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When
Janet Wong (
Out and About with Janet Wong and Grace Lin) was in Massachusetts in late March, she told me she was going to be back in our area in mid April. We made plans for her to come to my house for Sunday brunch on April 15th. Forecasts had been brewing most of last week about a terrible Nor’easter that was going to hit New England on Sunday. Janet emailed me on Saturday to say she probably wasn’t going to drive up from New Jersey because of the impending storm. Not long after that email I got another one saying: “We’re coming!”
I am so glad she did. I love Janet! She is a dynamo…and such a personable individual…and she has a wonderful sense of humor…and she writes terrific books. I got a chance to meet her charming husband—and to introduce Janet to
my charming husband, my funny, lovable daughter, and one of my three lovely nieces. The only disappointment was that
Grace and Robert couldn’t make it.
I know I had promised lots of “foodie” pictures—but I was so busy enjoying my wonderful company and trying to be a good hostess that I decided not to interrupt the pleasant conversation with a photo-taking session. I did manage to take snap a picture of Janet with my daughter before she left.
Janet & My Daughter Sara
FOODIE FACTS
I didn’t get around to taking pictures of the food before we ate--but I took a couple of snapshots of some of the leftovers. For you "foodies" out in the kidlitosphere, here's the menu:
potato pancakes served with creme fraiche
kielbasa with a pineapple and brown sugar sauce
shrimp and feta salad with kalamata olives, red peppers, cucumbers, purple onions, and grape tomatoes in a lemon garlic vinaigrette
smoked salmon and capers served with horseradish crème fraiche sauce
a salad of mixed greens with walnuts, dried cranberries, pears, blue cheese, and balsamic vinaigrette
For dessert we had fresh strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries with cold zabaglione. I haven’t made cold zabaglione in a long time. I had forgotten how good it is—and it’s really quite easy to make.
RECIPE FOR COLD ZABAGLIONE
Ingredients
4 extra large eggs yolks
4 tablespoons of sugar
½ cup sweet Marsala wine
1 cup heavy cream
1 or 2 teaspoons sugar
Combine the egg yolks, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and the wine in a large bowl. Place the bowl over a pan of gently boiling water. Whip with a hand held beater or whisk for 3 or 4 minutes—or until the mixture is tripled in volume, light and fluffy, and falls in a thick ribbon from the beater or whisk.
Have ready: A larger bowl with some ice and cold water in the bottom and the heavy cream and sugar, which have been whipped to stiff peaks. Cool the bowl of hot zabaglione in the bowl of ice and water. Then gently fold in the whipped cream. Cover and refrigerate. This recipe may be made up to 6 hours in advance of serving. Serve the cold zabaglione as is or spoon it over fresh berries for a light and delectable dessert.
If you try this recipe, let me know how it turns out.
THE LEFTOVERS
Shrimp and Feta Salad
Kielbasa with Pineapple and Brown Sugar Sauce
Here’s a list of some of this week’s Wild Rose Reader’s features:
An Interview with Douglas Florian!
Sunday Brunch with Janet Wong, which includes my recipe for cold zabaglione!
I Am Looking for a Poem About… You can request that I look for a poem on a specific topic for you. I will do my best to find one. Because of copyright laws, I will give you the title of a book/titles of books in which the poem can be found instead of posting the entire text of the poem. I just ask that requesters be reasonable with their requests.
More original poems…I hope! I’ve posted sixteen so far this month. I need fourteen more. I’ve pleaded with my muses not to pack up and leave town and take their inspiration to poets who live in warmer climes.
Janet S. Wong is the author of eighteen books, including three titles published this year: Before It Wriggles Away, part of the Meet the Author Series (Richard C. Owen, 2007), Twist: Yoga Poems, illustrated by Julie Paschkis (Margaret K. McElderry, 2007)(excerpt), and The Dumpster Diver, illustrated by David Roberts (Candlewick, 2007).
Janet S. Wong on Janet S. Wong:
I am a poet and a picture book author
because I can't sit still for very long
I am an eater
always hungry for dim sum, sushi, gnocchi, noodles, potato
chips, blueberries, roast pork skin and stinky cheese
I am a West-coast woman living near Princeton, NJ (a trailing spouse)
I am an Alaska Airlines MVP Gold and nearly a United Premier
But first-most I am a mom
driving my son here and there (and there and there)
and doing a whole lot of waiting
What about the writing life first called to you?
I was in a tiny children's bookstore looking for a gift for my young cousin. I had an armload of picture books, books that I wanted to buy for myself because I loved them so much. That's when the idea hit me: people wrote these books. Why couldn't I be one of them? What a different life that would be!
I was a lawyer then. I was making a ton of money, and I love spending money--but I was so miserable that the money wasn't worth it. I wanted to do something important with my life, and I couldn't think of anything more important than working with kids. I knew I couldn't be a teacher; I had tried substitute teaching in a local elementary school while I was a student at Yale Law School, and it was the hardest job I've ever had! I decided that writing books for kids would be fun and would also give me the feeling that I was helping to make a better world.
What made you decide to write for young readers?
I decided to write picture books because that's what I was attracted to. I've never been much of a novel-reader; it's the problem I described above with sitting still. I loved the way the silly picture books made me happy, the way the serious picture books made me pause and think/feel/react beyond the book, the way you can get so much from a picture book in a five-minute reading.
Congratulations on the publication of The Dumpster Diver, illustrated by David Roberts (Candlewick, March 2007)(inside spread)! What was your initial inspiration for writing this book?
I was at an arts fair and saw a chair made from old wooden skis. I asked the artist, Kerry Wade, what gave him the idea to use skis. He said, "Oh, I'm just a Dumpster Diver!" About a third of the way through The Dumpster Diver, I made Steve and the kids build something out of old wooden skis. In the original draft, they transformed the skis into a chair (imitating real life), but my very keen editor Kara LaReau (also an author) suggested that I make the creation something a little more unusual. Several drafts later the skis became a "Paraskater!" (which kids love).
What did David Roberts' art bring to your text?
I bow down to David for being a genius-inventor. For instance, look at what he created with nothing more than these words: "And an old table plus two banged-up skateboards plus a ripped crib mattress plus a hand-held shower plus thirty-two screws and a roll of duct tape can become...anything we want it to be."
The hand-held shower isn't used just as a prop. If I'd drawn it, it would've been a visual prop and nothing more. But David hooked it up to a very long hose, squirting at the other kids!
What were the challenges (literary, research, psychological, logistical) in bringing it to life?
One thing I kept waffling over was whether to have Steve the Dumpster Diver get hurt. I didn't want this book to be heavy-handed and preachy. Didacticism: the kiss of death in reviews! I didn't want my book to discourage "respectable people" from Dumpster diving. I wanted this book to be a call-to-action to all of us to stop wasting so much stuff, and an inspiration to make new things from junk.
But I also didn't want thousands of kids to start crawling into Dumpsters. Their parents would hate me. And how would I feel if some kids got hurt or sick? My solution was to have Steve get cut on broken glass and rusted metal when the Dumpster trash collapsed under him--and to have this inspire the kids to start collecting their Useful Junk in a different way. Kind of corny, I know, but as I said, I am first-most a mom--and I want my readers to stay out of trouble!
Are you doing any special promotions in conjunction with the release?
All for Kids Books in Seattle is working with me on The Dumpster Diver's Junk Is Good contest. Kids and adults can enter by building something or imagining something built from junk, and there are categories for individual entries, team entries, and classroom entries. We've received some pretty neat feedback. Apparently there are a lot of people out there with a whole lot of junk in their closets, basements, attics, and garages!
You're one of children's literature's most distinguished poets! How would you describe the current state of the children's poetry market? What changes have you seen over the course of your career? What do you anticipate for the future?
When I started writing in 1991, it was easier to sell an unthemed collection of poems, poems about whatever. And because of this I was able to write a wide variety of poems (varied in tone and subject matter) in Good Luck Gold (Margaret K. McElderry, 1994) and A Suitcase of Seaweed (Margaret K. McElderry, 1996)(excerpt), including poems about racism and ethnic identity, a poem about cheating, and poems about illness and death--all alongside silly poems about food, celebratory poems about birthdays, and odes to friendship.
But things quickly became different, soon after I started. It became apparent (at least to me) that collections must have a theme, in order to sell. I've written themed-collections on mothers, driving, dreams, superstitions, and yoga. But I have a ton of poems that would be hard to fit into a themed book--and so, for now, those poems sit in my computer or on little scraps of paper scattered throughout the house.
What advice do you have for beginning picture book writers?
Don't give up.
Getting published is like winning the lottery; you can't win if you don't play. Write like crazy, snatching little bits of time and capturing ideas before they disappear. In Before It Wriggles Away, my Meet the Author book, photographer Anne Lindsay shows me writing at the dentist's office, writing in the car, writing at my son's fencing practice, writing late at night, writing at the lake--writing everywhere and anywhere, even if just for five minutes at a time. If you wait until you have a whole free day to start writing your story, you might never write it!
Once you've written a shoebox full of stories, send your best stuff out. If your books come back with rejection letters, send them out again. Rejection is part of the process.
In the meantime, while your stories are out circulating, revisit them with a critical eye. Write different drafts. Don't try for better writing, just different writing. Experiment. See what you can do. If you were a basketball player, would you practice only lay-ups? No: you would challenge yourself, you would take risks in practice. Take risks with your writing. And have fun!
Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Leitich Smith, illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu (Morrow/HarperCollins, 2000) has been named among best Multicultural Books for Early Childhood Educators in the most current issue of Montessori Life, Volume 19, Number 1, 2007. See page 97. Thanks to Debbie Gonzales for letting me know about this honor.
In other news, Finding Wonderland: The WritingYA Weblog discusses my revision process as mentioned in my recent interview on Tantalize (Candlewick, 2007) at Not Your Mother's Book Club.
Thanks to A Fuse #8 Production for highlighting the YABC giveaway contest (20 copies of Tantalize) and Greg's post "How Bleak Thou Art." Thanks also to Stephanie Burgis for ordering Tantalize (enjoy!).
More News & Links
Poetry Friday: Yoga Poems. A recommendation of Twist: Yoga Poems by Janet Wong, illustrated by Julie Paschkis (McElderry, 2007). Source: Writing with a Broken Tusk by Uma Krishnaswami. Read an interview with Uma.
If you haven’t read my interview with Janet and Julie yet, I suggest you check that out before you read today’s post.
Interview Addendum
Elaine: Does either of you have any other books that will be published in 2007?
Julie: I am very excited about a book I illustrated that is coming out later this year from Henry Holt. It is called GLASS SLIPPER, GOLD SANDAL: A WORLDWIDE CINDERELLA and it was written by Paul Fleischman. It weaves together Cinderella stories from all around the world. It will be released in September.
Janet: Do you know about BEFORE IT WRIGGLES AWAY, my Meet the Author book (Richard C. Owen Publishers) that came out in January of this year? It's still not available through amazon.com (groan), but RC Owen sells it directly:
http://www.rcowen.com/MTA-JanetWong.htm
A Sneak Peek at a “Potential Project” from Julie and Janet
Elaine: Do the two of you have any plans to collaborate on a fourth book that you'd be willing to share with us?
Janet: Julie and I currently aren't actively working on a new collection but on a possible collection. Let's see if Julie is interested in "going public" with that, though, since it's still very tentative...
Julie, do you want to share an image from your Liberty Notes along with one or two of my DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE poems?
Julie: I'm happy to talk about this possible project! I've attached two of the images illustrating the 1st amendment (freedom of speech) and 4th amendment (freedom from unreasonable search and seizure) from a series of cards I made and sell to benefit the ACLU. The National Endowment for the Humanities recently used one of the images (The Pursuit of Happiness) in a library program they have.
Janet: Here's the text of the poems "Liberty" and "Declaration of Interdependence," both written to go with Julie's Liberty Notes (and hoping that they will be part of a fourth book called DECLARATION OF INTERDEPENDENCE):
Freedom of Speech
Declaration of Interdependence
by Janet Wong
We hold these truths to be not-so-self-evident
(but think about them a while, and hopefully you might agree):
all men are created equally a puzzle, made up of so many parts;
each of us makes up part of the greater puzzle that is our nation.
Lose one piece and the picture is incomplete. Recognizable, but
what happens when too many pieces, one by one, become lost?
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness: do your best to find
the pieces that fit, that need you, as much as you need them.
Freedom from Unreasonable Search and Seizure
Liberty
by Janet Wong
I pledge acceptance
of the views,
so different,
that make us America
To listen, to look,
to think, and to learn
One people
sharing the earth
responsible
for liberty
and justice
for all.
Elaine: Janet and Julie, Thank you so much for the wonderful interview and for an inside look at your collaborative process that brought us TWIST: YOGA POEMS—your third fine book of poetry and art. I do hope the “possible” project that you two have been working on gets published in the not-too-distant future. It looks like a great book in the making!
A Few More Words
I’d like to tell everyone how much I enjoyed conducting my “interview via email” with Janet and Julie. They responded promptly to all my questions and were so forthcoming with information about their author and illustrator process for TWIST: YOGA POEMS that writing up the interview for Blue Rose Girls was easy—easy once I color coded their responses in my Word document draft.
I should tell you, too, that it was Janet who suggested I include Julie in the interview. I had originally planned to write a blog interview with Janet about her poetry books. When I saw a copy of TWIST, I wrote Janet to tell her how much I liked the book—and Julie’s gorgeous illustrations. So Janet asked Julie if she’d participate with her in an interview about the book. How lucky can a blogger get?
Two Other Great Poetry Books by Janet and Julie
NIGHT GARDEN: POEMS FROM THE WORLD OF DREAMS (2000)KNOCK ON WOOD: POEMS ABOUT SUPERSTITIONS (2003) (Both of these books were published by Margaret K. McElderry Books.)
TWIST: YOGA POEMS
Written by Janet Wong
Illustrated by Julie Paschkis
Margaret K. McElderry
(2007)
What a gorgeous book! Julie Paschkis outdid herself with her art for TWIST, a poetry collection written by Janet Wong. I thought YELLOW ELEPHANT was one of the best-illustrated children’s books of 2006. I know it’s early March—but I think TWIST may well be one of the best-illustrated books of 2007.
This is the third book of poetry written by Janet Wong that Paschkis has illustrated. NIGHT GARDEN: POEMS FROM THE WORLD OF DREAMS, the first collaboration between Wong and Paschkis, was a stunner. It was designated a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of 2000 and a National Council of Teachers of English Notable Children’s Book. Their second book, KNOCK ON WOOD: POEMS ABOUT SUPERSTITIONS, was a Riverbank Review Books of Distinction Finalist. Needless to say, I waited with anticipation for my review copy of TWIST to arrive from the publisher. As soon as I looked at the front cover and read the first poem, Breath, I knew I had in my hands another wonderful pairing of art and poetry from these two talented and accomplished women.
TWIST is a collection of poems about different yoga positions. There’s nothing fussy or pretentious about Wong’s poetry in this book. With well-honed writing and lyrical language that is accessible to young children, she captures the poetic essence of the yoga poses and creates tangible images of sixteen different body positions—including Warrior, Tree, and Crow. Paschkis’s vibrant watercolor illustrations are striking and meld into a visual harmony with Wong’s fine text.
This is an attractively designed book. The format of TWIST suits the subject matter of the poetry perfectly. Each two-page spread includes a poem that explains the meaning of a particular yoga position and a painting that illustrates that position. Both the illustration and the poem are set inside frames of the same size—with the illustration on the left-hand page and the poem on the right-hand page. This gives the effect of the poem and the painting being mirror images of each other. The framed paintings are set inside larger border-like illustrations, which also mirror each other. These larger illustrations include design details that extend the yoga theme of each of Wong’s poems.
Here are three examples from the book to show you how the art and text work together so beautifully to provide us with a unique artistic and literary interpretation of yoga.
From BREATH
Breath is a broom
sweeping your insides.
Smooth and slow:
You pull scattered bits of dream fluff
And heart dust into neat piles…
Breath is a broom
sweeping you fresh.
From TREE
Trees watch.
This is why
they grow tall,
this is why they bend
and sway,
so they can see around
a house, over a hill,
beyond a fire…
At the tip of each branch
there is an eye.
LOW CROW
Crow depends on his elbows.
You cannot always fly.
You need to rest
the weight of yourself.
TWIST has the elements that I look for in an illustrated poetry book for children: well-written poetry with a new “twist” and art that not only adds visual interest to the book, but also adds another dimension to the author’s text.
An Interview with Janet Wong & Julie Paschkis
Janet and Julie were kind enough to let me interview them about their most recent collaboration on TWIST. Here’s a little background information first: Julie and Janet are friends. They met through Laura Kvanosky, author of ZELDA AND IVY: THE RUNAWAYS. Each of their three books has been submitted as an author/illustrator package, which is pretty unusual in the publishing world.
Elaine: Janet, in your Author's Note at the end of TWIST, you tell readers that you wrote the poems for Julie, who loves yoga and loves to stretch. Did you just sit down one day and decide you were going to write these poems for Julie...or was there something in particular that inspired you to so? I’d also like to know if you practice yoga.
Janet: Even though it has been years (and pounds) since I have practiced yoga, I did do the poses as I wrote the poems. I think my dog Nissa found it quite strange to see me typing away on the computer, then flopping suddenly down on the floor, stretching, then hopping back up to my desk for more typing. I'd be straining on the floor and she would come and lick my face in encouragement (or maybe sympathy).
I don't do enough exercise, and it was very good for me to have a reason to "have to" do yoga (apart from the health and spiritual benefits). One review suggested that this book was inspired by the "current yoga craze" but, actually, I started writing these poems in 2002, after Julie finished the paintings for KNOCK ON WOOD, and finished the poems in 2003. I was so pleased with what Julie had done in that book and wanted to give her another project, an "irresistible project." I chose yoga, knowing that she is passionate about yoga and practices it several times a week. I was a bit worried when I started seeing children's yoga books coming out. With each passing year, I worried that "the market" was disappearing. But this isn't a how-to book. I'm hoping that kids who have learned yoga will stumble on this book and feel a jolt of excitement at discovering a celebration of an important part of their lives.
Elaine: Julie, did you enjoy illustrating this book of poems that Janet wrote especially for you?
Julie: TWIST was great fun to illustrate. I do a lot of yoga so I felt like I knew the poses from the inside out (less googling than usual for reference). Janet's poems were surprising and just right. So many of the poses have animal names. She pushed those connections in ways that brought imagery to mind that was fun to paint. Now when I do yoga poses I often think of lines from her poems. I will be in cat pose and suddenly think of a pleasant bowl of cream.
Elaine: Janet, reviewers of TWIST have noted the variety of ethnicities Julie depicts in her paintings. Was this something the two of you discussed before she did the art for the book?
Janet: I like the fact that Julie varies the ethnicity of the children in our books. We have never discussed this with each other, but I feel it is very important for kids to see a variety of looks. Not just different races, but different hairstyles and body shapes. I'm happy to have inspired the roly-poly round-bellied "jelly doughnut" of a girl in the poem "Finding the Center" in TWIST. There's a secret truth in that painting that Julie didn't intend: the green apples in the foreground (painted by Julie to symbolize envy), actually (in my mind and personal history) symbolize Asians. When my grandfather learned that I was dating a white man (who later became my husband), he said, "There are green apples, red apples. We are green apples. But you need to try all kinds." My grandfather was about 85 years old when he told me this. He was quite poetic, a natural storyteller—and a very wise man.
The Jelly Doughnut and the Green Apples
Elaine: Julie, would like to speak to this diversity represented in the books you have illustrated for Janet?
Julie: I always want to include lots of different ethnicities so that children can see themselves. But also that reflects reality; on my block alone there are Indian, Chinese, Korean, Hispanic, black, white, and mixed race children.
Elaine: Julie, where did you get your inspiration for the art in TWIST?
Julie: I looked at a lot of Indian miniatures as I did the illustrations for TWIST. Since yoga comes from India it made sense for those pictures to influence the art in the book. I studied the miniatures for the colors and for the way space is divided up. I love how saturated the colors are in the Indian paintings. One interesting fact that I learned is that the intense yellow pigment in the miniatures was made from feeding mangos to the cows and then making paint from their dried urine. (I didn't use that technique.)
When I painted the clothing and the borders I looked at the Indian miniatures, at paintings of people in Indian clothing and at a Dover book of paisley patterns. I put all those ingredients in my head and painted the patterns based on those inspirations; they aren't exact copies of anything. I tried to make the patterns fit the poems. For example, in the illustration for the poem Triangle all of the patterns on the clothes are based on the triangle shape. Or in Cobra the border and clothing have lines that snake around.
Elaine: Janet, tell me about your author-illustrator relationship with Julie and why you love working with her.
Janet: Perhaps the most amazing thing about Julie is that she has made each book of ours significantly different from the last. People who look quickly might not notice the little differences, but all together they add up to something quite important.
For instance, NIGHT GARDEN: POEMS FROM THE WORLD OF DREAMS had no glossary of "dream interpretation" at the back. I thought that was fine; Julie, too, wanted to emphasize the poems and not distract the reader with psychobabble. Why, then, did we include "back matter" in KNOCK ON WOOD: POEMS ABOUT SUPERSTITIONS? Julie's curiosity about (and even, I would say, fascination with) superstitions, as well as the folkloric element of her paintings, led me to justify including a glossary (of sorts) at the end of the book. I say "of sorts" because, again, she encouraged me not to distract the reader with dry academic text, but rather to try to provide commentary that would be playful and inspire wonder. With TWIST: YOGA POEMS, I sought to replicate KNOCK ON WOOD's back matter with commentary or even instructions on the poses, but Julie was quite firm about not wanting that. I think that she has become increasingly certain with each book about how she wants it to look.
Julie is the only illustrator with whom I have this level of "back and forth"--or maybe I should say "back and back"! I like to consult her when the book is still being written, but she makes it pretty clear that I am to leave her alone to paint as she sees fit, once the manuscript is finalized.
Elaine: Julie, tell us what makes working with Janet and her texts so inspiring.
Julie: Our friendship grew out of working together. I think we spur each other on to create good work; I hope that A plus B equals more than C. I like illustrating Janet's poems because her imagery is like a diving board for my imagination. Also, her poems are subtle. When I read them over and over I notice the artistry in the construction of the poems and I find layers of meaning.
Come back on Sunday for a “sneak peek” at a potential Wong/Paschkis project!
There aren't many photos of the food because we WOLFED it down! I had been thinking about Elaine's potato pancakes for a year before our brunch, thanks to her amazing powers of description--and I'm already ready for Potato Pancake Brunch #2, slated for May 2008.
You have 13 months to get yourself invited!!
Oh, now I'm REALLY bummed I missed it!
Janet,
We'll have a cooking class--and you're going to learn how to make potato pancakes! You can try whipping up a recipe for cold zabaglione, too!
Grace,
I'll make you potato pancakes anytime you want. And cold zabaglione...and kielbasa...and shrimp and feta salad...and...and...