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Sara O'Leary is an award-winning children's writer, playwright, and fiction writer.
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Haven't been on here much lately and need to update a few things but in the meantime here's this lovely review that I seem to have neglected to post. Big thanks to Maria Russo and The New York Times.
Also a few nice pieces of news (via Publishers Weekly):
Now it's back to work!
Appearing at the beautiful
Greenwood Centre for Living History this weekend. Come and see me or just come and see the fabulous historic home. Thanks to StoryFest Hudson and ELAN Arts Alive.
Julie shared some early sketches from This is Sadie.
I'm having a hard time keeping up with all the kind words from bloggers and over on Instagram so if I miss anything, do please let me know. Here are a few responses from the past week.Author Sara O’Leary takes a remarkably common premise –kids have wild imaginations, and can do wondrous things with nothing more than an empty box– and weaves something incredible. Her text harkens back to a day of unforced simplicity in children’s literature, when easy ideas were delivered with just a pinch of poetry to make them go down even easier. Kinderlit Canada
I don’t know if it was seeing Sadie in a box, on a boat, hammering, wearing a fox mask, sleeping in a blanket fort or looking for her wings that felt most like a connection to my younger self. I do know that reading the lines – “A perfect day is spent with friends. Some of them live on her street, and some of them live in the pages of a book” – made me want to give a copy to every family I know. The Book Jam
‘This is Sadie’ by the formidable picture book pairing of Sara O’Leary and Julie Morstad is a celebration of creatively quirky characters and positive affirmation of a wild and wonderful imagination. Pictures Book Blogger
In "This Is Sadie" the little girl with a big imagination sees the ordinary as extraordinary. The Waterloo Record
In this story Sara O'Leary has given readers a character to cherish. Through Sara's words we see a girl who looks at her world, making it larger with her making, doing and being. Librarian's Quest
Sadie's imagination is so huge she can go anywhere, be anything, without leaving her room. With soft, whimsical illustrations and spare, lyrical text, This Is Sadie takes us on a sweet adventure and reminds us of how far and wide our own imaginations can go.Staff recommendation, Powell's
Strap on your imaginations and take a trip with Sadie (I think you are going to fall in love with her). This gentle ode to creativity will make a nice addition to storytime. Don’t miss this little Canadian gem, beautifully illustrated by Julie Morstad. Valley Storytime
Earlier reviews and interviews can be found
here.
Freedom To Think is an initiative that believes (as I do) that children thrive when allowed the luxury of boredom.
In This is Sadie, it is pretty easy to draw a direct line between boredom and creativity.
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| art: Julie Morstad |
Here's a little about the program from Freedom To Think founder, author Jonathan Stroud:
I believe that:
All kids can and should be creative.
They need time and space to achieve it.
Unscheduled time is creative time.
We can give them this.
Our Freedom to Think website will have a rolling programme of possibilities – but it’s up to the kids to do what they want with the time. Even if nothing tangible comes out of it, they’ve been let off the mental leash for an hour or two, and this very freedom will rejuvenate them.
I hope you will join us in the campaign to give free time back to children. I would love to hear what you think and see any photographs of your children’s creations or ideas. You can upload images or videos to this tumblr site, tweet them to
@iamfree2think or email them to
[email protected]."
This is Sadie, my latest book with the outrageously talented Julie Morstad was released this week and I thought I'd try to catch up a little on the notice it has received thus far. My very favourite review is the beautiful one that says a thousand words pasted in just below.
Publishers Weekly:
As in previous collaborations like When You Were Small and Where You Came From, O’Leary and Morstad put forth a playful, imagination-first portrait of childhood, introducing a girl named Sadie who is equally at home in the expanses of her mind as she is in the outside world. Striking an irreverent tone from the first page (“This is Sadie. No, not that. That’s a box. Sadie is inside the box”), O’Leary follows her raven-haired heroine as she sets sail in the aforementioned cardboard box, spends the day with friends (“Some of them live on her street, and some live in the pages of books”), and inserts herself into the stories she reads.
✭ School Library Journal: This award-winning duo beautifully convey the magic that is to be found in reading or listening to a story. The appealing text is accompanied by lush drawings rendered in gouache, ink, and Photoshop that lend it a fanciful feel in the best way possible. With its leisurely pace and verdant illustrations, this book is a delight for bedtime as well as an excellent storytime choice paired with Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon and Peter Bently’s King Jack and the Dragon (Dial, 2011). VERDICT A wonderful purchase for all collections.
Huffington Post:Sadie is a young girl who revels in the power of her imagination and is not limited by silly things like traditional gender constructs. The dynamic duo of O'Leary and Morstad have crafted a quiet but powerful celebration of childhood with a heroine that is a role model for boys and girls alike. Readers should be prepared to reserve a special place on their shelves -- and in their hearts -- for the incomparable Sadie.
✭ Quill and Quire:Morstad's soft-palette illustrations engage perfectly with O'leary's text creating a whimsical kid-centred picture book that will be enjoyed by both children and adults. With something new to discover upon each encounter, This is Sadie is sure to become a favourite bedtime read.
Montreal Review of Books: With the picture book This Is Sadie, Sara O’Leary and Julie Morstad team up to introduce us to a girl of great imagination. Rather than plotting a linear storyline for her heroine, O’Leary offers us a character sketch of a girl uninhibited by adult limitations.
Book Page: Sadie’s days are never long enough, and readers may feel the same way about this story: It doesn’t overstay its welcome, and every moment is a pleasure. And don’t forget to remove the book jacket to see the surprise waiting on the cover.
Here’s hoping for more of Sadie’s adventures in the future.
Buzzfeed: "What kind of reader is it for? This is a story for those with a deep love of stories." Canadian Review of Materials: This is Sadie is an irresistible book filled with a charm that entrances and a heroine that is unforgettable. Sara O’Leary’s fine narrative is sublimely complemented by the exceptional and aesthetically appealing art of Julie Morstad. Don’t miss this one! It is delightful.
This Picture Book Life: "This picture book is about a girl and her imagination. She’s a reader, of course. But a maker, too. She’s a child being a child, during those magical times in a secure childhood when there is little expected of you but to use your imagination.It’s wondrous in story and concept and artwork. I already know it will be one of my favorites from 2015 and a book to cherish always."
The Kaleidoscope: "When I first read When I Was Small by Sara O’Leary, my throat got so tight at the end and tears came rolling down. After, I picked up the rest in the series, Where You Came From, and When you were Small. As a mom of boys, I love Henry. Sara and Julie together, capture the heart.This Is Sadie will not disappoint. I have been following closely, it will be the story book of all storybooks."
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| Photo: Kelle Hampton |
Enjoying The Small Things: "Much to our delight, Sara O’Leary and Julie Morstad have collaborated once again and their new book, This is Sadie, just came out yesterday. And they did it again. With simplicity and magical details, they’ve created a beautiful story about the power of imagination…you can be anyone, you can do anything."Sharon the Librarian: "This is Sadie is the perfect book to encourage imagination, reading, and invention. Young readers already well versed in the glories of getting lost in a story or making up their own stories will be further encouraged and vindicated to continue on the path, while those that are a little less eager might find the inspiration to do so in this book."Fab Book Reviews says "This is a picture book that a reader can return to again and again, and one that I highly recommend reading and exploring. This Is Sadie is, quite simply, enchanting." Barda Book Talk: "How I love this passage showcasing a little girl’s vivid imagination. It sums up the book This is Sadie by Sara O’Leary (author) and Julie Morstad (illustrator) perfectly. When these two ladies team up, they create gorgeous books for young and old alike."Bea's Book Nook: "The messages about using your creativity and imagination are subtle but strong and should be spread far and wide. With this delightful book, they just might be."The Paper Trail Diary: "This is Sadie is a gorgeous children’s book made by a Canadian author/illustrator duo about a cute little girl with a big imagination, but it’s not just for kids; the illustrations will instantly intrigue any parent who’s big on decor and illustration (and those of us who don’t have kids but still look at pretty Pinterest and Instagram feeds a lot!)."Petit Collage: "Do you know any little children with big imaginations? They’ll be thrilled to meet Sadie, a small girl with a great, big, sparkling imagination. The whimsy of the text is matched perfectly with Morstad’s dreamy, gentle illustrations. The perfect book to read before drifting off to sweet dreams…"Waking Brain Cells: "O’Leary captures the wonder of a child’s imagination in this gorgeous picture book. Right from the beginning the tone is light and playful, inviting the reader to see the world as Sadie does."Kate's Bookery: "What I love most about her is that she creates imaginary worlds for herself as either a boy or a girl—no need to follow any gender rules here. I love that Sadie provides for little girl readers the chance to also be the hero in a fairy tale world and a boy raised by wolves."
Sukasa Reads: "I fell in love with the concept of This Is Sadie. How can you not, when it teaches you to travel into your mind and embark on an adventure that anything is possible. You can make and do and be lots of different things." I will try to keep updating this but if I've missed anything do please let me know. Also, if you are inspired to send me photos of your small people reading our book then I have to warn you that this is pretty much my favourite thing. You can find me on Instagram as
123olearyo.
Today is publication day for This is Sadie and to celebrate I decided to buy myself a little present....
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| Atelier Caroline |
My little Sadie doll was built by the very talented Atelier Caroline. Check out her work here. I couldn't be happier! I also couldn't be happier with this book. Julie Morstad just gets better and better and given how good she was to begin with, this is really saying something. Working with Tundra Books and its Editorial Director Tara Walker has been a dream. Her belief in the book from the very beginning has been what's brought it to glorious life. Jackie Kaiser of Westwood Creative has been Sadie's literary godmother and I am grateful for this and all other blessings she has brought into my life. The whole Tundra Books/Random House Canada team has been fantastic to work with. .jpg) |
| Atelier Caroline |
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| Atelier Caroline |
Special thanks to the book's brilliant designer Kelly Hill (that cover!) and to Sylvia Chan and Pamela Osti and Aliya Stacey for helping Sadie find her way in the larger world. Response to the book so far has been lovely.
We're getting very excited about the new book...not too long now.
My brilliant son Euan has put together this little teaser trailer to celebrate.
May 12, 2015
Available to pre-order at:
Barnes & Noble Indie Bound Amazon.com McNally Robinson Indigo Powell’s Hive
My son Euan is a great champion of my books and always has an eye on the spin-off potential.
We are making a book trailer for This Is Sadie and are looking for video clips of small girls and boys with big imaginations doing whatever it is that they like to do. What my boy likes to do is make films and so he will be putting this together as a special gift to me.
Head over to This Is Sadie for details and to see a great video by my pal Stephany Aulenback's darling daughter Sylvie.
Video clips can be sent to [email protected].
And here's a trailer we enjoyed for Little Humans by Brandon Stanton.
This Is Sadie is set for release next spring, but has already made a Buzzfeed list of 25 Ridiculously Wonderful Books to Read With Kids in 2015. What a ridiculously nice thing to happen.
Check out the whole list--there's lots to be excited about there. I'm looking forward to
Debbie Ridpath Ohi's Where Are My Books (Simon & Schuster) about a book-loving boy.
I very much like what reviewer Mallory McInnis has to say as well: "This is a story for those with a deep love of stories." I can't think of anything nicer.
If you're looking for an independent bookseller carrying the books, it's always good to check Indiebound. And if you really wanted to be kind, you could mention the book to your local librarian. We love libraries!
The promotional poster for my forthcoming book with Julie Morstad,
This Is Sadie, makes me want to cry in the best possible way.
In our story, Sadie is a little girl who likes to imagine herself right inside a story--in Julie Morstad's beautiful imagining, she actually dives right into a book. And what I hope for is that all children--boys and girls--feel free to imagine themselves as whoever they want to be in that fictional world, because that is, after all, a stepping stone to imagining yourself as whoever you want to be in the real world.
This image of the little girl on the horse makes me think of Elizabeth I and her Prince of England
speech, which I love. Here's Cate Blanchett on her white steed.
All of this got me thinking about the whole idea of princes and princesses. Over at
A Chair, A Fireplace, And a Tea Cozy, Liz Burns takes on what she calls "Princess Shaming" and avows the right of every child to play princess, read about princesses, and all that. She's writing partly in reaction to this article on Slate
The Princess Trap which basically takes the position that girls who play at being princesses will never grow up to be scientists.
Really what we want, I suppose, is a world where girls can play at being princes or princess and boys are free to do the same.
Liz Burns quotes novelist Meg Cabot as saying: "the princess thing is amazing. It’s about standing up for what you believe in, protecting the people you love, and never letting the bad guys win. It’s about rescuing yourself, and yet risking your heart when you meet someone who seems worth giving it to."
And on those terms, I do agree. Be the hero of your adventure is all I really want to say.
My new picture book This Is Sadie, co-created with the ridiculously talented Julie Morstad, and produced under the tender care of the brilliant editor Tara Walker at Tundra Books will be out in the world next spring.
Today I saw it listed for the first time online and am so very happy to be able to share the cover!
One of the nicest things about making picture books is the lovely people you meet along the way. I was invited to participate in the latest blogging chain mail enterprise by Kyo Maclear (her post here) and because it was Kyo Maclear and because I admire her and pretty much everything she does, I said yes. I agreed to answer these questions:
What am I working on? Why do I write what I do? How does your writing process work?
I'll answer the last first, just to get it over with
Q: How does your writing process work? A: Not very well.
Really I agreed to do this blog tour as an opportunity to talk about Kyo Maclear's latest book because it is a thing of beauty and (prediction) will be a joy forever.
Julia, Child is a story about childhood and friendship and mastering the art of slowing down and enjoying life. It is only in the very loosest sense about Julia Child and in its most profoundest sense about nourishment. Here is a little look at the interior art. Note all the adults rushing around and the children watching on bemused. The text here reads: "Life was filled with far too many grown-ups who did not know how to have a marvelous time. The girls had no wish to become big, busy people--wary and worried, hectic and hurried."
Julie Morstad's illos here are a wonderful mix of spare line drawings and vibrant colour and there is great pleasure to be found in all the delightful details. It's a perfect little gem of a book and an excellent reminder to slow down and smell the petits gâteaux.
Okay, that's enough not about me for a bit.
Q: What are you working on?A: Many things all at once.
I am doing a picture book called This is Sadie with the glorious talent that is Julie Morstad. It will be published next spring with Tundra Books and I just wish I could show you the cover right now because it is perfectly swoony. I am also working on a series of baby books with the fine folks at Owl Books. They are being illustrated by Soyeon Kim whose beautiful work you can gaze upon here. These books will be hitting stores next year and if you have a baby or know someone with a baby you will probably need them. I am also at various stages with various other things which I probably shouldn't talk about. One of them is a middle grade novel about a red-headed boy that I am writing with my very own red-headed genius of a boy.
I still intend to answer one more question but first let me tell you about who I will be handing the blog tour baton over to and let's get to the giveaway portion of this blogpost. Stephany Aulenback has just published her very first picture book and while I am quite sure it won't be her last it seems cause for celebration. In lieu of champagne, I've received permission from her publisher Simply Read Books to offer a copy of the book to one lucky reader. (Sorry but Canadian addresses only on this one.)
Stephany Aulenback's book is called If I Wrote a Book About You and it is illustrated by Denise Holmes. It's a wonderful paean to parenting and creativity. Here's a sneaky peek for you.
To win a copy just leave a comment below telling me what you might write a book about or what your favourite book is or how much you'd like to win a book. Basically, just leave a comment. Or you can tweet something about why you love picture books to @saraoleary using the hashtag #stephka and I will enter your name.
Last question now....
Q: Why do you write what you do?A: Because I stumbled into writing for children and consider myself very, very lucky to write books for the very most important readers there are.
That's it. By way of a disclaimer I should mention that I am inordinately fond of both Steph Aulenback and Kyo Maclear although I have never actually met either of them in real life.
Finally, some other blog tourists I have spotted on my travels.Susan JubySophie BlackallCarin Berger
Lots of beautiful Julie Morstad prints for sale on her site, but I have to say I'm pretty sure I know which is my favourite....  |
| from WHEN I WAS SMALL |
This is my son's cherished typewriter. A Hermes Baby. Built in Switzerland, boasting a distinctive shade of mint green and and a QWERTZ keyboard.
Ron Charles writes about his appreciation of typewriters in the Washington Post.
I am re-posting this in honour of Pink Shirt Day. I don't have any problems with the sentiment behind wearing a pink shirt to say that you are anti-bullying but I think that it's good to look at it as an opening gambit in the conversation about way of building empathy.
I'm interested in suggestions for an Empathy Reading List--books that we can give to teens to help them see the world from a perspective other than their own. Really, any good fiction can do this but here are some books that deal specifically with issues around high school bullying, cyberbullying or just plain old being different (always a tough one in high school). I will add to the list as suggestions come in through comments here or over on twitter @saraoleary. Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Gillian Tamaki Speak Laurie Halse Anderson
I haven't read all of these but I have read and reviewed several. Here is my review of What I Was. I'll try to post some of the other reviews as I find them. Studies have shown a direct link between reading fiction and empathy in young people. There have been a number of recent articles on the subject including this one by Keith Oately in Psychology Today. This link between fiction and empathy seems to be a good place to start in thinking about problems of bulling and cyberbullying. I wrote here about the Pink Shirt campaign the other day, trying to work through for myself why the idea of being Anti-Bullying didn't seem terribly useful to me. And I'm still not at all sure about demonizing bullies as a way of instilling greater compassion in our young people. It's this failure of compassion or empathy that seems almost endemic in our society that truly frightens me. And it's got me thinking about ways to inculcate these values in our children.
There's a fascinating program designed to address these problems called Roots of Empathy. You can read the first chapter of the book about it here. It says: When students in Nova Scotia saw a younger student being harassed because he was wearing pink, they decided to do something. They took it upon themselves to buy every pink shirt in town and they did it on their own dime. The next day they handed these shirts out at school. Suddenly the bullies who were making this young man’s life miserable were surrounded by students in pink. They learned in no uncertain terms that the vast majority of kids were not going to accept their behavior. Message sent. To me, the kindness, courage, compassion and creativity exhibited by this gesture is what being Canadian is all about.
I agree that it's a good message and that those young Nova Scotians deserve kudos for what they did. It's good to remember when the news is full of the stories of what some other young men from that area did and the consequences their actions had. Rehtaeh Parsons was driven to suicide by the sexual assault that she suffered and the distribution of images related to that assault. Those were criminal actions--not anything as innocuous-sounding as bullying--but part of her suffering was to do with the the ongoing circulation of those images and the cruel comments made about her by her peers through social media. And that kind of cyberbullying is all too common right now. The program is based on the idea that if we are able to take the perspective of the Other we will notice and appreciate our commonalities and we will be less likely to allow differences to cause us to marginalize, hate or hurt each other.
And that seems to me to be a good place to start. Reading fiction helps children to develop emotional literacy and that means they will be better equipped to see the suffering of others and be moved to do something about it.
I've written about empathy here before and I'd like to once again direct readers to this article by Nikhil Goyal about empathy on the Globe and Mail site. The article gives some alarming statistics:Today, there is a dearth of empathy in young people. After analyzing data among almost 14,000 college students over the last 30 years, a University of Michigan study two years ago concluded that college students are 40 per cent less empathetic than their counterparts in 1979. Indeed, the most significant drop has been in the past decade. What’s more, cases of bullying and suicides are climbing at an alarming pace. That means empathy education is needed more than ever before.
Happily, empathy education is being addressed in at least some of our schools. I learned today about The Empathy Factory which is a fantastic initiative out of Nova Scotia. According to their site: "The Empathy Factory was founded on the belief that by instilling empathy in our youth, injustices will be stopped, communities transformed and hope inspired." So there are reasons to be hopeful. And I will be doing my best to think pink.
I spotted this book on my young pal Ezra's desk the other day and wanted to share.
I've just looked up Marion Deuchars and she has several books available from
Laurence King. They all look like great fun and I'd highly recommend for either children who like to draw or those who may not be as naturally inclined.
Let's Make Some Great Art reminded a little of a book my boys had when they were small by Quentin Blake called
Drawing: For the Artistically Undiscovered (Klutz Books). We all loved it and it's a nice souvenir from earlier days.
You can see inside
Let's Make Some Great Art
here, do online activities
here and see more of illustrator Marion Deuchars work
here. I think I may need a copy of my own. And maybe one for my boys.
I've found myself having a few conversations this week about how I got into writing children's books and (not un-relatedly) how I met Dimiter Savoff of Simply Read Books. Mainly this is a direct result of the lovely little profile Helen Spitzer did for Bunch Family (thank you, Helen!) As a result of my little visit to memory lane, I've had a burrow through the archives and here is a profile I wrote about Dimiter back when I was a columnist for the Vancouver Sun. (And yes, if I were still a journalist I would have to call him Savoff.)
Are publishers born or are they made? Could you make one out of wood, say, the way you could a puppet or a little boy? This may not seem like a rational question to you, but then you probably haven't spent the past few days immersed in a remarkably lavish new edition of the classic children's story Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi, with illustrations by Iassen Ghiuselev (Simply Read Books, 153 pages, $29.95), the brainchild of the newest publisher on the Vancouver scene. This isn't a new and improved Pinocchio. It's an old and improved Pinocchio -- a freshly revised and unabridged text based on a translation of the 19th-century Italian original, written by Collodi for a popular children's serial publication of the time. The difference is like the one between thinking you know the Frankenstein story -- dead bodies, lightning, staggering monster throws girl in pond -- and actually reading the Mary Shelley original. Pinocchio is a dark and nuanced tale of the morality of being human; it serves as a reminder that all in this world is not the hum-along merriment that makes up the world according to Disney.
The adventures and misadventures that befall the little wooden puppet aren't typical of childhood. He falls asleep with his feet on a brazier and wakes to find his feet have been burned up. He is almost burned up entirely by the Fire Eater, gets robbed by a lame fox and a blind cat, and falls into the hands of murderers who string him up and leave him for dead, where he is found by the Lovely Girl with the Blue Hair. And that's just the beginning. But while this is the stuff of tales, the impudence, the pranks, the relentless curiosity and the restless imagination displayed by Pinocchio are all too typical of childhood.
Boys will be boys, no matter what the century or country, no matter whether they are made of wood or flesh and blood. And ultimately Pinocchio's innate goodness -- his love of others above himself -- allows him to become what he most wants to be ... a real live boy. Pinocchio is not a story about lying and a nose that won't stop growing: That's just a single incident. Pinocchio is a love story -- a story of filial love and its rewards.
But what, I wonder, makes a man decide that the world needs a new edition of Pinocchio? What makes him search and search for an artist capable of doing illustrations worthy of the text, and then wait until that award-winning illustrator has time to undertake the project? What makes this would-be publisher spend more than a year combing the world for a printer capable of producing work to his exacting standards for a price at which the book would still be affordable? It's obviously a case of a born publisher.
The publisher in question is Dimiter Savoff who, along with editor Gillian Hunt, has produced a brilliant debut title for a press that plans to specialize in beautiful illustrated books for readers of all ages. Savoff, a Vancouver architect who fondly recalls growing up in a home with more than 12,000 books, a member of a family of translators, editors and bibliophiles, and the grandson of a publisher in his native Bulgaria, has translated his lifelong love of books into Simply Read Books, an enterprise which one can't help but wish a long and fruitful life.
Simply Read's second title is the work of two Vancouver authors, Judith Steedman and Robin Mitchell. It's a photographic book for young children that Savoff says is both reminiscent of work of the 1960s and very modern. At 48 pages, it's longer than many books aimed at children of this age, and again the production values will be very high. The book will include instructions for building a kite (a tie-in to the story's subject matter), and it will be the first in a series.
Also in the works is an edition of Alice in Wonderland, again featuring Ghiuselev's artwork. It's bound to be a sumptuous, fascinating, provocative rendering of Lewis Carroll's imaginings, and I can't wait to see it. A sneak preview -- in the form of a poster -- should be available this year. The book is on Simply Read's lists for 2003. So why Pinocchio? Savoff says it's one of his favourite tales from childhood and that when he was looking for a version to read to his children, he couldn't find one that satisfied him. The one he has created should bring pleasure to readers young and old for years to come. I could tell you to go out and buy a copy, but I won't. Instead, I'll tell you to go out and buy two copies -- one for yourself and one for someone you love.
(Jan 19, 2002)
I've just discovered that an old Q & A that appeared on the site Little Literati is no longer online (due to Posterous's untimely demise) and so have received permission from the lovely Heather Thompson to re-post it here. The interview was done just prior to the publication of When I Was Small and I did like the direction the questions took.
WHO would you visit if you had a time machine teleporter?
Nobody famous, I don’t think, although there’d be a great temptation to visit H.G. Wells around when he wrote The Time Machine just to freak him out. Really, I’d like to visit my maternal grandmother as a little girl. She grew up in and around Glasgow and emigrated to Canada after her father was killed in WWI. I’d like to meet her just before she set off for her new life. I was named for her and she for her mother and I’d love to know more about them both.
WHAT book had the greatest impact on you as a child?
The book that I loved the most may have been Joan Walsh Anglund’s Look Out the Window. I still have my copy and if I try to work out what I liked about it, I suppose it comes down to identification. I was very much a looking-out-the-window child.I also really loved the "Just Mary" and "Maggie Muggins" stories by New Brunswick writer Mary Grannan. They were quite magical stories but the books also resonated with me because they had belonged to my father as a child and were stories that he’d grown up listening to on CBC radio. Clearly I have a sentimental attachment to the past.
WHERE do you think technology is taking the picture book?
Wonderful things are being done with iPad apps for picture books – Oliver Jeffers’ beautiful The Heart and the Bottle is an excellent example. But I think that picture books will contain to thrive alongside their animated cousins. The print copy of The Heart and the Bottle that I am saving with my store of books for future grandchildren is the one that will be cherished the longest.
WHEN did your passion for picture books begin?
I wrote any number of other things before coming to picture books and it was only after having my own child that I found myself reading the same picture books over and over and over and over. It’s a good way to learn how a thing works. Of course many people read picture books and think, “I could do that!” which is funny because you don’t come away from a night at the ballet and tell yourself the same thing.
I made up stories for my son for years before I got around to doing anything with them and it was only after interviewing a brand new children’s publisher that I suddenly got passionate about them. I was working for the Vancouver Sun at the time and the publisher was Dimiter Savoff of Simply Read Books who had just produced an edition of Pinocchio that was one of the more beautiful books I have ever seen. I gave him one of my little stories and hey presto he transformed it into a beautiful book. Lucky me! My third book with Simply Read is coming out this fall and like the others is illustrated by Julie Morstad and designed by Robin Mitchell-Cranfield and I can’t wait to hold a copy in my hand.
WHY do you think children connect with picture books so intimately?
Maybe it’s the wonderful Rosetta Stone sensation of un-locking the mystery of the text. The first book I thought I could read was Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but of course I couldn’t read it at all but had simply memorized the text and could make it correspond to the image on the page. The first word I ever read was “wagon.” It was in a Dick and Jane reader (yes, I am that old!) and I can still recall the moment the letters suddenly became the word and how somehow the rest of the page aligned itself into a decipherable text in the moments after. Magic!
There's a very interesting conversation happening on twitter right now about Joan Bodger and the fact that her brilliant and devastating memoir The Crack in the Teacup is currently out of print. If you'd like to chime in on this discussion you can find me @saraoleary over on twitter. And if you feel inclined I'm looking for people to support a plea for bringing the book back into print.
Meanwhile, I dug out the review I wrote when the book was first published and here it is.
There is real life and there is storybook life, and I never expected the twain to meet. But in the person and works of Joan Bodger, they do. Joan Bodger, author, storyteller and gestalt therapist, has spent her life reading and telling stories, and the result is her new autobiography The Crack in the Teacup: The Life of an Old Woman Steeped in Stories (McClelland & Stewart, 412 pp., $34.99).
Bodger's name was already familiar to many readers because of her wonderful tale of a family's very personal quest, How the Heather Looks: A Joyous Journey to the British Sources of Children's Books (McClelland & Stewart, 249 pp., $29.99). To read the two books in tandem is to risk laying the heart bare to all the joys and sorrows of both childhood and parenting.
How the Heather Looks was first published in 1965. It was out of print for more than 30 years before it was brought out in a new edition. In the meantime, copies were passed hand-to-hand, illegally photocopied, borrowed and never returned. It had the dubious honour of being the book most often "retired" along with retiring children's librarians.
It tells of how, in 1958, Joan and her husband John took their children Ian (almost nine) and Lucy (two-and-a-half) on a trip to England. The couple had come into what Bodger calls "a modest windfall" and decided the children should have the opportunity to see the places of storybooks such as A Child's Garden of Verses, The Wind in the Willows, Swallows and Amazons, and Puck of Pook's Hill, among others.
It's a glorious idea, and halfway through reading the book I was ready to call the travel agent and book passage on a Cunard liner, modest windfall or no.
Their trip is lovingly described, an idyllic journey where the storybook characters resonate with meaning for the four family members. Ian, at nine, is curious and fearless, disappearing down country roads, scrambling over bluffs, shadow-jousting on the ramparts of castles. He is Puck, and King Arthur, and the boy narrator of Robert Louis Stevenson's verses all at once. Lucy, at two, dressed in practical corduroy overalls when all little English girls of the time wore little nylon dresses, red-haired and lovely, running down paths ahead of her parents, looking for Mrs. Tiggy- Winkle.
It is all achingly perfect and perfectly real at the same moment. And then, in Bodger's new afterword to the book, we read how, before the book was even published, the family had suffered the devastation of death and schizophrenia.
Wanting desperately to believe in the idyllic world where parents and children can travel into pages from storybooks brought to life, I almost had to make myself open The Crack in the Teacup,Bodger's autobiography. Can't I just leave them all on holiday? I wondered. Ian and Lucy forever children, Joan and John forever happily married.
Reading the autobiography was a completely different experience. Not that it wasn't an enjoyable read, because it was. Bodger writes of the events of her American childhood, how she was moved to join the army, her courtship and marriage and the birth of her children. It's all very interesting but not particularly extraordinary.
Now 77 and suffering from exhaustion and illness in the aftermath of completing her memoir, she shows that a life can equal much more than the sum of its parts. What lifts her book above the ordinary run of recollections is the relationship she has to myth and story. In the period when she was writing How the Heather Looks, her young daughter developed a brain tumor and her husband began showing symptoms of what would later be diagnosed as schizophrenia. He was institutionalized as a result of hallucinations and she was left alone with two small children.
Her brother-in-law refused her an advance from the family trust to enable her to attend library school because he said he'd noticed that in cases where the wife went to work, the marriage generally ended in divorce.
She was heartened to learn that one of the other mothers from her daughter's class, Betty Friedan, was also writing a book. She called her up, but Friedan said she was too busy to talk to every suburban housewife who called her. Still, Bodger wrote her joyous book about a "joyous journey." It strikes me as a remarkable achievement.
Bodger came through the devastation of her family and began again. She worked at nursery schools for the poor and in education and library studies. She reviewed children's books for the New York Times and became an editor in the children's division of Random House-Pantheon-Knopf.
She married a Canadian, moved to Toronto, trained as a gestalt therapist, started a storytelling group and became a tour leader for literary trips to England.
Bodger's genius lies in shaping her life into narrative. She writes: "There is a genre of fairy tale in which the hero or heroine must go through a door, or run through a forest, or face a dragon, or jump down a hole, not knowing the outcome." Sounds a lot like life.
The Crack in The Teacup is a brave book, free of self-pity or recrimination. It is one to learn from.
(article originally published Vancouver Sun, December 9, 2000)
It's Family Literacy Day and since it is a subject dear to my heart, I thought I would share a few links with you.
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| photo: Saskatoon Star-Phoenix |
- Kerry Clare's list of books for Family Literacy Day. Some beautiful books on this list but I'm especially fond of the work of Sheree Fitch. I've done school visits where Sheree has been a previous guest author and can testify to her being the hardest of acts to follow. (In one Q & A I was asked in the most reverent of tones: "Are you Sheree Fitch?" and I had to answer sadly in the negative.)
- A little introduction to the works of literacy advocate extraordinaire Joan Bodger via Kathryn Kuitenebrouwer. (Read The Crack in the Teacup and How The Heather Looks in that order if you want your heart properly broken.)
- A link to a previous post from here about Mother Goose and Joan Bodger, and an old article about the wonderful Mother Goose program from when I was writing for the Vancouver Sun. (Back in the days when my son asked me: why do you have your picture in the newspaper every week when you're not even famous?)
- Something I wrote for Blog of Green Gables about getting boys reading.
The photo at right is from the first time I ever got my picture in the paper (just for hanging around the library as was my wont on a weekend). Some children were gathered up from the wonderful children's section at the Saskatoon Public Library to pose with former librarian Muriel Clancy. The photogenic boy on her lap is my younger brother. Many happy hours of my childhood can be credited to that library and all the doors it opened to me.
Best wishes from me and from small Henry and his brilliant creator Julie Morstad.
In some ways I feel we are both mothers to this imaginary child....
Cory Doctorow was kind enough to write a thoughtful review of When I Was Small that ran on Boing Boing a little while ago. One of the comments suggested that the picture of Dot was reminiscent of the young Mako Mori character in Pacific Rim.
Last night I finally watched the film with my son and then he drew this for me.
Mako Mori in the style of Julie Morstad's Dot. There have been a number of homages to Julie's work around here over the years but this may be one of my favourites.
Here's little Mako (played by Mana Ashida) hiding from the Kaiju.
Maybe we need to get The Henry Books into the hands of Guillermo Del Toro.
I'm hanging out on twitter today, helping out with a CBC Canada Writes contest for
Cozy Classics.
Here are a few items that I am loading into my virtual cart.
Conspicuous by their absence in The British Library shop, however, are the beautiful board books from Cozy Classics (hint, hint).
Mo's Mustache by Ben Clanton (Tundra Books) arrived the other day. Son reported it was the best thing anyone ever sent me in the mail ever. If you've got a young reader who is also of the "show me the funny" temperament you might want to seek out a copy (still time to buy before Movemeber rolls around again.)
This is a nice little story about individuality: Mo is a monster with a moustache. Everyone likes Mo's moustache. Suddenly everyone has a moustache just like Mo's and on it goes. It's kind of like a less creepy version of The Rainbow Fish.
For me the real joy in the book was in the details. When you take off the dust jacket (and as I recall small children LOVE to take off dust jackets) there's a nice little surprise on the inner cover.
Also, printed on the inside of the dustjacket is a poster giving tips on mustache maintenance. (For those who like novel approaches to dustjackets see also Robin Mitchell Cranfield and Judith Steedman's
Windy and Friends books.)
Highly recommend this one, although I'd like it just that little bit more if they'd gone with Canadian spelling on the title as Mo's Moustache would be more visually euphonious. I also wished it had come with a moustache or two. This would be a nice little promo item: a sheet of cardboard punch-out moustaches. But all in all this is a very stylish little addition to the library.
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By: Sara O'Leary,
on 7/21/2015
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There's a fascinating program designed to address these problems called Roots of Empathy. You can read the first chapter of the book about it here. It says: 
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