Breakout Session: Capturing Your Life: Memoir in Picture Books with Andrea Wang

 

screenshot from the zoom of the breakout session with author Andrea Wang

Andrea Wang is an acclaimed author of children’s books. Her picture book Watercress received the Caldecott Medal, a Newbery Honor, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a New England Book Award, and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, among other accolades. Her other books, Summer at Squee, Luli and the Language of Tea, The Many Meanings of Meilan, Magic Ramen, and The Nian Monster, have also received awards and starred reviews. Her work explores culture, creative thinking, and identity. Andrea holds an M.S. in Environmental Science and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing for Young People. She lives in Colorado with her family.

Andrea talks about subject, and speaks of Watercress being a "braided memoir" where her memories in first person and her mother's memories in third person are both included.

Next we look at plot - how do you choose the events, and the order they occur, and how they relate to each other? It's not just an account of what happens, but also reveals the cause and effect.

Commenting that "memories can definitely be temperamental," Andrea poses this question to us:

What is your own sticky, significant memory? 

Andrea shares the typical picture book plot arc, breaking down "My Lost Freedom" by George Takei, Illustrated by Michelle Lee.

But what happens when your experience you want to write about doesn't fit a traditional plot arc? It's alright. 

Often, picture book memoirs have an atypical plot arc:

Introduction
Introduce the Event
Experience of the Events
Wisdom from an Elder
Moment of Realization/Acceptance
Ending

Often picture book memoirs are less about the external actions (not so much the hero's journey) and more about the internal growth - "the character arc becomes the plot arc."

Andrea walks us through how Watercress follows this plot arc, and shares additional examples of picture book that have this same kind of plot arc: A Different Pond, We Wait for the Sun, I Talk Like a River, Amah Faraway, From the Tops of the Trees, and The Most Beautiful Thing.

Andrea also covers structure, theme, and challenges us to consider: 

what connects you (and the story about your life you want to tell) to the reader?

There are writing exercises/prompts, insights into Andrea's process, and then a thoughtful and inspiring Q&A.

It's an excellent session!