Beep Boop Blog

One of my favorite picture books of 2021 is BARTALI’S BICYCLE (Quill Tree Books), written by Megan Hoyt and illustrated by Iacopo Bruno. It follows the true story of Gino Bartali, the Italian Tour de France winner who secretly helped rescue 800 Jews in WWII by smuggling papers in his bicycle frame (for a great adult book about this, check out ROAD TO VALOR).

I was recently excited to learn that Megan has a new historical picture book coming out this July 5th, THE GREATEST SONG OF ALL: HOW ISAAC STERN UNITED THE WORLD TO SAVE CARNEGIE HALL (Quill Tree Books, 2022, illustrated by Katie Hickey), and I caught up with Megan to learn more about this compelling story.

Me: How did you get into creating children’s books?

Megan: I started out making up bedtime stories to tell my children, and when I got my first laptop computer I used to get up at 5 am and write. It was quiet me time with nothing but the dim morning light, my imagination, and a chocolate-y mocha latte! My first stories were horrible. I remember I once wrote a 3800 word picture book when the industry standard is around 500 words for fiction and 1000 for non-fiction. I clearly knew nothing about the actual business of writing picture books when I started out. But then I met a group of authors at an SCBWI Schmooze in Davidson, North Carolina, and we formed a critique group. We called ourselves the Mudskippers. If you’ve never heard of a mudskipper, it’s a fish that can actually walk on land! We wanted to encourage ourselves to believe that we could do anything we poured our hearts into. I think five of us ended up published authors and one is now an agent. But we will always be Mudskippers!

What inspired The Greatest Song of All?

My parents met playing violin and viola in the pit orchestra at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, and I always thought their story was so charming. Their first date was for cheesecake at Carnegie Deli. I wanted to dig into the time period when my parents lived in New York—to see what life was like back then. They were older by the time I came along, so this was the 1950s and 60’s. As I researched, I came upon a photo of a ballet dancer leaping across Broadway at a protest, and I thought that was so interesting! I’d never seen a ballet dancer dancing in the street, much less protesting in dance clothes. It was Valerie Harper, who later became a famous tv sitcom actor.

The more I read about how everyone came together to save Carnegie Hall, the more I wanted to let children know that they, too, can get involved and help save both buildings and people. Where I live now, city officials recently destroyed a “tent city” that was housing homeless families uptown. The families were to be moved to hotel rooms for eight months, and after that, hopefully, they would find housing. Well, the plan backfired when they discovered they had more homeless people than hotel rooms! I saw that and wondered how a city manager could so mishandle a situation, just like Robert Moses did when he forced out thousands of people from their San Juan Hill neighborhood in New York. I realized it’s up to the citizens to take care of one another. We can’t just depend on a city planner or organizer to handle it all, especially someone who does not have a vested interest in the issue. If no one had taken action in New York, Carnegie Hall would be gone, replaced by a giant glistening high-rise office building. It took a concert violinist, ballet dancers, famous musicians from around the world, and millions of dollars, collected from donors, young and old, to come together and save Carnegie Hall.

What was the most challenging part of your research?

The most challenging part was telling such a complicated story with lots of twists and turns in only forty pages! A few times along the way, I stopped and set it aside, thinking there were just too many details to the story for a young audience to grasp. But it tugged at my heart as sort of a tribute to my parents, so I went to the Hall and met with the archivists to get a better sense of what facts had to stay in and which ones might be okay to leave out. That was tough! There’s a whole back story to how Carnegie Hall was built in the first place that is so interesting—a musician met Andrew Carnegie on a cruise ship while the Carnegies were on their honeymoon and convinced him New York needed another concert hall. Well, that whole bit had to be cut for space. A few other details are not in precise chronological order because there were so many meetings and two different committees. Oh, and I had this whole spread where Isaac Stern talks to the Mayor at a Passover Seder and convinces him to help save Carnegie Hall. There was just no room for it, even though I wanted to be able to focus a bit more on Isaac Stern being Jewish since that is why they left to come to America to begin with.

Katie’s illustrations are amazing. How did you get paired with her?

The publisher always chooses the illustrator, but they did show me samples from three different artists to get my feedback. I already loved Katie’s work on Jess Keating’s book, Ocean Speaks: How Marie Tharp Revealed the Ocean’s Biggest Secret, so I was very excited. I think her vivid colors really bring the story to life.

What are you working on now?

Right now, I am working on a biography of author Marguerite Henry, who is also near and dear to my heart, since I grew up riding bareback in Texas. I met her at an author visit at my school when I was around eight years old. I still have my autographed copy of Justin Morgan Had a Horse!

I also have two more books coming out with HarperCollins’ Quill Tree Books: A Grand Idea: How William Wilgus Created The Grand Central Terminal and Kati’s Tiny Messengers: Dr. Katalin Kariko and the Battle Against Covid-19. And I have a soon-to-be-announced picture book coming out with a Jewish publisher, Apples and Honey Press. I’m working on two middle grade novels as well.

Wow, Megan, your plate is full! I can’t wait to check out those new titles. Thank you so much for answering my questions!

To learn more about Megan, go to www.meganhoyt.net.

When I saw that author friend Terry Catasús Jennings had a new book releasing, I knew it was time to rekindle the Getting to Know the author interviews. While I’ve featured Terry before, The Little House of Hope is a special new picture book (releasing June 14 from Neal Porter Books) and I wanted to learn more.

Me: Congratulations on your beautiful, touching new book! How much of the Little House of Hope mirrors your own experiences?

Terry: Hi, Jon, thank you so much for hosting me on your blog. I’m glad you’re back in business. The answer to how much The Little House of Hope mirrors my own experience is: most of it.  When we came to the United States my uncle, my father’s brother, had been in the United States for more than year.  They had rented a house (a little house) and they opened that house to us when we came with nothing but fifty dollars for the whole family and a suitcase each.  They also opened up that house to my aunt’s brother, his wife and baby—they lived in the garage. I slept with my two girl cousins. We shared two twin beds and a cot—took turns on the cot—which was really a generous thing to do, because they could have made me take the cot all the time. And no one complained. I think my parents slept on the pull-out couch. We only took in family, so that’s a difference, but really just about everything else is true, down to making collages to decorate the walls.

Me: Though the story has obviously been with you for a long time, when did you realize it would make a good picture book? Did anything stand out about the writing process for this work?

Terry: Well, it wasn’t with me that long. I got mad at a realtor who said that “Mexicans” lived four families to a home and trashed a house, and then I remembered that for about a year after we came to the United States, the first part of that statement applied to us. We lived three families to a house.  Fourteen people on weekends when my aunt’s other nephews came to stay with us. I think, at first, it was more of having to get the story out, than realizing it would make a good picture book. As the story took shape, though, I thought it could be special. I wanted to turn it  into a good message for young readers, and maybe even the adults who read to them, that immigrants don’t come to the United States on a whim, it’s a gut wrenching decision and it is a very tough life. What stood out in the process was how quickly it came together and how few revisions it went through.  And oh, I just heard it is a Junior Library Guild selection. I’m really stoked about that.

Me: Raúl Colón is an amazing illustrator and his illustrations for your book are stunning! How did you end up working with him?

Terry: He is amazing, Jon. Neal Porter, the editor of the book picked Raúl and I couldn’t be happier.  He knows Cubans (he’s married to one). His style is so unique. I think anyone who picks up the book is bound to open it to see the rest of his illustrations. You can’t ask more than that.

Me: There have been a couple more books in the Definitely Dominguita series come up since the last time I interviewed you. Can you briefly tell us about those, and your Pauli Murray biography?

Terry: Well Dominguita went on two new adventures since we last spoke. In All for One, she and the crew pretend to be musketeers and save a quinceañera party—a debutante party Latinx style—from the dastardly Bublassi clan.  They arm themselves with toilet plungers, instead of musketeer swords that could poke their eyes out, but I have to say the toilet plungers are award-winning toilet plungers. It’s a big part of the plot. I bet you can tell what Dominguita and her crew are in Sherlock Dom, they work on the mystery of the Lost Goat of Tapperville, which could be vaguely, vaguely reminiscent of the Hound of the Baskervilles.  Pauli Murray, The Life of a Pioneering Feminist and Civil Rights Activist is a biography in verse about the person who figured out the strategy that would win Brown v. Board of Education and desegregate schools. She didn’t get the credit, though, because she was a woman. She was also responsible for including gender as a protected category in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and getting equal pay for equal work for women. But she was so much more. She wrote, to anybody that could help the cause of human rights, including Franklin Roosevelt, and the First Lady. She and Eleanor became great friends. She also wrote beautiful poetry and a history of African Americans in the United States which was focused on her family but chronicled the journey of Black Americans until that time. She was so much, and she was so humble. She never stopped fighting. I collaborated with her niece, Rosita Stevens Holsey in writing it.

Me: What are you working on now?

Terry: I have two books out on submission right now, one is a picture book biography of Pauli Murray and the other is a book about a young boy and his grandfather, on a day when grandpa doesn’t feel so well and the roles are reversed. It’s a sweet story. I hope both of those become books. And I have two other mg novels in the final editing stages. I hope they’ll go on submission this summer.

Jon, thank you so much, again for hosting me. I can’t wait to see your new books. You know you’re my grandkids’ favorite author.

Me: Aw, second favorite, I’m sure. Wishing The Little House of Hope much success!

To learn more about Terry and her books, go to TerryCJennings.com and on Facebook: Terry Catasús Jennings, Twitter: @TerryCJennings, Instagram:  Terry.C.Jennings 

I really love books. I really love trees. And I don’t have to go too far out on a branch to admit I love finding beautiful and meaningful books about trees, and our relationship to them. So I’m happy to report I’m adding a new one to my collection, Beatrice Was a Tree (Greenwillow Books, 2021) by Joyce Hesselberth, which I’ll certainly use in my art room and highly recommend to other teachers. I caught up to Joyce to learn more.

Me: How did you get into creating children’s books?

Joyce: I kind of took the long path to get here. I remember thinking how great it would be to work on children’s books when I was in college, but I realized I didn’t have the skill set. I was studying graphic design, which turned out to be a great skill to have, but wasn’t what I ultimately needed to make book content. After I graduated, I slowly migrated over to illustration. I started doing a lot of work for newspapers and magazines. In my thirties, I still had that itch to make a children’s book, so I decided to dedicate some time to it each day. When I made my first dummy, I sent it to anyone who would accept un-agented submissions. That book never got published, but I kept making dummies. Many rejections later, and after I managed to get my wonderful agent, Erica Rand Silverman, I sold my first book, Shape Shift.

What inspired Beatrice Was a Tree?

Well, first, trees are amazing. Who doesn’t love trees? I like drawing plants and nature, so that was part of the inspiration. But ultimately, this book was based on a little tiny sketch in my sketchbook. I was flipping through it, looking for ideas, because I didn’t have any at the moment and needed something to pitch to my editor. The sketch was a picture of a kid wearing a tree costume, like they were in a school play. It was something I drew for an editorial job about summer camps, but it got me thinking about what it would be like to be a tree. That’s one of the things I love about keeping a sketchbook. They are records of ideas you have and once you draw them, you can go back to them later and they can inspire other projects.

Beatrice has a great intuitive connection with nature and if every kid could relate to just one tree on that level, I wouldn’t have too many worries about the future. Was this you as a kid? How do we help more kids see the world this way?

I definitely spent my fair share of time playing in the woods as a kid. I still do actually. There’s a trail near our house where I love to go running. I don’t think I would be a runner if it weren’t for that trail. Just being in nature is so healing.

I think having unstructured play outside is so important for kids, but really for everyone. Also, another thing that definitely connected me to plants as a kid was my family’s garden. They planted acres and acres of vegetables (I’m kidding, but their gardens did tend to be large). I think having that experience of planting something and watching it grow is really special.

Your art is stunning. Can you share a little about your process?

Thank you! I started the art for this book by creating a lot of messy paint swatches. Although I love creating art digitally, there are some things that are better with traditional media. Plus, it’s really fun to just paint and experiment! When I had a little library of textures that I liked, I started cutting into them digitally.

Color is really important to me, and this book was a little tricky because it has a broader palette than some of my others. I needed the palette to really change from season to season, so having that library of textures helped me unify the book too.

What are you working on now?

I’m just finishing up the artwork for my next picture book, When Molly Ate the Stars, (Chronicle Books, expected Fall 2022). This is the first story I’ve written that is completely fiction and I’ve been having so much fun working on it.

I’ve also been writing my first chapter book. It’s not far enough along to share yet, but I’ve been obsessing over this story for about a year now and I’m really excited to bring it out into the world.

Any advice for young artists, naturalists and storytellers?

Sure, I like that grouping! I think keeping a sketchbook or journal is a really great habit to start. And give yourself room to be messy/silly in it. It doesn’t need to be precious. The important part is to keep drawing, and observing, and writing!

Perfect advice. Thank you so much, Joyce!

Learn more about Joyce and her books at joycehesselberth.com and on Instagram and Twitter: @hesselberth

I’ve always had a soft spot for kids who love to read. Maybe because I was one of them! But do kids who love to read books make good characters in books? They certainly do if their name is Dominguita Melendez, plucky protagonist of the awesome new chapter books series, DEFINITELY DOMINGUITA (Aladdin, 2021). I caught up with author Terry Catasus Jennings to learn more:

Me: How did you get into writing children’s books?

Terry: Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m delighted to be here with you. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, since I was a kid. Especially after I read Little Women. And stories are always rolling around in my head. I’m always reporting on what’s going on. Often making things come out better than they did in real life. But for many reasons, most of them having to do with being an immigrant and needing a secure job, I didn’t pursue a career in writing. That’s someone who is really talented pursues. Hemingway, and Louisa Alcott. It’s like in my head they were hit by lighting and turned into authors. I never even thought of looking at it as a career. You know, back then, maybe we didn’t look at having a career as much as having a job. I knew I would go to college so I could get a job where I could support myself. And I ended up majoring in math and took a lot of science and I actually did land a job in the engineering department of the telephone company. Then when I had children, I decided to stay home with them while having my own tiny bookkeeping company for small businesses.

But stories never stopped rolling around my head. And when my youngest went to middle school and I really didn’t need to volunteer anymore, I decided to try my hand at writing and to see if I had what it took. So I started with essays, and some of them were published in The Washington Post. And I wrote a family humor column for my local newspaper. Then I tried to get some sort of a steady gig, and I ended up writing educational content for the Smithsonian. Science stuff. But my name was always buried in the next to the last page. So then I tried my hand at science books for kids—creative non-fiction—books that would have my name on the cover. And then some regular non-fiction. I did a lot of work for hire. And each time something was published I wanted a bigger step. Say, going from a small science publisher to a real publisher. And that happened with Dominguita and Simon and Schuster. But it took forever. I’d say about 20 years.

What was your inspiration and process for Definitely Dominguita?

Remember those stories that are rolling around in my head? I was weeding and thinking to myself that what I was doing was as impossible as Don Quijote trying to become a knight. But wait. The idea of a kid trying to become a knight might work. And this little boy showed up in my head dressed in a cape and a make-do helmet. Fortunately for all of us, my daughter reminded me that I am a feminist and it would be a lot better if my protagonist were a girl. Before I finished my weeding, my character had a name and I’d written the beginning of the book in my head.

The process for writing these books was different from writing a regular novel. First I had to read the actual classics. And re-read them. I took notes on the characters speech and mannerisms. I looked at scenes that were iconic to the book, like Don Quijote tilting at a windmill. Or scenes that could translate well into a Dominguita story, like the rescue of the queen’s diamonds in The Three Musketeers. Once I was sure what parts of the classic book I wanted to echo, then I began to write. The three protagonists don’t always take the place of a character in the classic. For instance, in Captain Dom’s Treasure, there is no Jim Hawkins, but there is a Captain, a doctor, a mate and definitely a Long John Silver. There is also the maroon they find when they get to the island. But the three characters have specific roles in the series. Dom is the big thinker. Pancho is the realist who reels her in. Steph is the peace-maker. I didn’t set out to make them that way, but by the time the third book rolled around I realized that they had settled into those roles and that those roles made the books work.

I love that Dominguita is inspired by the books on her grandmother’s shelf. What books inspired you as a kid?

I was in Cuba when I was a kid, so I was a lot like Dominguita’s grandmother. I read the classics. All of them. Particularly, Jules Verne. I loved adventure. My father gave me an allowance. He was a banker and he wanted me to learn to manage money. I don’t exactly remember how much it was, but I could spend it however I wanted to, so long as I accounted for it on this green ledger paper he gave me. I solved that problem very easily. Whatever he gave me was enough to buy a book. How lucky could I get?  One entry. I got what I wanted and my bookkeeping was minimized. Now that I think back on that, I wish I had talked to him about that. I did not learn what he wanted me to learn from that experience. But I bought and read all the classics, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jack London, Sir Walter Scott, Mark Twain and all the Louisa May Alcott book, and there were some Spanish books which today we would call graphic novels. I devoured those. They were cheaper. I could get a couple of those for the price of one of the other books. But whatever I read was always adventure.

I draw my own characters, so I’m always curious about that moment when your first see your characters drawn by someone else?

I always cry. Really. It’s just very emotional for me when someone takes my words and translates them to art. With Dominguita, I was very lucky. I had pictured her as a plucky kid. Someone who wasn’t afraid of anything. Someone who would stand up for what was right. And Fátima Anaya portrayed just that. I couldn’t have been happier. If you look at that first inside sketch when Dominguita is reading and recess is happening all around her, she is alone, but not lonely. She has her book, and she doesn’t need anything else. Fátima GOT Dominguita. She sees her the same way that I did. I actually think that Fátima understood Pancho Sanchez, Dom’s sidekick, even better than I did. I love the way she drew him. How he grew from book one to book two. And Steph is perfect. She is the peacemaker. And she looks it. Fátima is a superstar. So far in all my books I’ve been lucky in that the illustrators have made the book even better than what I envisioned. Their art has brought my text to a higher level.  I love Beep and Bob, by the way. I would have been happy with them.

Can you tell us about Dominguita’s next adventures?

In Captain Dom’s Treasure, Dominguita finds a treasure map in an old copy of Treasure Island. The kids are sure it’s a real map. But how to prove it? They use logic to solve their problem. Then, once they know there is an actual treasure, they need to follow the map to find it. But the map was dated 1967. It’s not easy. And what makes it worse is that a meanie, conveniently called Juan Largo (Long John), insinuates himself into the group trying to find the treasure. Dominguita and her crew have to outwit the intruder and get to the treasure first.

All for One has echoes of The Three Musketeers. The three friends have to save a quinceañera party (a fifteenth birthday party) from the dastardly Bublassi gang. It features chocolate covered toilet plungers as Dom’s musketeers weapon of choice. Of course, you can figure out what Sherlock Dom is all about. The crew tries to find the Lost Goat of Tapperville echoing The Hound of the Baskervilles—hound and all. There can be many more Dom stories based on even more classics. I hope I get to write them.

Any advice for young knights and storytellers?

Dominguita never gave up, and storytellers should never give up. It’s a long road, but I wouldn’t trade it. The good thing about Dominguita is that, in the end, she made friends. And she goes on to live her books with them. I hope that readers see in Dominguita a Cuban-American girl who’s just like them and that it opens the door, just a little bit more, to understanding.

Thank you so much, Terry!

Find out more about Terry and her books at TerryCJennings.com and at Facebook: Terry Catasús Jennings, Twitter: @TerryCJennings, Instagram:  Terry.C.Jennings and Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54304114-knight-of-the-cape