What I’ve Been Reading: Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tale of Despereaux
I have been making a concerted effort to discover exactly what everybody loves so much about Kate DiCamillo. Nope. Didn’t find it.
Read MoreWhere Do Your Ideas Come From?
A Young Girl Reading, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, c. 1776
For some reason a lot of writers hate this question. I’m not sure why. Myself, I don’t mind it. I can usually track down where my idea for a particular book came from. (Dragon’s Egg came from a conversation with my nephew, Cub’s Big World came from the moment I learned that polar bear cubs are born in snow dens and don’t see the outside world until they’re a few months old).
But for everyday purposes I have a short and simple answer: From other people’s books.
I don’t mean copying, I don’t mean stealing (Who was it who said that if you steal, always do it from at least three different sources and call it research?); I mean inspiration. If I stopped reading tomorrow, I’d stop writing next week. Filling myself up with stories, characters, settings, facts, and discoveries is the only way to allow my subconscious to come up with new ideas of my own. The trouble is, it’s been tough finding enough time for the last several years to read as much as I’d like to.
So I am declaring a summer sabbatical. For a good part of the month of August, I am not going to write; I am going to read. Award winners, classics, new and popular stuff that I haven’t kept up with, books people recommend or books that just catch my eye. Anything you think I shouldn’t miss? Please let me know.
Read MoreHistory Lessons
Thomas Jefferson: President and Philosopher by Jon Meacham, adapted for young readers by Sarah L. Thomson
Exciting to receive in the mail recently an advance reader’s copy of Thomas Jefferson: President and Philosopher. I got to adapt this young reader’s version of Jon Meacham’s amazing bio of Thomas Jefferson, and it will be out in September.
Lovely to see all the art in place–portraits of all the major figures, political cartoons from the day, photos from Monticello. It’s going to be a gorgeous book as well as instructive.
Writing and adapting books is how I get my history, these days, and it’s as good a method as any, although a little haphazard at times. (I know a lot about the Elizabethan theater, for example, but only up till 1593, when my book The Secret of the Rose was set. At the moment I’m busy getting a grasp on feudal Japan.) One of the great results of adapting Meacham’s work is that I have a new understanding not just of Thomas Jefferson, but of the American Revolution as a whole, and the way our history fits into the struggle between France and England for dominance of the New World.
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The Magic of Sketches
LIta Judge brings such personality (monkey-nality?) to LIttle Monkey, the heroine of Sarah L. Thomson’s new picture book, Quick, Little Monkey!
There is no moment of the picture book process that I love more than the first glimpse of the illustrator’s sketches. This is the moment in time, for me, that a story or a manuscript–a bunch of words on a page–turns into a real live book.
A picture book is always a melding of art and text, and a good one takes art and text to a new level–each expanding the other, bringing something to the combination that neither had alone. So when you see the words and the pictures together for the first time, well, nothing quite compares.
Picture book writing is an odd craft. I’m thinking visually the whole time, from the moment the idea floats into my head. I’m thinking of page count (the magic number is 32; that’s the number of pages in a picture book), I’m thinking of how the text will spread out over those 32 pages (or actually the 23 that I really get to write on), I’m thinking of the balance between text and art on a page, and of course I’m thinking of the art. How will it look? Have I given the illustrator something to draw here? I haven’t stuck her with landscape for three spreads in a row, have I? Or created a dialog that he’ll only be able to illustrate with two talking heads?
And yet I don’t know what the art will look like. I don’t know how the illustrator will seize my ideas and run with them; I don’t even know who the illustrator will be, most of the time, when I’m working on a picture book text. So there’s this big empty space in my head that will eventually be filled up with glorious, imaginative, energetic full-color artwork. And then the sketches arrive in my e-mail in-box–and BOOM. What was once an idea, and then a sequence of words on a page, has suddenly become an genuine book, something readers will pore over and take delight in.
It’s amazing. Not even the delivery of a full-color bound book can compare with the exhilaration packed into a set of black-and-white rough sketches.
Yesterday I got my first look at Lita Judge’s sketches for QUICK, LITTLE MONKEY. And…wow. I mean…wow. I mean…gosh. There’s Little Monkey herself, in all her glee and courage and pluck and daring, and there’s the ocelot (oh, that ocelot!) who stalks her through the undergrowth, and there’s…well. I’m sorry you all don’t get to see Lita’s brillance until the book is actually out. But here’s one tiny sketch to give you a taste.
Read MoreAround the Neighborhood in the Garden
Author Sarah L. Thomson (that’s me!) reads her picture book Around the Neighborhood.
Such fun visiting the Friends School of Portland to share Around the Neighborhood for their Stories by the Garden program! If you’re in the Portland area with little ones, do check out this program. What’s nicer than a visit to sweet, scenic Mackworth Island, a story to hear, and maybe a picnic lunch to enjoy afterward on the trail that goes all around the island?
The kiddos were energetic and delightful. We read the book (in the gym rather than the garden, due to weather), sang the song, and then scattered outside for a scavenger hunt.
This is such a happy, adventurous book for a summery activity or story hour. Check out the fun and free Activity Kit if you’d like to recreate our scavenger hunt. We had a great time!
Read MoreHappy Birthday E.B. White
Happy Birthday to E.B. White, a fellow Maine author and an inspiration, who once wrote to a young correspondent who asked when he’d have his next book out:
Read More“I would like to write another book for children but I spend all my spare time just answering the letters I get from children about the books I have already written. So it looks like a hopeless situation unless you can start a movement in America called ‘Don’t write to E. B. White until he produces another book.'”
Cub’s Big Read
Two readers doing what readers should do, at a book fair at Chenery Middle School. Kudos to super-librarian Karen Duff for pulling off a magnificent event, and may there be many more!
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Sarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Thomson focuses on newfound connection, magic, and suspense to conjure a fast-paced, heartwarming mystery. Thomson’s world is populated by resourceful protagonists, fanciful creatures, and quirky supporting characters.”
—Publishers Weekly