Tag Archives: picture book

Welcome to the … aughhhhh

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Sometimes a book takes its own sweet time. I’ve talked before about the long journeys some of my work has travelled from the initial spark to the published story.

There was Bella and the Wandering House, which took 14 years, and which I wrote about here.

There was Let Me Sleep, Sheep!, which was 13 years, and which I wrote about here.

There was How to Make a Bird (17 years, here.)

And Ella and the Useless Day (17 years, here.)

There are many reasons why so much time can elapse from pen-on-paper to publication. Sometimes it’s about the idea percolating and sometimes it’s about the writer procrastinating … or perhaps pondering. Sometimes it’s about the publishing world needing to catch up to the concept.

For the most part, this slowness has served me well. If How to Make a Bird had been embraced by publishers when I was first sending it out, it wouldn’t have ended up in the hands of Matt Ottley. It would be nothing like the beautiful art object it is today. If Ella and the Useless Day had been published in its original form, I would always have felt as if I’d somehow missed the point, not quite got to the heart of what I was trying to say. And I could never have collaborated with Karen Blair, who has brought much more to it than I could ever have imagined.

I say “for the most part” because there have been downsides – sleeping projects I’ve had to shelve because someone came out with something that was just too similar. Still, though, the hits have been relatively benign. Like most writers, I’m sure, I have a whole storehouse of fragments and snippets, endless beginnings of maybe-possible future things. Some have a little more momentum than others, have gathered more thoughts around them, begun to take on a somewhat recognisable shape. But even so, they’re still just beginnings, formative, not too hard to be philosophical about when I’ve had to let go.

Until now, that is.

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Ella Emerges from the Rubble

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In my last post, I referred to “the glorious rubble” that was the process of excavating and clearing out my childhood home. And that, on account of me being me, that rubble fed inevitably into the creative well, setting all sorts of things in motion.

Today, I want to talk about the first of those things, which has turned into a gorgeous little picture book called Ella and the Useless Day. As is the case for a lot of my work, this is something I started working on many years ago, which has had a long and bumpy ride to publication. When I first wrote Ella, back in 2005, it was the story of a little girl and her father who have a big cleanout and take all the useless things they don’t want any more to the local tip. There, where the bulk of the story’s action takes place, they unload everything gleefully and toss it onto the piles of already-discarded items. In the background, however, out of sight to everyone but Ella, another little girl – the daughter of the tip gatekeeper – is equally gleefully purloining many of their ‘useless’ items for herself.

As we pull back further, we see the little on-site house where they live, which is partly constructed by and decorated with all sorts of salvaged things. As Ella and Dad drive away, congratulating themselves on having disposed of all those useless things, the little girl sets to work to repurpose them. At the very end, I imagined a wordless spread which would show the various interesting uses to which she had put them.

Pretty fun, right? I liked it. But no one else did. Or at least not enough to publish it. Across Australia and the US, it was form rejections all round, and so I set it aside, another failed project for the bottom drawer.

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On Creativity, Crap, and the Clearing Away of Childhood

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Firstly, thank you: for your kind and enthusiastic and kindly enthusiastic responses to my last post. I am particularly heartened that people seem to like my scribbled poetry notes. These little fragments are where I feel most at home creatively and I look forward to rambling about them at length in the future.

For now, though, I’ve been thinking about the long, slow process of cleaning out my childhood home, which took place over the last couple of years – firstly in a big, focused burst, and then in dribs and drabs and trickles and whimpers. It was full of sadness and joy and reminiscence and teeth-grinding and head-shaking and many more things besides. We moved around a lot in the first few years of my life and I have blurry memories of that time, but the year I turned five, my parents bought the one and only house they would ever own, and proceeded, over the next 50-some years, to fill it with kids and memories and obscure family sayings and stuff. So much stuff.

I’m sure they threw plenty of things away over that time. They were sensible people, after all. A little quirky, sure, but then again, aren’t we all? They made conscious choices about what to keep – things that were useful, or might be some day, even if in some as-yet unimaginable way; things that had once been useful but were now broken but might be fixed at some future point or repurposed, possibly in some as-yet unimaginable way; things that had sentimental value or might have one day, depending on what events transpired in your life or the kind of person you turned into or a million and one other variables. Things that sparked joy or rage or indifference or even just a raised eyebrow and a mischievous line of thought: Hmmm, I don’t know what this is for and the kids won’t either. I will attach a label to it that says “MYSTERY OBJECT” and use it to bamboozle people.

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Twice Upon A Small Rhinoceros

No, it’s not a sequel. This isn’t a new book but a new lease of life for an old one.

I can’t believe it’s nearly two years since Once Upon A Small Rhinoceros set sail, but since it is, that means it’s time for a paperback edition!

PaperRhino

I’ve had the loveliest time introducing my little rhino to readers in schools and libraries far and wide. We’ve talked about courage and resourcefulness and feeling the fear and doing it anyway. About the beauty in encountering ‘strange’ things and the opportunities in letting yourself be lost. We’ve talked over and over about why it might be that so.many.readers can read the whole book and still think my glorious girl is a ‘he’.

Sometimes we’ve just curled up on the carpet and let the waves rock us to sleep. One little boy entered so completely into that space he said he felt seasick afterwards!

AtNight

Along the way, I’ve learned a few things. Kids have pointed out things in the illustrations I’ve never noticed. My rhinoceros-drawing skills have improved, or changed, or something. I overcame my terror of public humiliation and drew a rhinoceros on butcher paper in front of a hall full of kids, upon which a small boy raised his hand and said he liked the way I had displayed a growth mindset. Kids today, I tell ya!

Rhinowonky   Rhinodrawing

One of my absolute favourite things about being a writer is seeing my work spark creativity in others, and it’s been such a joy to get feedback from teachers and students who have used Once Upon A Small Rhinoceros in the classroom.

With one group, I talked to kids about why the rhinoceros might wear her lifejacket before and during her journey, even when she’s on dry land. And why, in one particular illustration towards the end, she leaves it completely undone. We spoke about the idea of nightlights and security blankets, cuddly toys – things that make you feel safe independent of any practical function they might have.

A week or so later, a teacher sent me these wonderful pictures of an activity her class had done back at school. She had built on this idea, personalising it, challenging the kids to think about how this idea could relate to them. What were their worries and fears? And what could they use as a personal ‘lifejacket’ be in those situations?

On another occasion, I received a wonderful package from a Year 2 teacher in Sydney. Her class had compiled their own illustrated stories of the adventures the ‘even smaller rhinoceros’ might go on were the book to continue.

Last year, a mentor in the 12 Buckets program who had been sharing the book with one of her students had a 3D model of the rhinoceros printed so she could accompany her on holiday, and share her travels with the student.

(Small rhinoceros also visited Mark Greenwood‘s spa, but that is a whole other story …)

RhinospaMark

And recently, I received the following from a Year 2 teacher in Swanbourne:

In 2018 Once Upon a Small Rhinoceros became our most celebrated text in my Year 2 class.  Children delighted over this little but intrepid character and we compared her braveness, determination and independence to qualities we would need to face the new year ahead.  We allowed ourselves to dream big just like the little rhinoceros and set ourselves our own goals to strive for.

This is the stuff that absolutely makes my heart sing. These little glimpses from the reading frontlines remind me that these things I make up in my head go on to have a life outside me and themselves, that they ripple and ripple and sometimes really matter.

I’m so thrilled that my small rhinoceros is setting sail again. I hope she finds her way into the hearts of many more readers in the years to come.

MegwithrhinoLakeMaggioreKites

 

The Sheep Have Landed!

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Amidst all the brouhaha about Catch A Falling Star and Skylab and things that fall from the sky, something else has happened.

A new picture book has landed! Some sheep have landed – with heavy thuds on the floor of a little boy’s bedroom.

FinalcovermedresLet Me Sleep, Sheep hit shelves on 1 March, the same day Catch A Falling Star was published and just after DUCK! was named a Notable book in the Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Awards, at which point I suddenly realised I’ve written three books in a row about things unexpectedly falling from the sky-ish.

No, wait. Not written. Published. Because the truth is I wrote Let Me Sleep, Sheep a long time ago. A very long time ago. The story of this book begins in 2006 when I had the initial idea. I don’t know where this one came from. It’s just one of those quirky little things that appeared out of somewhere, and which I threw into my ‘random picture book ideas’ file alongside many many others.

OriginalSheepThoughts

My initial notes from 2006

I’d written about twelve picture books at that point, most of them pretty awful and none of them published. But this one was better, I thought. And moreover, my first novel had just been accepted for publication. By the time I had a submittable draft of Let Me Sleep, Sheep!, it was December 2006 and I was just three months away from being an actual real published author.

Then I stumbled across a book called The 108th Sheep, which was launching on exactly the same day as my debut novel, with a premise alarmingly similar to Let Me Sleep, Sheep! There was no way I could submit mine now, I thought. I told no one about it, tucked it away in the metaphorical bottom drawer.

A year later, when I saw a book called  The Eleventh Sheep come out, I thought, hmm, maybe there’s room for more materialising sheep books after all and pulled the manuscript again to tweak it for submission. When the following month, I saw a review of It’s Time To Sleep, You Crazy Sheep, I put my head down very firmly on the desk. I’d really missed the boat this time. Surely we’d reached critical mass for “materialising sheep” books in the picture book market, at least for now. Maybe if I waited a few more years?

Instasheep

I waited a few more years. I published a few more books, even some picture books. I had more credibility now! I had a publisher! Some other publishers knew my name!

I sent it off. I got rejections. It was fun but too difficult to illustrate. The problem, you see, was that all the action was taking place in one location.

But but but what about all those other counting sheep books? I wondered. I wanted to say. I did not say. I tucked it back in the metaphorical drawer, the third one down this time, where all the junk lives. I got on with other ideas, other books, other things.

And then, in late 2016, I signed with an agent. And I didn’t have anything new to send her so I went back to the Drawers of Rejection, to see if there was anything salvageable. The sheep made me laugh. I thought hey, I reckon this is actually okay. I did a quick google for new counting sheep books. I couldn’t find any. Clearly, this was my moment! I sent it off.

Three weeks later, I was offered a contract. Shortly after, the glorious Leila Rudge went to work, effortlessly breezing past the ‘single location’ problem. And in June 2018, approximately five days after we sent Let Me Sleep, Sheep! to the printer, a book called Go To Sleep, Sheep! was published and I DID NOT CARE AT ALL. And in March 2019, one of the very first reviews on Goodreads said this …

GRReview2

… and I laughed so hard I almost cried.

 

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A Rhinoceros By Any Other Gender…

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As many of you know, I have a new picture book coming out very soon.OUASR_CVR_HR-RGB

Once Upon a Small Rhinoceros will officially hit bookstores on 1 September. I’ve blogged previously about the inspiration for the book, and a little about the process of writing it. During that process, many things changed. Some were big – like the title. Others were small – a shift in phrasing that made a line sing, an ellipsis that opened up the ending.

And there was one that was both – tiny but enormous.

Here’s the last line as it appeared in one of the roughs:

Rough4

If you’ve read the book, you should be able to spot the difference. If you haven’t, then know this: across many, many drafts, and until quite late in the process, my small rhinoceros was male. And then at a certain point, I said huh?

Because my small rhinoceros was male for no good reason. For no reason at all except that I had unconsciously defaulted to that without a moment’s thought. Continue reading →