Nationally published children’s author Lynne Jonell is our special guest for today.
Lynne, thank you so much for joining us. I reviewed some of your picture books for Families.com earlier this year and was intrigued by your angle. In a world where many picture books seem to be designed to teach the child, you take situations from the child’s perspective, essentially teaching the parent how the child feels. How did you arrive at this unique way of looking at things?
Um—I might take issue with the idea that most picture books are designed to teach the child. Some are, but those tend not to be the best or most beloved books.
The best books, picture or otherwise, begin with the author trying to tell a story. And then at the end, a writer looks back and says, “Oh, that’s what I was trying to say!”
To elaborate: If a book is designed with the idea that it will teach a child (or a parent) something, then it shows. A didactic, nagging quality is apparent. But if the writer begins by trying to tell a story, by trying to accurately describe a set of characters in some kind of conflict or difficulty, then the theme will emerge naturally. It won’t feel like a lecture. And with any luck, by the end of the story, not only the characters will have changed in some way, but the reader will have experienced a shift in perception as well.
How did I come to look at things from a young child’s point of view? That was a process. I never started out to be a picture book writer. My first love was fantasy for the 8-12 set, and I had written three of them (all soundly rejected) and was working on a fourth when I suddenly changed direction.
What caused the shift?
That started when my son Christopher was about eighteen months. I became increasingly aware that he had emotions every bit as big and powerful as an adult’s– but he couldn’t articulate them very well. As he struggled to express himself, he used his limited vocabulary in fresh and unusual ways. I listened, fascinated, and began to write some of it down.
At the same time, I was suddenly reading a lot of picture books. Chris adored stories; but some were good for just one reading, and some were asked for again and again. What grabbed him, in the books that he took to his heart? Why did certain books mean so much to him, while others were never picked up again after the first reading? I started to absorb the answers into my bones.
As I was observing my son, I found myself increasingly sympathetic to his plight. He was a very small person in a very large world; and he had a passionate desire to have things all his own way. I sympathized completely, as I have always wanted to rule the world, myself.
Obviously I couldn’t let him have his own way all the time. But I felt such compassion for this little person who was trying so hard to figure things out, and longing so desperately to run the show, that I thought it might help if I could give him, in fantasy, what I couldn’t give him in reality. And that’s when I got the idea of writing a picture book where the child gets to be big, and the adult becomes small. I was walking up the stairs with a stack of notebooks and pencils when the idea hit me, and I stopped and sat down on the stairs and wrote the first draft right then. I didn’t know if it was any good or not—I just knew I had to write it.
Amazing how that idea came just when you needed it the most!
We’ll continue our conversation with Lynne Jonell tomorrow. In the meantime, be sure to go check out her website to learn more about her.
Related Blogs:
Picture Books by Lynne Jonell and Petra Mathers
Food for Thought (and other food books)
Children’s Picture Books by Kathy Mallat