Today on Book Review Wednesday, we welcome Jane Sutton and her main character Sidney. Jane’s picture book, Don't Call Me Sidney just launched last week and I am so happy to have her here at Creative Chaos. Jane is a New England author of seven books for children. According to her website, Jane likes to laugh, ride her bike, watch the Red Sox play baseball, do crossword puzzles, travel, and dance and sing along to rock music.
Sidney, and his friend Gabie the duck, were imaged by Italian illustrator, Renata Gallio. It may have been more appropriate to invite Sidney for a poetry Friday post. Yes, Sidney the pig is a poet-- a poet with a problem. You would have a problem too, if you couldn’t find anything to rhyme with your name.
The funniest thing about Sidney’s problem is that he creates it himself. He is not poet enough to restructure his lines, instead he chooses to rename himself “Joe,” a name with plenty of rhyming possibility. In doing this, Jane digs a deeper more meaningful problem for Sidn--, I mean Joe. Who is he really, and what’s in a name? Sidney solves his problem and revises his poetry on his own, to make a very satisfying ending.
In addition to wonderful facial and body expression, Renata Gallio creates character by giving Sidney a never-ending supply of scrap paper. Throughout the book, we see Sidney’s thought process on the papers that trail behind him or are taped to furniture, walls, and buildings. (Like Sidney, I often have purses and pockets full of scrawled scraps. Ah… the life of the writer.) This is a wonderful example of the illustrator extending the story. Renata Gallio uses acrylics, collage, pencil and a muted palette to create Sidney and his friends.
Welcome Jane and thanks for bringing Sidney. Just a few questions:
Most picture book authors expect to wait two to three years for their manuscripts to go from contract to pub date. I understand that you sold the Don't Call Me Sidney manuscript in 2001, but it is only just being released this week. Congratulations! Can you give us a short history of the obstacles this manuscript faced on the road to publication?
Don’t Call Me Sidney was originally Don’t Call Me Mortimer, a sequel to The Trouble With Cauliflower, published in 2006. When we learned the sequel wouldn’t work out, my editor and I decided that I should rewrite the text with new characters since the second book would have a different illustrator. It took a long time to find the right illustrator for the project. But she was definitely worth waiting for! Actually, I think the extra wait has made the release of the book feel all the sweeter. I’m dancing in the streets! No neighbors have called t