So I’ve been asked to talk about an element of writing my book, The Emerald Atlas, that I struggled with, and honestly, it’s hard to pick just one thing. I could talk about the number of times I pulled my hair out for imagining that I could write a mind-twisty time travel story. Or I could talk about the difficulty of working in a genre as well-established as children’s fantasy, a genre in which I would be using characters and tropes that readers had seen a thousand times before and it was my job to figure out how I was going to breath new life into those dusty conventions.Guest Blogger: John Stephens
So I’ve been asked to talk about an element of writing my book, The Emerald Atlas, that I struggled with, and honestly, it’s hard to pick just one thing. I could talk about the number of times I pulled my hair out for imagining that I could write a mind-twisty time travel story. Or I could talk about the difficulty of working in a genre as well-established as children’s fantasy, a genre in which I would be using characters and tropes that readers had seen a thousand times before and it was my job to figure out how I was going to breath new life into those dusty conventions.
Growing up in Mexico, I learned to speak the language of color at a very early age. “No dar color” is a popular expression that, translated, means an inability to give off color or emotion. Using color and texture helps me to express my identity, my heritage. I've also learned that color is the most direct (emotional) route to the children (and families) who turn the pages of the books I’ve illustrated.
By now I’ve written a number of books and have enough distance from them, to see patterns emerge. Looking back, I’ve realized that so many of the children (or mice or other animals) who populate my work use imagination—as play, as an escape, as a tool.
At the end of last year, the UK media reported the pretty disturbing fact: nine percent of British children are leaving primary school with the reading skills of a seven-year-old. As it happens, I’ve met seven-year-olds who are well into the novels of J. K. Rowling, Roald Dahl, and even J. R. R. Tolkien, but the media was talking about thirteen-year-olds—and boys are the worst offenders, naturally—who can’t struggle their way through much more than a tabloid newspaper.
Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave (Little, Brown, 2010) is based on the true story of Dave, a man born into slavery in 1800 who created approximately 40,000 ceramic pots in his lifetime. Dave was owned by six slave masters, but was ultimately sold to a plantation that produced large clay pots. It was on this plantation that Dave was trained to make pottery and became a master potter.