Stephanie maps out six types of endings (we'll share 3) that we should work towards to keep our books from being returned to Barnes & Noble:

1. The Happy Disney Ending, this can be happily ever after or happy for now. A happy ending had better be earned by the character to be believable and satisfying, Stephanie says.

2. The Tragic Ending. This is typically a sequel's ending in a trilogy, think of Star Wars's The Empire Strikes Back. The hero gets what they want, but something important has been lost, like a Han(d). The villain may triumph or get away.

3. The Series ending. This is often a book's ending if it is in the middle of a series, it's a cliffhanger ending. Stephanie admonishes that you'll want to write your book's ending as potentially standalone if this is a first submission for you. The initial ending will need to satisfy, if the editor agrees it would be great to turn it into a series, you can adjust the ending to return to being a cliffhanger. This is something Stephanie did for CARAVAL.

One of Stephanie's five exercises for better endings is:

With your existing manuscript or story idea, pick an ending type, first, but then examine within your ending what has changed, the character? The world? The past? Someone's/the world's outlook/thoughts?

SOMETHING MUST CHANGE for a five-star ending, you can justify a characters actions, but that will never be as satisfying as watching a character actually change. Stephanie brings up her one beef with the latest Pride & Prejudice reboot. Darcy is a very proud man whose haughtiness and manners soften as he gets to know Elizabeth Bennet. In the latest reboot, though, there's an added line where Lizzie explains away his earlier behavior by saying Darcy was acting that way because he was just 'shy,' which to Stephanie is a total cop out and a disservice to Darcy's character.

Stephanie asks us to think about how much fun we have noticing the changes to the characters and the world at the end of BACK TO THE FUTURE. Though Marty's character stays the same, everyone/thing else is a bit different.

Jenni Holm is here today to tell us that currently, children's graphic novel/comics publishing is a veritable Wild Wild West, the processes of acquisition and production are different for all publishing houses, but the ones that ARE making kids comics are behind them whole hog, which is great to hear!

She recommends you read the Comics Making Bible, aka Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. (I'd add the New Testaments of Comics Making are Jessica Abel and Matt Madden's Drawing Words & Writing Pictures plus the follow up, Mastering Comics.)

She briefly tells us how comics were written, and shows us how the actual script pages compare: the old standard Stan Lee Method, the exhaustive/OCD Alan Moore method, and the classic, screenwriting style of script like a Joss Whedon would use. Jenni recommends using a screenplay format or her storyboard format as mentioned below, but probably NOT the Marvel Comic or Alan Moore format, which most traditional children's book editors might not be familiar with.

All do in some way separate out visually in the script the dialogue vs. action vs. narration. How do you use each part in your graphic novel script?

Dialogue: Same as prose, only now in speech bubbles!

Narration: More complicated, primarily used for scene transitions, major backgroun set-up, or increasingly internal monologue, occasionally even as a character, like the snarky narrator in BABYMOUSE.

Action: Stage directions/everything else that happens.

Jenni shares with us the various ways you rough out a comic, different types of storyboards, some of which are artist driven (sketches are fairly fleshed out and laid out and basic composition is done), some that are author driven.

HOW A BABYMOUSE GETS MADE:

Jenni and Matt's graphic novels always start with story first. Jenni and Matt come up with a log line, and then Jenni starts planning the story with this sort of storyboard:

Jenni already knows that the final published BABYMOUSE is going to be 96 pages, which equals about 56 pages of this storyboard.

After Jenni writes it all out, it goes to Matt, and then the editor, and when everybody loves it, it goes back to Matt for thumbnailing.

Those thumbnails get laid out page by page and are then sent to the art director who double checks it for clarity and printing guidelines.

After that it goes back to Matt to do the final art and color spotting!

TADA!

Jenni lists the children's publishers doing kid's comics today:

GRAPHIX (probably biggest commercial titles publisher via Scholastic)
First Second (all ages/arty)
Random House (younger/elementary school)
ABRAMS (Nathan Hale and Cece Bell, Wimpy Kid)
TOON BOOKS (via Candlewick, super young end of spectrum)
DC and MARVEL (may want to start YA)
BOOM STUDIOS (Lumberjanes)

Mem Fox Keynote: Inside the Writer's Head: The Writerly Thoughts that Lead to Success

Lovely Mem, the best
readalouder in the Universe!

Mem Fox is here! If you haven't read her wonderful picture books, you are missing out, and you ALSO must read her fantastic book, Reading Magic.

Lin calls her, "the best, single creator in the picture book world."

"In any good story, there's a beginning, a middle, and an end, and only one of two themes: either a quest; or a stranger comes to town. This morning, I am the stranger."

Mem acknowledges the illustrators in the room, she says we all know a successful picture book is a half and half affair. But she says the rest of the morning is all about Mem.

Mem reads Hattie and the Fox, and the audience plays the part of the cow. We are really good at it.

Instead of a mic drop, Mem has perfected the book drop

Mem tells us a little bit of her origin story, it's very similar to Wonder Woman's, but includes taking children's literature courses.

"I know far too much about children's books now to write with any comfort."

Mem knows she will have to read the whole book out loud, over and over again to check for any number of literary sins she has committed.

Mem knows whatever picturebook story warms the hearts of adults will probably be the same picturebook story that makes children want to throw up.

Mem talks about how a good picture book that has a subject that resonates for a child has to be something the author has felt or experienced first. Mem reads Wilfred Gordon MacDonald Partridge for us, something that came out of her first visit to her 90-year-old grandfather. She then reads The Magic Hat for us.

When Mem writes a book, she keeps four different children in mind:
"One is on my lap, a tiny kid. One is sitting by me on a couch. One is snuggled up in bed, the last is in a crowd of children, listening to a teacher read my story aloud."

"I am aware in my position as a children's book creator that I am a
brain developer and a developer of speech, an artist who paints with words, a musician who makes words sing. I can kindle an interest in reading, or kill it.

The responsibility is so overwhelming that I can walk away from a draft for months."

Word choice: Don't choose an interesting or difficult word just to be different, choose the right word, and don't dumb down your word choice to patronize to children, Mem mentions Tomi Ungerer's The Beast of Monsieur Racine. 

Mem is going to talk about rhythm! The audience can't wait. If you aren't here, do yourself a favor and grab Reading Magic and read that, and watch or listen to Mem reading:

By the power of Skype! Tomie de Paola's Virtual Keynote!

We miss him but Lin's Skype interview with Tomie was fantastic! Hardly any technical difficulties!

Lin starts by telling us Tomie has published 250 or so books over fifty years, she asks him the secret of sustaining a lifelong career.

Tomie: Courage!

Lin: Courage to...

Tomie: Just courage! I get up in the morning and I have to face a blank piece of paper and my brushes all clean and ready to go. I panic, I freeze, I know I'm going to make a mistake... By then it's the afternoon! 

Without scaring anybody, I think it gets worse! The more you know. You know, fools rush in, now it's all of these pressures that come from the outside, it's really hard to put them in their place. I'm so aware of the responsibility I have for creating something for young people.

Lin: When you were starting out were you aware of that responsibility? Or did you just really want to make picture books and felt your art was suitable?

Tomie: It was a bit of both. You know, the 'fame mosquito' buzzes around for a while, and you want that in the early days. 

And eventually you will have a HUGE disappointment in your career, and you ask yourself why you are doing this?

Why are you doing books for children?

And I realized it was because they'd been important to me, in my life as a child, and I wanted to be that for new generations. I was lucky to have this epiphany early on.

Lin: Is there something you hope your books say to kids? Or is it that you want to create an atmosphere of something beautiful for them. 

Tomie: All of that. I want kids to fall in love color and line and character, I want to make people laugh and cry...

Lin: Your books have such a present sense of childhood, what you do you think gives you that fresh sense?

Tomie: I'm blessed to have a very good memory. And the more I remember of my childhood, the more I remember. I really cherished those memories, and I had some help, I have home movies of me as a child and that helps me remember the experiences. What's important is I remember how I felt. It's not important what color the car was or what color the socks were. It's the feeling.

I also come from families of great storytellers.

Lin: Many artists are asked to write an artistic statement, how would you write your statement?

Tomie: My first response is I want to say 'Why do YOU want to know?!?!' I don't think it's a bad idea to write what your purpose is. But write it twice, write the first one very honestly and don't let anybody see it.

I was trained in the middle fifties at Pratt, a very fine art school, by very fine professionals. We were told not to be afraid, to try everything, you're just students—don't take yourself seriously—yet.

I look at curriculums today and I frankly don't recognize them, I remember when I bought a rapid-o-graph pen and everybody said, Oh my god! There is an emphasis on computers/technology today, and if I was in school today I would want to take advantage of all of that, of everything that's on offer. What bothers me most is the lack of history. People forget that Giotto and Fra Angelico were illustrators. They were visual storytellers and that's what illustrators have to be. I worry that young people today aren't given enough time to develop and flower. If they don't come out of the gate winning awards, the industry just says, "Next!"

It's like that Thornton Wilder quote, "Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow..."

Some Tomie laws:

• Don't ever try to illustrate something you don't like.

• You and your art director speak the same foreign language.

• Don't get so busy with your work (Tomie's speaking to artists and art directors here) that you stop looking at others' art and going to shows. Have your household gods, surround yourself with images you love.

• You should be able to tell the story of a picture book just by looking at the pictures.

• Try reading The Courage To Create, modern society almost doesn't understand the creative act. So know you'll probably be misunderstood and try to make something anyway.

Lin's Lightning Round of questions for Tomie! His FAVORITE...

Classical artist: Piero della Francesca 

Musical : Gypsy

Play: Glass Menagerie

Saint: Francis of Assissi

Pizza: margherita

Color: white

Flower: anemone

Paint brand: Golden Acrylics

Icon/Household god: Virgin of Guadalupe

Piece of Advice: 

Be brave.

Thanks, Tomie!!