Emerging from the Chrysalis

Belle: The Amazing, Astonishingly Magical Journey of an Artfully Painted Lady, is my first published children’s book.  Briefly, it the story of a painted butterfly named Belle, who is accidentally tossed off her seventeenth century Dutch still life as it is being transported through the National Gallery of Art.  Belle and her sidekick Brimstone, a fellow butterfly who was ejected from the painting with her, become lost and must find their way back home.  Because they are made of paint, they discover that they can blend into any of the other paintings in the museum. They travel through the galleries, morphing into and out of many works as they search for their own painting, while trying to avoid becoming lunch for a hungry bird similarly released. 

Belle was great fun to write.  I loved everything about the process -  well  - except maybe for the part when I had to cut stuff out.  I tend to be a conscientious objector when it comes to “murdering my darlings.” My long-suffering editors (including my sister, who has also always been my best critical reader) will gladly vouch for that! But in the case of this particular book, I not only cut words, I was also forced to ruthlessly axe works of art, metaphorically speaking, and that was really painful!  Too many choices!  Too many favorites!  

But I was a writer with a mission.  I was desperate to create a book for kids that provided a magical but meaningful journey through 300 years of art history.  I wanted my painted characters to try blending into paintings representing a variety of places and time periods; I wanted to include art by women, by African Americans, and I wanted my characters’ journey to move smoothly through time and touch a number of art historical styles.  And I wanted all of this to happen inside the framework of a fun-to-read, well-paced plot with amusing characters.   I must have been crazy to think I could do this!

Over the years I've had a number of scholarly publications in art history, but I'd never had a published picture book before.  On the other hand, since I'd never had a published children's book before, there was really nothing to lose.  It was an exhilarating, often-frustrating, amazingly-consuming, frequently-messy, always-challenging trial by fire.  Yet the moment I dared to believe I had actually succeeded with this adventure came only a month ago, when the book’s illustrator, Phyllis Saroff,  and I introduced Belle to a receptive audience of kids and adults at the National Gallery of Art.  Meeting children who love your book – that, of course, is the reason any writer writes!

It is a probably a little unusual for a children's book talk to include slides – but that’s how we art historians are used to communicating! 

 Being able to project images allowed me to start by showing paintings included in the book, and sharing a few fun facts about them. After that I projected the page spreads as I read an excerpt from the book, making it easy for everyone to see the pages and Phyllis’ wonderful illustrations.

Phyllis followed up with a terrific demonstration, as she explained the ins and outs of creating images from others' words. 

The kids were terrific and asked great questions. 

Yup! Those are butterfly wings on my head!  Belle is written in first-person, so I donned the wings, you know, for the sake of authenticity when I did the reading; and of course, I completely forgot to take them off when the reading part was over. I wore them through the entire question-and-answer session!

On the other hand, my daughter (right) and her girlfriend knew they were wearing butterfly masks as they hovered near the signing table, proving, as Belle states at the very beginning of the book: “Hovering can be very tricky!”

Read Me A Story!

When I was a kid, we called them “storybooks.”   I never thought of them as picture books, but of course, they were.  The books I loved as a kid had colorful illustrations on every page, but they also had lots of words and a real story to tell.  My sisters and I shared many Little Golden Books when we were growing up.  And some of them were pretty “wordy.”  Just for kicks, I decided to count the words in one of my favorites (since I still own a copy) - The Shy Little Kitten, written by Cathleen Schurr and illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren (© 1946).  It has 800 words on 24 pages.  That’d be 200 more than the maximum allowable word count for a 32 page picture book these days.  

One of my daughter’s favorite books when she was young (she’s now a teenager) was the award-winning Stellaluna, written and illustrated by Janell Cannon and published in 1993.  The word count for that story comes in at about 900, and that does not include the “Bat Notes” in the back of the book. I read that story over and over again to Victoria – she never tired of it.  You can do that when a story has some complexity.  Complexity is interesting, it stands up to repetition (demands it!) and it often takes some words.

 My daughter and I spent countless hours reading and re-reading storybooks, and she is still an avid reader today. I don’t understand why the prevailing “wisdom” for picture books says that they should be “quick” reads and the fewer words, the better.  The combination of a compelling tale and great pictures is what defines the perfect storybook for me.  I think that not only is there room in the market for the longer picture book, but in our world of fast-paced electronic communications, there is actually a greater, counterbalancing need for them.  

Of course, I have a dog in this fight, as the longer picture book is the kind of book I want to write. But I also have two young great-nephews (5 and 6 mos.), and as I peruse the bookstores looking for books to sit and read with them,  I am hoping that the pendulum swings back in favor of the “storybook” once again, and soon!  I want books that will take more than 3 minutes to read.  I want compelling stories that we can read and re-read and talk about together.  I want to be ready the next time my nephew says: “Read me a story!”

First Flitter!

My inaugural blog post! Thank you for reading it!

Belle: The Amazing, Astonishingly Magical Journey of an Artfully Painted Lady, my first children’s book, has just been published and the main character is a painted butterfly.  Belle is the master of the “artful flitter” and so she has inspired me to begin this blog. 

Belle’s journey takes her through centuries, as she morphs into one painting after another in the great National Gallery of Art, while at the same time fleeing from a hungry raptor who is in hot pursuit. 

I expect this blog will “artfully flitter” from topic to topic, although I suspect most posts will in some way relate to either art or children’s literature – my favorite subjects!  So please stay tuned! And thanks so much for coming!