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I need to read. If I
don’t read, I get antsy, edgy, uncomfortable. Even if everything in my
life is fine, and I’m not simply turning to a book for consolation or
escape, I still feel the need. If I don’t read, I don’t feel like
myself.
Sven Birkerts speaks to who we are and the connection between the
sense of self and reading. He asks if our adaptation to the “circuit
board future,” when we are unable to give full attention to
reading (or
anything else), will leave us without a core sense of self. “Reading,
even though it proposes an elsewhere, gives me that self--gives it to
me most fully and purely when I am most deeply possessed by the work.”
So reading is demanding. It is also comforting. Having books around the
house is comforting, too. If one wishes to speculate on how that
feeling of comfort began, why not go back to babyhood? For a baby, a
book is a comforting physical object. A baby can manipulate it, “use”
it, stop using it, and return to it again, always with the assurance
that D will follow C.
Beyond toyness, a book offers the elemental experience of story. At
first, like the toy-book, the story provides constancy. It can be
repeated, memorized, mastered. It is unchanging in an otherwise
unpredictable and puzzling world. Even if the story sets up a problem,
conflict or tension, which most stories do, the story becomes familiar
once repeated. And repetition and resolution are comforting.
Older children say they like a good story, meaning plot, characters....
A good story will cast a spell, allowing a reader to slip into another
world, to watch the characters and become part of their lives. Readers
enter into a kind of “virtual experience” where they can control the
pace and imagine the scenes, unlike a movie, for example, which is not
as interactive and which can sometimes be assaulting.
Scholars have theorized that the immersion or escape into a book may
bring readers closer to that which comforts us, even if those specific
elements in the story that do so can’t be isolated. I’m reminded of all
the times I re-read The Secret
Garden. Why? I wonder. I’m still not sure.
And another question: how exactly do we learn to read? If someone had a
one size fits all answer, wouldn’t
everyone be a reader? I can’t remember how I learned. Did it just
happen? Kids forget. But those who love to read do not forget one
thing--the pleasure.
Part of my work as a children’s librarian was turning kids on to books,
and the best way for me to do that was to share the pleasure through
storytelling.
What makes a good story to tell? Again, no single answer. Librarians
spend a lot of time choosing the best stories--it’s called “book
selection” and “collection development.” Some stories are time
tested--retold and perfected over years. The Mende people of Sierra
Leone, among the greatest African storytellers, know what makes a good
story. They expect it to contain:
1) fun,
laughter, humor
2) imaginary
incidents (“The story is a lie, we just arrange it.”)
3) song: the
opportunity to sing and shout
4)
information, a proverb, a moral.
A good story may not meet all four criteria, but it must be
entertaining. In other words, it must offer pleasure.
The sources of pleasure can change over time. I can’t recapture the
response I had as a child to the books I once devoured. Nancy Drew
books were engrossing, scary, thrilling; now they’re dull and
transparent. Some books that were howlingly funny are now mildly
amusing or not funny at all. Some that were emotional, tender, and deep
now seem overwritten, florid, cloying. I dare not go back and re-read
some of the books I loved the most!
When I read the following words in Diane Setterfield’s novel, The Thirteenth Tale, they seemed my
own--but more eloquent: “I have always been a reader; I have read at
every stage of my life and there has never been a time when reading was
not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have
done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I
did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when
I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are,
for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget
is that there was a time when they were once more banal and more
essential than that. When I was a child books were everything. And so
there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of
books.”
As an adult, I guess I’m more critical, more stressed, more easily
distracted. It’s harder for me to give myself over to other worlds, to
let the author carry me out of this one, though I’m lucky in that many
books still do the trick. I can’t forget the impact, for example, of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or
Midnight’s
Children--the
sense of discovery, coming to those books without expectations, just
picking them up--and being blown away. More recently, I've been passing
the word along about The Lacuna
and Cutting the Stone--beautifully
epic, absorbing, big hearted novels.
Some children’s books also blow me away with their brilliance and
heart, The Music of Dolphins,
for example, which restored my faith in what a contemporary children’s
novel could be. And I was so glad that Harry Potter’s success made
fantasy profitable, allowing old and new fantasy to flourish again,
because, as artist/writer Betsy James put it, “Fantasy is the melting
pot of the soul.” (Check out Betsy's
site and blog for many other soulful thoughts!)
First books--those cozy “lap” books a parent reads
to a child, often at bedtime--are flourishing, too. Despite all the
aggressively marketed
electronic distractions books have to compete with, as Eden Ross Lipson
observed in The New York Times,
“one thing that has not changed is the pure pleasure of reading with
toddlers and preschoolers.” Among the benefits of reading to a child,
beyond pleasure, is that “you are giving a child undivided attention.”
Maybe the core sense of self that Sven Birkerts described starts out
with the parent-child bond--and a book!
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MAKING
PICTURE BOOKS
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When I was working as a children’s librarian, we’d physically examine
picture books at book selection meetings. We’d look, read, discuss.
Picking up a book, I sometimes felt a tingling in my fingertips. That’s
when I knew something special was going on: book magic! Everything in the book
had come together perfectly--text, illustration, design, type,
endpapers. The book was a keeper, a read-it-again book, a book that was
great to look at. It didn’t have to be elaborate either. The Carrot Seed comes to mind as a
perfect--and simple--book.
Now that I’m involved in making picture books myself, I realize how
complicated the process can be. It’s a long process--sometimes it takes
years, and there are a lot of variables at work. Magic isn’t easy!
According to an artist friend, good art cannot save a bad story, but a
good story can survive bad art. So it makes sense that most picture
books begin with the text.
For me, once a manuscript is accepted for publication, it’s like
sending a child out into the world. You hope you can continue to guide
her, but you know, in reality, you no longer have much control. So you
tell yourself, I did the best I could. And now you’re cautious, warning
yourself, I don’t want to make the mistake of being too involved in her
life--suffocating and overly protective. But I need to keep in touch,
don’t I? I have to make sure she’s not in trouble.... How can I stop
being a mommy? A worried author?
Your child’s teachers, lovers, friends influence her life, and so it
goes for the manuscript. Everyone influences the final work: writer,
artist, editor, printer, designer. A picture book is a group project, a
collaborative creation, and better yet, a creative collaboration.
Once, when I was on a writer’s panel, the question came up: “If you
can’t choose the illustrator, what happens to your vision?”
In my case, I try to convey my vision to the book’s editor in the form
of a written description or a little mock up of the book (a “dummy”).
The editor may share my thoughts with the artist, but more often than
not the artist would prefer to imagine the book herself, letting her
own imagination respond to what she sees in the text.
I do have a strong conceptual or visual idea as I write. The visuals I
have in mind even dictate the text, especially if I’m writing verse.
But I know that sticking to my vision might be limiting, closing the
door to other valid, possibly better visions. Picture book magic might
take place when two or three imaginations add up to equal more than the
sum of their parts, and not necessarily when the writer’s vision
dominates. So I TRY to let go a little bit, both as a parent and as
an author!
When and if the editor shares the artwork-in-progress with me, I
comment on it and make suggestions. I always try to step back, as
though I had nothing to do with the book. I put on my book reviewer
bonnet and library-lady hat so I can be as critically objective as
possible. Then the text editor and art editor get back to the artist
with their own critiques--and maybe mine as well.
We all want the same result, a wonderful book, hopefully a magic one.
Revisions are always part of the process. After all, didn’t E. B. White
and Garth Williams go back and forth until they got Charlotte exactly
right? Once a writer and artist establish mutual trust and
appreciation, they
might communicate directly with each other. They might spark each other
creatively. They might even immortalize each other. Consider White and
Williams, Kraus and Aruego, Minarik and Sendak--magical picture book
collaborations. Happily, the list goes on!
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ILLUSTRATIONS
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What kinds of pictures appeal to children? I grew up in the heyday of
The Little Golden Books. I loved those books, with illustrations by
Mary Blair, Gustaf Tenggren, Tibor Gergely, and Feodor Rojankovsky. The
only illustrator I remember disliking was Eloise Wilkins. I didn’t care
for the illustrations in my Dick and Jane readers either.
Both my
parents were artists, so I was exposed to all kind of art from
the beginning, not only in picture books, and I was given lots of art
materials myself. I think my background was atypical, and that most
kids find picture books their first and only source of quality art. It
could also be that my parents' own response to the books we read
filtered down to tme.
When I worked as a children's librarian, I saw that some children
couldn't stop looking at a quality book, as
though the art were a revelation. I’m thinking in particular of a
kindergartner in St. Thomas. He lived with his family in the back of a
bar. He was kind of wild, probably chronically overtired, and he wasn’t
up to par as a student. But his appreciation of beautiful book art was
extraordinary and intense. He was totally absorbed in it. He couldn’t
tell me WHY he liked it, and I could only wonder, Where did this
feeling come from, how did it arise? Was it instinctual?
Back to the question: What appeals? Some have written that that
cartoonish and representational are a child’s
favorite styles. Yet one child told me he didn’t like seeing faces
pictured in books. He’d rather imagine them. Another was frightened by
the lack of faces in my book Tukama Tootles the Flute
(Orchard, 1994), illustrated by Synthia Saint James, On the other hand,
the artist’s bold, almost abstractly conceived pages appeal to a wide
audience, including the visually impaired, as I was gratefully informed
by some parents. Given anecdotal evidence, there really aren't any hard
and fast rules about what appeals to everyone or, in fact, what works
best with a specific
kind of text.
A story of few words might require more than simply designed, graphic
illustrations. More complicated and detailed illustrations might carry
the narrative above and beyond the text. When I’ve looked at picture
books with older kids, I got more articulate responses about why they
liked a certain book’s art. (One nice thing about working with children
in the Virgin Islands--there is no stigma attached to reading picture
books, while on the mainland I’ve heard them described disparagingly as
baby books, even by parents.) These children delighted in visual
narratives, including contradictory ones, surprises, and hidden
treasures. On the other hand, once again, books read as readalouds in a
group might benefit from bold images rather than detailed ones. And
contrary to expectations, a very young lap book might benefit from
detailed illustrations offering take off points for talking about
things other than the story--images, numbers, colors.
The popular psychologist, Penelope Leach, in her book Your Baby & Child: From Birth to Age
Five (Knopf, 1989 edition), says that babies are entranced “by
big, clear, illustrations of babies and older people doing familiar
things” (p. 257), that toddlers’ attention will be held by “big,
detailed illustrations of familiar scenes” (p. 360), and that a
somewhat older child, “reading” pictures, is also preparing for reading
words later on. “Try to find him books with big, colorful, detailed
illustrations,” she advises, “rather than the sterile conventional A is
for Antelope type” (p. 453). I was a little surprised to find her
taking a stand, and such
an odd one, regarding quality. In my experience alphabet books are more
often artistic showcases and conceptual tours de force than sterile
exercises! What I think she’s really intending to speak to is a certain
level of visual storytelling and artistic quality that goes beyond the
ordinariness and predictability of the dictionary.
Dr. Leach’s recommendations are broad, but specific studies have been
done trying to analyze children’s subject and style preferences. I
found one old interesting document on-line: in 1941 thousands of
children were asked what they would like an artist to paint for them.
MOMA held a competition, and the winning artists of “pictures for
children” would receive a princely $25. (To see the themes, check
out this site.)
Judging quality and impact is a more difficult task. Judgments can be
informed, based on knowledge and experience, but can also be elicited
by an
undefinable combination of nature and nuture. I say this because of the
realization that came to me while sharing art preferences with my
husband and with colleagues whose taste and judgements I respect. We
almost always disagreed! That proved to me just how subjective a
reponse to art can be, which led me to the view that judgment must go
beyond education and to some sort of gut based, mind/body predilection.
"Kid appeal" aside, we’re well beyond the point today where children’s
book art is viewed
as second class or “only” for children. Original art from children’s
books is being curated in museums and sold in galleries as its own art
form, along with “fine art” and “graphic art.” Sometimes the
distinctions seem fluid, just as literature crosses the boundaries of
specific genres. If the text comes first, which had been a criticism of
illustrations as Art with a capital A, isn’t it true that art
historically served a story--most often a religious one? Portraits,
events, places offer stories, too, and knowing the story, for most of
us, enhances the art. It helps us to understand the use of symbols,
form, and color, and to better appreciate the message. So the fact that
picture book art is, as part of its mandate, aimed at appealing to a
wide audience and confined to a specific format doesn’t prevent it from
being considered for its art values, apart from the text.
Some contemporary picture books even reference the wonderful children’s
book art of the past to add richness and wit to a story--Brian Lies in
his terrific Bats at the Library
(Houghton Mifflin, 2008), for example, and Marjorie Priceman in my
book, This Is the Day (Houghton
Mifflin, 2007), with her echos of Madeline.
The new sophistication extends to the use of artistic styles ranging
from Naive to Renaissance to Surreal to Retro....
Professor Kay E. Vandergrift offers pointers on discussing and reviewing
picture book art, a bibliography
on children’s book illustration, as well as notes from her own and
other books. The quotations are fascinating and offer food for thought.
But in the end, I’m glad about one thing. Scholarly research hasn’t
been conclusive on the question of child appeal. If it had, we might
never get to see such a great variety of artistic styles and pictorial
voices in children’s books.
Asthetic appreciation is still something of mystery.
After all, however incomprehensible to me, millions of people loved the
work of Eloise Wilkins. And Dick and Jane have their fans too. Good
grief, they’ve even made a comeback in the 21st century!
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RETELLING
TALES
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People always ask, “Where do you get your ideas?” My answer:
from real life, dreams, a word or phrase--and other people’s stories.
Someone else’s story might grab my attention and beg me to retell it.
I’m attracted to certain themes: loss, struggle, transformation, magic,
overcoming, good vs evil--the stuff of legend and folktale. I’m drawn
to the topics of food, family, art, music, and love. When I come across
a story that comes after me, I want to “fix” it, or recreate it to
reflect my own experience and values.
Nobody minds when a writer refashions a fairy tale. If the ogre is
sympathetic, the prince turns out to be a bum, the princess is not
helpless after all--that’s perfectly okay. But when it comes to
adapting folktales from other cultures, questions arise. Questions
about source, accuracy, multicultural sensitivity....
For example, can a non-African retell an African folktale? I believe
there is such a thing as cultural “radar,” but I also believe that
there are more differences within a group than between the empathetic
of two different groups. We are all part of the human family, and we
all have antennae, if we choose to wave them around a bit, that can
provide us with good information. We can empathize. We can inhabit. We
can imagine. In fact, sometimes it takes an outsider to reveal the
value of a culture insiders may take for granted, or denigrate, or even
try to suppress.
Besides, I like the idea that all writers are free to write about what
touches them, no matter what their backgrounds may be. This isn’t to
say I’m not interested in being true to the cultural source of a tale
that pulls me into its orbit; I always research its setting and
origins, and salt and pepper it with some specific, telling cultural
details, but I need to make the story my own, too. And while that may
mean the story is no longer authentic culturally, the process of adaptation is culturally authentic.
For Native Americans, a story has an independent life, to be nourished
and to nourish. In Africa, the Hausa people say, “A story, a story, let
it go, let it come.” Individual Ahamba storytellers reenact each story
creatively, even to the extent of altering the ending. And as Ruth
Finnegan wrote in her book, Limba
Stories and Storytelling (Oxford, 1967), “There is no ‘received’
or correct text of any traditional story. Limba story-telling is a
living art and the traditional themes and motifs find their realization
in the actual performance, embellished on each separate occasion with
differing dramatic devices, emphases, and wording, or with episodes or
references peculiar to the occasion.”
What is most powerful in these tales is their universality; the same
basic story and character type can be found in nearly every culture.
But the variants make each one unique. They reflect particular cultures
and a real, concrete sense of place. Turning that principle on its
head, I have sometimes taken my favorite tales from childhood and
placed them in a brand new cultural context. For instance, “The
Fisherman and His Wife” became “Reina Sardina” (Spider, 3/2004), and “Stone Soup”
became Kallaloo!
(Cavendish,
2005).
If I’m guilty of sanitizing a story, altering its trajectory, or making
the characters more likable, as I did in Only One Cowry (Orchard,
2000),
it’s not only because I’m writing for children, but because I’m writing
a story I’d like to read myself. The source may be a traditional story
that grabbed me, but it also has to become a story that satisfies my
somewhat moralistic storytelling impulse. In the case of Only One Cowry, a trickster tale
evolves from one of outright selfishness to one of sharing the
wealth--and still keeps its tricky nature.
Retelling a story, I try to dust it off, shake it up, and make it
fresh, or as Ezra Pound put it succinctly, “make it new,” as good a
rule as any for creative interpretation, to which I’d add “make it your
own.”
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