The Book Chooses You with Soman Chainani

Soman Chainani’s debut series, THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD & EVIL, has sold over 4.5 million copies, been translated into 35 languages across six continents, and has been adapted into a major motion picture from Netflix that debuted at #1 in over 80 countries. His book of retold fairytales, BEASTS & BEAUTY, also debuted on the New York Times Bestseller List and is slated to be a limited television series from Sony 3000. In 2026, Soman unveils a brand new universe with YOUNG WORLD, a global political thriller. 

In his career, Soman has visited more than 800 schools around the world, where he continues to share his secret with students of all ages: that reading is the path to a better life.

When Soman wrote The School for Good and Evil, he kept it under wraps, so when completed and on the shelf, it was as if the book was dropped by magic. But in these times of AI, and process being manufactured so quickly and easily, he realized it's important to show the process of how books come to be; an artisanal stamp of how it was created. Soman now tries to open the doors of writing, just like Willy Wonka did with the Chocoalate factory, so people can see behind the door. To see how the book is created. 

This has become his mantra. To pull back the curtain. Soman has a substack, Diary of a Novel, tracking the week by week making of his latest book. He also has a podcast called Plot Twist- revealing everything!

"This has become my entire ethos," he says. "I'm all about showing you how the thing came to be."

The book chooses you. 

This is how writing started for Soman. Out of college, he joined his father's business, but he was always found working on his book in the corner, and in fact, work realize he'd been working on his little fairy tale project all day long. That little fariy tale was The School for Good and Evil. 

Fast forward to when the book was finished and on submission, 16 of 17 editors said no. Just one said YES. A good reminder that it only takes one yes! 

Soman walks us through the next books that also chose him. He found that when books organically came out of him, that's when the good stuff happened.

 However, after his many books, he found himself pigeonholed in fairy tales, and that chance for an instant sale pushed him into writing books that were not choosing him. He chose to let go of a sure thing, and let his brain start working on something very different. He had an idea: What happens if teenagers interrupt a presidential election between two old zombies? That book is called Young World and it's coming out this May (cover reveal coming in September).

But after turning in pages of this new book, his agent was honest with him. The concept was great, but the writing was not that good. Soman couldn't write this book like he did the middle grade fairy tales. So he threw out everything and started over. This time he started in diary form. 

Soman leaves us with this great wisdom, perhaps giving us all a mantra to walk away with:  "The book chooses you every single time...the more you trust yourself and what your body and your voice is telling you to create, and you have the right people along the way who support you and don't push you towards money and easy answers, the more you'll get what's meant to be your career."

This talk! The reactions in the chat. The emojis flying up. If you're not signed up for the conference, it's not too late to registerer. 

If you want to view this session to hear the full content, along with the rest of the conference,

register at https://www.scbwi.org/events/virtual-summer-conference-2025. Replays of the

conferences will be available until September 14th, 2025.

Welcome and Keynote with Felicita Sala

Welcome and Keynote with Felicita Sala

Happy Day Two of the 2024 SCBWI Summer Conference!

The morning began with the most exciting presentation by Felicita Sala! Though she wasn't able to join us for a live session, the pre-recorded keynote was absolutely fabulous! 

Felicita Sala began with a bit of her background but spent most of her time diving into her influences, why she makes picture books, and how they shaped her work.

Felicita wasn't always a picture bookmaker. In fact, it wasn't necessarily her dream. She just happened into it. But as a kid who loved to read and to escape to fantasy worlds with imaginary friends. From a very young age, Felicita had a love and fascination with fairytales that she would listen to on audio cassettes and read along. Some of her earliest influences were Italian illustrators and authors from the 60s and 70s. She would pour over them, and attribute them to her sense of aesthetic. 

Felicita thought that these books just existed. She didn't realize that an artist- made the pictures, even though she grew up in Italy looking at brilliant artwork. 

So she began to ask herself:

"What it means to be a child, and what is her service to them?"

When Felicita creates, she doesn't think of the audience when she begins a story but rather, thinks more about the personal need of what the story needs.

As a teenager, Felicita read Sophie's World which led her to study philosophy.

That is when she became interested in the word "WONDER," which she feels means to "leave space for something mysterious."

What attracted her to "wonder" was the connection between child and philosopher. This connection to the artist.

" I don't believe we can make children's books if we have lost the faculty of wonder."

Disillusioned by modern and post-modern art, Felicita went on to explore other things. She didn't think illustration could be a career path until she returned to Europe where she discovered picture books were an art form. 

Picture books lives outside the conventional art world. It bridges the world of adults and children and called back to the fairytales of her childhood. 

"Children have the key to understanding them (on picture books), that most adults have lost."

So Felicita began her work in the publishing world. She mostly works with Australian and UK publishing which she believes has a different sensibility than US publishing, and this has been a great environment for her experimental and playful aesthetic and storytelling.

Felicita loved books that "help children climb through the window, not the door."

Here are some of her INFLUENCES:

Gianni Rodari 

A creator of picture book from 60s through the 80s who played with words  annd surrealism. 

Felicita loved the experimental aspects of his writing and own "The Grammar of Fantasy" by Gianni Rodari, which dives into the storytelling she admires and loves. 

Emanuele Luzzati 

Illustrator that was influenced by folk art from Eastern Europe. 

The decorative, flat style influenced Felicita's aesthetic. 

Loves surreal, nonsense, over-the-top things, entertaining- Feeds her inner child

Scandinavian Literature: 

Felicita loved the way these artists drew children and this influenced several of her books and how she drew children.

"When you work on something that appeals to your inner child, it will appeal to children as well"

Russian Influences: 

Leo Lionni "Swimmy" 

It is textural, and experimental, where the artist is free from creative constraints.

This influenced Felicita's book "When You Find the Right Rock." 

In this book, she allowed herself to play with paint, brushes/brushstrokes, and collage which she usually doesn't do. It felt very freeing and this is one of her favorite works which releases in September 2024.

FELICITA'S PROCESS

Starts with a light sketch to map out the piece.

Using masking fluid to keep some spaces white, and light washes of color

More washes of color and added color detail.

Deepening color, defining shapes, and adding more details.

Color pencil to add features, minute details.

Then she scans and adds/cleans up digitally.

At the very end, Felicita showed some pages from SKETCHBOOK:

 Sketchbooks allow you to work on fundamental skills (linework, texture, etc) and allow you to learn to play.

Check out her STUNNING work!

https://www.felicitasala.com/

Felicita Sala
Illustrator

About
Felicita was born in Rome but grew up in Perth. She graduated with Honours in Philosophy form the University of Western Australia. She moved back to Italy in 2007 where she taught herself illustration and very slowly started making picture books. Over the years she collaborated on various papercut animations with husband and animator Gianluca Maruotti. She now works as a full time illustrator. One of her books 'She Made a Monster' was selected among the 10 best picture books of 2018 by the New York Times, and her self authored book 'Lunch at 10 Pomegranate Street' has been translated in over 10 languages. In 2020 she won the Premio Andersen as best illustrator in Italy. She lives in Rome with her family.

Keynote: Joseph Coelho

Joseph's poems have been published in several Macmillan anthologies including Green Glass Beads ed. by Jacqueline Wilson. Joseph has been a guest poet on Cbeebies Rhyme Rocket where he was beamed up from The Rhyme Rock to perform his Bug Poem. His debut children's collection "Werewolf Club Rules" is published by Frances Lincoln and was the winner of the 2015 CLPE CLiPPA Poetry Award. 

Joseph is the Waterstones Children's Laureate. Read all about his goals and the powerful things he's doing with and for kids. 

Joseph starts by sharing,"Poetry can help all of us, no matter what we write, can make our writing sing."

"I truly believe we are all poets."

Joseph writes across formats...all kinds of books. He grew up in nature, and loved writing with friends. Into his 20s he began preforming poems, which led him to writing for young people, which led to him writing for TV. He still turns to the outdoors to be inspired. 

Joseph says a good poet distills writing down to its essence, cutting straight to the marrow (like an artist drawing the perfect circle). 

He asks: Did you know you can write a poem with one word? 

The trick is to have a very long title!

The Sad Tale of a Fly

SPLAT!

Joseph tell us we are all poets and we all need to claim that right as poets. 

Poetry can be freeform or structured. 

With the help of attendees ,Joseph creates a MORERAPS poem which uses poetic devices. Each line of the poem is one of the following poetic devices. 

You can create your own MORERAPS poems to explore your story, to add more to your work. 

Like poetry, creativity needs to be fed and shared. When Joseph willingly started to give his creativity, rather than feeling it was something that he had to do, everything started to flow for him. 

Joseph shares a powerful message:

"Wait for no one. There are no gatekeepers except to those you give keys and chains to."

Joseph tells the room, "It's okay to play. There's no right or wrong way to do things. By sharing and being of service, your creativity blossoms."

Check out Joseph's YouTube channel and his Poetry Prompts: 5 to 10 minutes interactive guides for kids to write poetry. 

Angeline Boulley Closing Keynote

Author Angeline Boulley gave a perfect closing keynote! 

A highlight being when she shared the origin story of her first book, FIREKEEPER’S DAUGHTER: While still in high school Angeline’s best friend had told her about a new boy at another school that she thought was Angeline’s type, but when Angeline found out the boy hung out with a group of kids that did drugs, she gave the guy a hard pass before ever even meeting him… Only later did she find out he was working ¡undercover! for the police to help do a drug bust. That pre-21 Jump Street plotpoint moment stuck with Angeline for the rest of her life—the ‘what if’ of if they had met and there had been sparks, what would have happened next?  

But Angeline did not pursue creative writing in college, instead she worked in grant writing and education (as a former Director of the Office of Indian Education at the U.S. Department of Education) yet all that time she could not stop thinking about that highschool story idea. Angeline is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, a part of the Ojibwe community in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The more she thought about that highschool moment, the more she wondered how an Indigenous teen girl like herself might have been needed in such a storyline.

Finally at 44, during a midlife crisis in which she DID buy a red sportscar, Angeline also decided she’d rather live with failure and write the world’s worst draft of her story than live with the regret of never trying.

The rest of the keynote expands on Angeline’s authorial career arc getting even more interesting and fantastic along the way, but a blog post will not do it justice. Angeline's talk was so lovely and so worth experiencing in person (or in Zoom) that it's worth the effort to seek out her next events or interviews, but in summary: You think you know how your path to publication is going to go, but it’s probably not going to turn out that way. For Angeline it did not, but every rejection gave her momentum and she stayed true to writing the story in her heart.

And wow, did staying true pay off: Sold in a 12-house auction, FIREKEEPER’S DAUGHTER became an instant NYT bestseller. And only two weeks after selling the manuscript did the OBAMAS approach her to buy TV/Film rights. You can now find the book in 22 different languages as well as look forward to seeing it on Netflix in the near future. 

Keynote: Doug Salati

Keynote: Doug Salati

What a way to start off the second day of the conference! After the wonderful introduction by our Executive Director, Sarah Baker, Doug took us on his wonderful journey!

Doug's art is known for its beautiful line work, textures, and stunning visual narrative.

Having moved to NYC 16 years ago, Doug had NO idea what to do when he arrived but knew-

He wanted to tell stories.

So after moving in with a friend in Brooklyn (shoutout to BK! OwOw!), he promised himself one thing...

...to figure it out.

Once, he dreamt that he was in his bed, but instead of pillows, he slept on a pile of dogs. It was the best night of sleep. So from that moment on, he decided to document everything.

A big fan of people-watching, and location drawing, Doug took inspiration from everything around him.

He got an office job at SVA, where he would doodle and draw on office memo pads, post-its--any paper he could get his hands on.

He was in a creative environment and wanted to capture it all.

Art is like a time capsule. It is a snapshot of where you were as a person, who you were artistically.

He soon enrolled in Continuing Education courses, a perk of working at SVA full-time, and began to experiment with storytelling and narrative...

Silk Screening...

Layering...

Color...

Linework...

He didn't know what he wanted his artwork to be like but explored, nonetheless.

"How do I make my illustrations into sequential imagery?"

He continued to experiment during his SVA courses. 

"The power is in the doing! Make it, move on, try something different."

 

He continued learning and building community. He participated in fellowships, worked on his art, drew on location, embraced change, and pursued his Masters, all in the pursuit of bettering his craft. 

One day, while on vacation on a beach, Doug met Charlie, an energetic dog who was so happy to just be at a beautiful place on a beautiful day. 

On the train home, Doug drew some thumbnails of Charlie. Like his dream, he just wanted to document it.

After working on "In a Small Kingdom" by Tomie Depaola, and "Lawrence in the Fall" by Matthew Farina, Doug, with nothing yet on the horizon, decided to revisit, the then-titled, "Charlie and the Island."

"The first two projects help me learn what I needed to learn to be able to create this story. Without those, I couldn't have made Hot Dog"

While you are waiting, go back to your writing, drawing, reading, favorite movies and shows, etc. Get back into your creative habit. Work like you have something people are expecting from you.

SO

Doug fleshed out the story.

He worked on textures, linework, shape, and form, refining his ideas.

He expanded the story and developed the relationship between the dog and his human.

Doug even returned to the beach to see what Charlie saw.

Doug ended with a quote from Marshall Arisman:

"You either follow what you do or you try to lead it.

And I stopped trying to lead it. 

I follow it.

I'll do anything to get rid of my rational brain. 

So I play these games in hopes that some other part of me will come out and talk for a minute."

"Instead of pulling, see if there is a way to follow your ideas in a giving, imaginative, and playful way."- Doug Salati

Doug's keynote was beyond inspiring. Being given the chance to listen to his story, see his beautiful artwork, but to also hear how much work he has put into his personal growth was something to behold! 

Congratulations to Doug and we can't wait to see what else you create!

If you want to view this session to hear the full content, along with the rest of the conference, register at https://www.scbwi.org/events/summer-conference-2023. Replays of the conferences will be available until September 10, 2023.

Check out the SCBWI Bookshop!

Doug Salati
Author/Illustrator

Doug Salati is the author and illustrator of the 2022 picture book Hot Dog, recipient of the 2023 Randolph Caldecott Medal. His first book was In a Small Kingdom by Tomie dePaola, and his second, Lawrence in the Fall by his partner, Matthew Farina, was a 2020 Ezra Jack Keats Illustrator Award Honoree, a Society of Illustrators Original Art Show selection and Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection. Doug graduated from the MFA Illustration As Visual Essay Program at the School of Visual Arts in 2014. He was a 2015 Sendak Fellow. He lives and works in New York City.