Gleanings from the SCBWI Western Washington Story Garden

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susanboa
on April 14, 2010
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I lay in bed Sunday night, having returned home from the SCBWI Western Washington conference, and tried to sleep. My head buzzed. Not from the drive home on I5 from Seattle to Portland, or from caffeine, but from ideas swirling and mixing, colliding together. There’s nothing like getting a group of people who are passionate about what they do, presenting their strategies, concepts and insights to a group of people who are equally passionate about the same subject. As an attendee, you come away inspired, awed and somewhat cowed by the sheer talent and prowess, but ultimately encouraged and revitalized. (P.S. Check out the SCBWI Western WA Chinook Update blog for more information on all the presentations at the conference.) 

The guy I most wanted to see and hear from was Peter Brown, author of CHOWDER, THE FABULOUS BOUNCING CHOWDER and THE CURIOUS GARDEN (all by Little Brown, BFYR). I was lucky to attend several of his sessions at the conference and his keynote at the end was a knockout. He spoke about his goal from the age of 7 to become a children’s book author and illustrator and proceeded to outline his “Plan” to do just that. At turns hysterical and wise, he gave us the outline for his success (THE CURIOUS GARDEN spent many weeks on the NY Times bestseller list). The takeaway for me was to “work hard and smart”; fill your life with activities and friends to help balance all the hard work and to think holistically about career and life. Thanks, Peter Brown!

I was excited to learn that a writing sample I had offered up for critique during the “First Pages, Picture Books” breakout session was included in the Most Promising Works-In-Progress. It’s wonderful to receive such encouragement from professionals in the children’s book publishing world.

Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag…

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susanboa
on February 15, 2010
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Heading off to Nye Beach this weekend to the Sylvia Hotel with my critique group book buddies. We’ve all been too much challenged by day-to-day problems of late and are seeking an opportunity to focus on good company, good reading, writing and respite.

The Sylvia Beach Hotel is a gem - dedicated to book lovers. “There are no t.v.’s, no radios, no phones (although 1 public phone is available.) It is a quiet place on most days. Except for the glorious storms. Then the wind howls, the building shakes, and the rain pounds down. Some days it’s warm and sunny and the sky is bright blue. Some days there’s morning fog. Some days the wind makes you stay inside and read! Some days are rainbow days, the weather just can’t decide. The ocean is always present. (The hotel is on a 45 foot bluff right above the surf.) You move into the rhythm of the sea. Perhaps that’s why time seems to slow way down, almost to a standstill.”

Each room is named after an author, though we’ll be bunking (literally!) in the women’s dorm. It’s a cheap night at $30 with a great breakfast thrown in. Check out the details at: http://www.sylviabeachhotel.com/home.cfm?dir_cat=39281

I recieved a new manuscript from my editor at Henry Holt, Reka Simonsen, which I’m very excited about. It’s the second in Wendy Orr’s Rainbow Street Shelter series and I look forward to uninterrupted time to give it the initial, fresh read - awaiting the characters and pictures which will surely pop to my mind’s eye.  This one features a cat! I find cats much more challenging to illustrate than dogs, as their faces tend to be more static (do cats smile as dogs do?), but what can’t be expressed facially with a cat be reflected in posture and body movement.

So, ladies, start your engines. Fasten your seat belts. Turn on the windshield wipers and off to the beach we go. Don’t forget your kit bag full of books, paper, pencils, erasers, manuscripts and sweet dreams. Oh… and smile, smile, smile!

George and Martha - Two Imperfectly Perfect Friends

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susanboa
on January 16, 2010
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I picked up a staff-recommended book at Powell’s around the holidays and it has become a new favorite: George and Martha, The Complete Stories of Two Best Friends, by James Marshall, with foreward by Maurice Sendak (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008).

Throughout the 35 stories included in this compilation, George and Martha kid, harass, cajole, misunderstand and make up. They try to impress and one-up, but also support and encourage. They warn against mistakes and disaster, then counsel and sooth with great tenderness when such misfortune comes to pass.

As with any old and dear friends, they have found a way to put up with each other’s idiosyncrasies on the one hand, and delight in them on the other hand.

James Marshall’s warmth and wickedness are supremely evident in his George and Martha series. Hysteria lies just below the surface of his impeccably crafted illustrations and between the lines of his deceptively simple prose.

Included in this 360 page book are appreciations by children’s book author/illustrators who knew James Marshall personally. Their rememberances help define just what it was about Mr. Marshall that informed his perfect storytelling.

 

Holiday Greetings!

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susanboa
on December 23, 2009
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                             Season’s Greeting from the Great Northwest.

Becoming the Person You Were Meant to Be

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susanboa
on November 9, 2009
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That’s me in the first row of Miss Giesel’s Grade 3-4 at Lewton Elementary School, Lansing Michigan, April 6th, 1962. I had no ideas about who I might become at that age, but I knew I didn’t like white socks and I hated my bangs. I remember being in love with a couple of guys in my class. Hey, there were some cute guys in that class! And I remember drawing and painting up a storm and reading above grade level. So, I was busily “becoming”…I just didn’t know what.

A friend gave me an article from Oprah’s “O” magazine the other day. The writer who contributed the piece is one of my favorites. Anne Lamott writes that, “We begin to find ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously who we were born to be …So the real issue is how do we gently stop being who we aren’t?”

The take-away piece of the article for me, as a writer and illustrator of children’s books, was this paragraph: “When I was a young writer, I was talking to an old painter one day about how he came to paint his canvases. He said that he never knew what the completed picture would look like, but he could usually see one quadrant. So he’d make a stab at capturing what he saw on the canvas of his mind, and when it turned out not to be even remotely what he’d imagined, he’d paint it over with white. And each time he figured out what the painting wasn’t, he was one step closer to finding out what it was.”

Oh yes, yes, yes…this is the way it works for me! I woke up at 5:30 the other morning to let our old dog out and once back in bed, a clear image of an old man and a child came to me. They were walking and the child was asking her grandfather, “Grandpa, what is life?” the first few lines of a new book came to me and I thought, drifting back to sleep, I need to remember this so I can write it down when I wake up, which snapped me awake. I shuffled downstairs and spent two hours trying to capture what was on the canvas of my mind. I’ve spent the past week doing rough pencil drawings for a storyboard of this new picture book —figuring out what the drawings weren’t and coming closer to finding out what they were.

Read the full article in “O”: http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200911-omag-purpose-anne-lamott

Peter Peter Picks a Pumpkin House - Cybil nominee!

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susanboa
on October 30, 2009
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Peter Peter Picks a Pumpkin House (illustrated by yours truly), Henry Holt and Company, 2009 has been nominated for a Cybil award under the Easy Reader, Short Chapter Books genre. What lovely news, just in time for Halloween! 

Follow the link to learn more:

http://dadtalk.typepad.com/cybils/2009-nominations-easy-readersshort-chapter-books.html

Boy and his dog

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susanboa
on September 1, 2009
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Just a little pencil sketch to share.

“Children’s Art” by Miriam Lindstrom

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on August 27, 2009
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If you can get your hands on a copy of this little book, originally published in 1957, you are in for an illuminating read. Described as tracing “the normal development of visualization in children between the ages of two and fifteen…from the earliest scibble and chance forms, through the first schematic formulae, to pictures that show evidence of creative organization…”, I found this passage on page 11 to be of particular interest:

Through visual statement, mysteries reach some resolution, reality takes a tangible form, fantasy becomes stated and thereby less confusing, and a small person gains some measure of mastery over the vague but powerful forces that he feels govern his life and his world. To the extent that magic, animism, and super-naturalism are one’s explanations for causes and effects, some method of exorcism is essential until more rational interpretations supply a more comfortable logic to live by. (Adults, who seldom give themselves so completely to any experience as little children do, could not stand the emotional wear and tear of living as they do, so intensely, so passionately, so without perspective or philosophy to sustain them beyond moments regarded not as transitory but as all of life.)”

For me, as an illustrator, the ”exorcism” I experience in the act of drawing continues to sustain me through a life which can still feel at times completely without logic and rational interpretation. The trick now is to offer something up creatively that is as unforced and genuine as those “earliest scribbles and chance forms”.

Who needs underwear anyway??

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susanboa
on July 28, 2009
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In honor of the fact that it is 105° F in Portland today, I had my hair cut off ala Jamie Lee Curtis and am hiding in the one air-conditioned room in the house (which, lucky me, happens to be my little writing room). While I hide, I’m picking favorites off the shelf and thumbing through them. It’s not the kind of day where I have the energy or concentration to actually READ said books, just peruse them.

The image I’m posting is from one of my very favorite picture books: The Philharmonic Gets Dressed by Karla Kuskin, illustrated by Marc Simont (love, Love, LOVE him!) and edited by genius Charlotte Zolotow, Harper Collins, 1982.

This is one of a few picture books that make me laugh out loud.

Book Review - The Underneath by Kathi Appelt

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susanboa
on July 13, 2009
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The Underneath by Kathi Appelt, Drawings by David Small (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2008).

 Poetic thread by poetic thread, Kathi Appelt weaves a spellbinding tale of hatred and love, pain and loss, fear and redemption. This was a re-read for me, as I couldn’t take it all in the first time around. For someone like me, who cannot bear the sight of a squashed squirrel in the street, it took the lull of Kathi’s mesmerizing prose to lure me into the story—and then, as though caught in quicksand, I was trapped within the tapestry of this mythical tale, along with Gar Face, Ranger, Grandmother, the Alligator King and the kittens. A rare and beautiful read—a classic.

David Small’s masterful illustrations offer a spare and sensitive counterpoint to the lush, descriptive prose.