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"Monster"
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From: Yeh, Phoebe <Phoebe.Yeh>
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 17:09:18 -0500
Walter came into the office, and told me, I've been thinking of writing a screenplay. Look what I bought on the street (He showed me a copy of HAROLD AND MAUDE). I said something to this effect. OOOOh, HAROLD AND MAUDE, one of my favorite movies. (I thought to myself, Hmmmm: a screenplay for YA readers. This may be a challenge. I tried to think of books I had read that might have had a similar format. NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH by Avi came to mind. I resolved to re-read it as soon as possible).
The original manuscript for MONSTER was written entirely in play form. Steve's story was gripping, and I was fascinated, entertained, repelled by the various personages: the inmates, the other defendants, the attorneys, courtroom personnel, Steve and his family, Steve's teacher. But I did feel that the format would make it more difficult for readers to keep up with Steve because all your information about the crime and the case and jail is filtered a particular way -- all as dialogue and notes about the setting and camera angles. I asked Walter, why not have Steve keep a journal that tells readers what he's really thinking, and since he's a movie buff, and precocious, and smart, he's writing a screenplay about the "predicament" in which he finds himself. Even then, reality hasn't hit because just the notion -- hey, I'll write a screenplay about my life, suggests that Steve still doesn't get it. The journal would handhold readers (but of course astute readers know that you can still lie to yourself in your own journal). With both the journal and the screenplay formats, Walter would have even more perspectives to work with.
All along, we thought Chris Myers would do a beautiful jacket for MONSTER. Since Steve Harmon is a budding moviemaker, it occurred to me that there should be a visual angle in the book. Besides thinking about how he would shoot particular scenes, I thought Steve would also make sketches of himself cast in the leading role (author, director, etc, etc) and the other characters in his play. And that's why we then asked Chris to provide about 12 or so interior pieces of art. We wanted to see what Chris came up with so he was completely on his own. A photographer friend took various photos
(Scholastic's very own Jacky Harper kindly agreed to pose as Steve's mother); Chris's girlfriend's brother is Steve; and Chris then scanned the photos into his computer and emerged with the finished art. Once we had the images in house, our designer, Alison Donalty went to work.
For the jacket, we wanted to create an immediate sense that our (anti)hero Steve was in jail and was somehow related to a violent crime (hence the red, an obvious color choice but effective in this instance). The front and profile shots were a must have. Alison visited a precinct and reminded us that in addition to these shots, the inmates are fingerprinted. Walter kindly donated his fingerprints to the cause (He had to go to his local precinct to take care of this). I had seen a particularly effective jacket treatment in BAT 6 (title?) by Virginia Euwer Wolff, so all along I had my heart set on a 3/4 jacket only we would print the thumbprint form and prints and credits on the case of the book; and Chris's art would form the jacket. There was some discussion in house over the relative merits of a 3/4 jacket, and whether it would be a problem if the jacket slid up and down the length of the book when it was resting on a store shelf. We decided that the concept would really enhance the overall look of the book, and we had to have it. Obviously we needed to distinguish between the journal
"hand-writing" (Because you probably wouldn't hyphenate in your journal entries, we deleted all hyphens from Steve's journal) and the screenplay type. Walter provided the STAR WARS credit idea so I brought in our home copy of STAR WARS so Alison could get the sizing of Steve's movie credits, just right.
All of us who worked on the book, the copy editor, the designer, the art director, myself became so vested in MONSTER. As we worked on it, we became completely engrossed in Steve, his journal, his screenplay, and every last copy?iting and design component of the book. We wanted to truly leave no stone unturned.
One last anecdote that may be of interest. When I first read the manuscript, I said to Walter, Hey, defendants are supposed to tell the truth when they're on the stand. Walter reminded me of the hours and hours of courtroom research he had done, which led him to the sorry conclusion that actually, people lie all the time on the stand. Then I got called on jury duty and served as a juror on a month long case, where I learned the sad reality: Walter was right, sometimes everybody does lie on the stand. My participation as a juror gave me incredible context for the courtroom scenes in MONSTER. We also asked an attorney who had served as a clerk for a judge to read the manuscript.
(Katy: I'm in Rhode Island tomorrow for an SCBWI conference. I'll be in the office on Monday should new questions arise).
Take care, phoebe
,-Original Message----From: Kathleen Horning [mailto:horning at education.wisc.edu] Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2000 6:22 PM To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu; maia at littlefolktales.org Subject: RE: "Monster"
I am pleased to announce that Phoebe Yeh of HarperCollins has generously agreed to join our CCBC-Net discussion of "Monster" by Walter Dean Myers. Phoebe worked on the book as editor and I'm sure she'll have some interesting insights to share with us. Please feel free to ask her any questions you may have about her work on the book.
For starters, I'd like to ask Phoebe to tell us a little bit about how the book came to be. What did the manuscript look like when you first saw it ? did it have the same double narrative structure that we have in the finished book? And at what point in the writing process did the author begin to think about the design of the book? Since it's so graphically distinctive, I'm wondering how and when the graphics came into play?
Kathleen T. Horning (horning at education.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706 608&3930 FAX: 608&2I33
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Received on Thu 17 Feb 2000 04:09:18 PM CST
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 17:09:18 -0500
Walter came into the office, and told me, I've been thinking of writing a screenplay. Look what I bought on the street (He showed me a copy of HAROLD AND MAUDE). I said something to this effect. OOOOh, HAROLD AND MAUDE, one of my favorite movies. (I thought to myself, Hmmmm: a screenplay for YA readers. This may be a challenge. I tried to think of books I had read that might have had a similar format. NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH by Avi came to mind. I resolved to re-read it as soon as possible).
The original manuscript for MONSTER was written entirely in play form. Steve's story was gripping, and I was fascinated, entertained, repelled by the various personages: the inmates, the other defendants, the attorneys, courtroom personnel, Steve and his family, Steve's teacher. But I did feel that the format would make it more difficult for readers to keep up with Steve because all your information about the crime and the case and jail is filtered a particular way -- all as dialogue and notes about the setting and camera angles. I asked Walter, why not have Steve keep a journal that tells readers what he's really thinking, and since he's a movie buff, and precocious, and smart, he's writing a screenplay about the "predicament" in which he finds himself. Even then, reality hasn't hit because just the notion -- hey, I'll write a screenplay about my life, suggests that Steve still doesn't get it. The journal would handhold readers (but of course astute readers know that you can still lie to yourself in your own journal). With both the journal and the screenplay formats, Walter would have even more perspectives to work with.
All along, we thought Chris Myers would do a beautiful jacket for MONSTER. Since Steve Harmon is a budding moviemaker, it occurred to me that there should be a visual angle in the book. Besides thinking about how he would shoot particular scenes, I thought Steve would also make sketches of himself cast in the leading role (author, director, etc, etc) and the other characters in his play. And that's why we then asked Chris to provide about 12 or so interior pieces of art. We wanted to see what Chris came up with so he was completely on his own. A photographer friend took various photos
(Scholastic's very own Jacky Harper kindly agreed to pose as Steve's mother); Chris's girlfriend's brother is Steve; and Chris then scanned the photos into his computer and emerged with the finished art. Once we had the images in house, our designer, Alison Donalty went to work.
For the jacket, we wanted to create an immediate sense that our (anti)hero Steve was in jail and was somehow related to a violent crime (hence the red, an obvious color choice but effective in this instance). The front and profile shots were a must have. Alison visited a precinct and reminded us that in addition to these shots, the inmates are fingerprinted. Walter kindly donated his fingerprints to the cause (He had to go to his local precinct to take care of this). I had seen a particularly effective jacket treatment in BAT 6 (title?) by Virginia Euwer Wolff, so all along I had my heart set on a 3/4 jacket only we would print the thumbprint form and prints and credits on the case of the book; and Chris's art would form the jacket. There was some discussion in house over the relative merits of a 3/4 jacket, and whether it would be a problem if the jacket slid up and down the length of the book when it was resting on a store shelf. We decided that the concept would really enhance the overall look of the book, and we had to have it. Obviously we needed to distinguish between the journal
"hand-writing" (Because you probably wouldn't hyphenate in your journal entries, we deleted all hyphens from Steve's journal) and the screenplay type. Walter provided the STAR WARS credit idea so I brought in our home copy of STAR WARS so Alison could get the sizing of Steve's movie credits, just right.
All of us who worked on the book, the copy editor, the designer, the art director, myself became so vested in MONSTER. As we worked on it, we became completely engrossed in Steve, his journal, his screenplay, and every last copy?iting and design component of the book. We wanted to truly leave no stone unturned.
One last anecdote that may be of interest. When I first read the manuscript, I said to Walter, Hey, defendants are supposed to tell the truth when they're on the stand. Walter reminded me of the hours and hours of courtroom research he had done, which led him to the sorry conclusion that actually, people lie all the time on the stand. Then I got called on jury duty and served as a juror on a month long case, where I learned the sad reality: Walter was right, sometimes everybody does lie on the stand. My participation as a juror gave me incredible context for the courtroom scenes in MONSTER. We also asked an attorney who had served as a clerk for a judge to read the manuscript.
(Katy: I'm in Rhode Island tomorrow for an SCBWI conference. I'll be in the office on Monday should new questions arise).
Take care, phoebe
,-Original Message----From: Kathleen Horning [mailto:horning at education.wisc.edu] Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2000 6:22 PM To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu; maia at littlefolktales.org Subject: RE: "Monster"
I am pleased to announce that Phoebe Yeh of HarperCollins has generously agreed to join our CCBC-Net discussion of "Monster" by Walter Dean Myers. Phoebe worked on the book as editor and I'm sure she'll have some interesting insights to share with us. Please feel free to ask her any questions you may have about her work on the book.
For starters, I'd like to ask Phoebe to tell us a little bit about how the book came to be. What did the manuscript look like when you first saw it ? did it have the same double narrative structure that we have in the finished book? And at what point in the writing process did the author begin to think about the design of the book? Since it's so graphically distinctive, I'm wondering how and when the graphics came into play?
Kathleen T. Horning (horning at education.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706 608&3930 FAX: 608&2I33
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Received on Thu 17 Feb 2000 04:09:18 PM CST
