CCBC-Net Archives
Re: ccbc-net digest: September 24, 2014
- Contemporary messages sorted: [ by date ] [ by subject ] [ by author ]
From: Susan Guevara <susanguevara_at_jps.net>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 22:12:13 -0600
>
>
> Subject: Little Roja Riding Hood: Observations
> From: Ginny Moore Kruse
>
> Can you say more about the Three Blind Mice? And while you're at it,
> do you imply a subtext about the inattention of the cat to the
> presence of mice? Personally I mourn the loss of the Three Bears as
> you described and then decided against using them.
Thank you for your comments, Ginny!
I think it was when we were struggling with how to make the visual story of the Bears work from spread to spread that my editor, Susan Kochan, said something like "wouldn't it be funny to see the Three Blind Mice in here..." For the record, that is my all time most favorite type of exchange when making a book. One idea leads to another, one sketch holds the tiniest kernel of a new approach, one comment spawns a complete new sub story. To me, that is when the book's life begins to emerge. As these sub stories emerge I become very involved in the past and sometimes future of the characters. They often show up in my journal sketches or sometimes my personal work (which is what I call the art I make for no purpose other than I just have to make it.) I often just draw these characters and see what appears.
The content doesn't originate with words. After the fact, I can look at the drawings, and put a word story to them. Such as the mice. I can say now that the mice are very much like the white eyed bee that is very close to Ro all the time. The Bee and the Mice are a function of Little Roja's intuition. The Bee is usually closer to her head and serves as a symbol for her wisdom. Her little-girl-inside-wisdom that alerts her when something is not quite as it should be. The mice are closer to the earth. They are a kind of pragmatic understanding of cause and effect. The cat is my cat, Bulldozer. At 7 lbs., she has an infamous "stink eye" and has kept many a big dog at bay with her unwavering glare. She is more interested in that wolf than the mice who are, after all, friends. But that wolf, he just doesn't smell right.
Yeah, I really loved those bears. But I think my art director, Cecilia Yung was probably accurate to say that their presence cluttered the page(s). As well they never quite made sense to her. I can see that, well, Bears are BIG. Their story was big. And perhaps too concrete to play a sub role. Unlike the bee and mice they were not really symbols but were representative of actual people here.
>
> Probably everyone's first impression of Little Roja Riding Hood
> relates to the cover art where el lobo is featured, not little "Ro,"
> as you call her. Can you tell us about that decision?
I dummied up a photo of an old fashioned leather bound book with an oval inset of Little Roja (I think) for the cover. Then the designer, Marikka Tamura gave the idea a more modern twist by creating a similar but fresher looking cover and placing the wolf in Ro's cape in the inset as a place holder. Everyone at Putnam fell in love with that idea and so did I when they showed it to me. Little Riding hood is such a well known story, it's nice to have this visual twist to Little Roja before we even open the cover.
>
> Susan Guevara graciously worked with TeachingBooks.net to record the stories behind her book, Little Roja Riding Hood.
Thank you, Carin and Jeanette for the opportunity. It was great fun to be that nervous again about "presenting" --even as short as it was--after a hiatus of a few years.
> Enjoy!
> Carin
>
>
>
> Ginny pointed out that Abuela seems to be editing something and, in her
> notes, Susan mentioned she was a romance writer. I had also noticed
> that Little Roja's mother is a romance reader. (Whether she is reading
> Abuela's books or the books of one of her competitors, only Susan
> knows.) And at the beginning of the book, even before the title page,
> Little Ro is retuning home with a basket of books on the back of her
> ATV, specifically fairy tales. All three seem to be very caught up in
> traditional literature. Perhaps that is why they are so good at meeting
> the challenge when a wolf comes calling.
Dear KT, Yes, actually, those books that mama is reading are mostly written by her mother. And here is a case where one line sends me off into the entire world of a particular story.
"Roja," called Mom from her telenovelas... Telenovelas, romance novels, red dresses and dramatic flare ups. Abue is a romance writer! Abuela is modeled after 2 different people. The first is a good friend of mine from California who is a painter and novelist and whom I met at an SCBWI conference in 2007. The last morning we sat at the same breakfast table and decided to checkin once a week with our progress on our current writing and art projects. We did that pretty consistently for 5 years. She since has written 3 novels and I've had two gallery shows of my personal work. The second person Abue is modeled after is a writer/poet who owns an apple orchard in a small town north east of El Rito. Both women have long silver hair, wear lots of silver jewelry and are astoundingly persistent in their writing careers. One is Anglo and one is Hispanic.
As the book opens Little Roja is returning from the-- El Rito Library! Ta-da! She has a basket full of new books for her weekly reading pleasure. The covers of the fariy tales are taken from mini books I kept from my childhood. Mini mini books, I might add, found as the prizes in boxes of Cracker Jacks. As a child, Grimm tales were my favorite. They scared me half to death, were good for afternoon reading, not before bed reading. The Platero y Yo book is a nod to the importance of a relationship between an artist (in this case a writer) and his "animal", the natural world that surrounds him, and the beauty in life. I heard a few of these poems recited as lyrics to classical guitar music created just for them by the NM guitarist, Lynn McGrath. Since that time I have had an interest in illustrating the relationship between this man and his donkey and the world they inhabit together.
And yes, it was my original intent that this little girl came from a family of readers and that literacy and the reasoning powers it provided her were part of her strength.
>
> It's also a lot of fun to see what the duendes are doing on every page
> to cause chaos. I hadn't noticed until about the fifth reading that they
> are doing all sorts of things to the wolf's disguise to help Abuela see
> that he's an imposter. So even when they are making mischief, they are
> part of the world that supports Little Roja.
Those rascally duendes! They don't much care who receives the brunt of their mischief. They just like creating it. But funny how the universe just steps up and turns something rotten into something helpful. That's just the way it works.
Susan
>
>
> ---
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Received on Thu 25 Sep 2014 11:12:49 PM CDT
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 22:12:13 -0600
>
>
> Subject: Little Roja Riding Hood: Observations
> From: Ginny Moore Kruse
>
> Can you say more about the Three Blind Mice? And while you're at it,
> do you imply a subtext about the inattention of the cat to the
> presence of mice? Personally I mourn the loss of the Three Bears as
> you described and then decided against using them.
Thank you for your comments, Ginny!
I think it was when we were struggling with how to make the visual story of the Bears work from spread to spread that my editor, Susan Kochan, said something like "wouldn't it be funny to see the Three Blind Mice in here..." For the record, that is my all time most favorite type of exchange when making a book. One idea leads to another, one sketch holds the tiniest kernel of a new approach, one comment spawns a complete new sub story. To me, that is when the book's life begins to emerge. As these sub stories emerge I become very involved in the past and sometimes future of the characters. They often show up in my journal sketches or sometimes my personal work (which is what I call the art I make for no purpose other than I just have to make it.) I often just draw these characters and see what appears.
The content doesn't originate with words. After the fact, I can look at the drawings, and put a word story to them. Such as the mice. I can say now that the mice are very much like the white eyed bee that is very close to Ro all the time. The Bee and the Mice are a function of Little Roja's intuition. The Bee is usually closer to her head and serves as a symbol for her wisdom. Her little-girl-inside-wisdom that alerts her when something is not quite as it should be. The mice are closer to the earth. They are a kind of pragmatic understanding of cause and effect. The cat is my cat, Bulldozer. At 7 lbs., she has an infamous "stink eye" and has kept many a big dog at bay with her unwavering glare. She is more interested in that wolf than the mice who are, after all, friends. But that wolf, he just doesn't smell right.
Yeah, I really loved those bears. But I think my art director, Cecilia Yung was probably accurate to say that their presence cluttered the page(s). As well they never quite made sense to her. I can see that, well, Bears are BIG. Their story was big. And perhaps too concrete to play a sub role. Unlike the bee and mice they were not really symbols but were representative of actual people here.
>
> Probably everyone's first impression of Little Roja Riding Hood
> relates to the cover art where el lobo is featured, not little "Ro,"
> as you call her. Can you tell us about that decision?
I dummied up a photo of an old fashioned leather bound book with an oval inset of Little Roja (I think) for the cover. Then the designer, Marikka Tamura gave the idea a more modern twist by creating a similar but fresher looking cover and placing the wolf in Ro's cape in the inset as a place holder. Everyone at Putnam fell in love with that idea and so did I when they showed it to me. Little Riding hood is such a well known story, it's nice to have this visual twist to Little Roja before we even open the cover.
>
> Susan Guevara graciously worked with TeachingBooks.net to record the stories behind her book, Little Roja Riding Hood.
Thank you, Carin and Jeanette for the opportunity. It was great fun to be that nervous again about "presenting" --even as short as it was--after a hiatus of a few years.
> Enjoy!
> Carin
>
>
>
> Ginny pointed out that Abuela seems to be editing something and, in her
> notes, Susan mentioned she was a romance writer. I had also noticed
> that Little Roja's mother is a romance reader. (Whether she is reading
> Abuela's books or the books of one of her competitors, only Susan
> knows.) And at the beginning of the book, even before the title page,
> Little Ro is retuning home with a basket of books on the back of her
> ATV, specifically fairy tales. All three seem to be very caught up in
> traditional literature. Perhaps that is why they are so good at meeting
> the challenge when a wolf comes calling.
Dear KT, Yes, actually, those books that mama is reading are mostly written by her mother. And here is a case where one line sends me off into the entire world of a particular story.
"Roja," called Mom from her telenovelas... Telenovelas, romance novels, red dresses and dramatic flare ups. Abue is a romance writer! Abuela is modeled after 2 different people. The first is a good friend of mine from California who is a painter and novelist and whom I met at an SCBWI conference in 2007. The last morning we sat at the same breakfast table and decided to checkin once a week with our progress on our current writing and art projects. We did that pretty consistently for 5 years. She since has written 3 novels and I've had two gallery shows of my personal work. The second person Abue is modeled after is a writer/poet who owns an apple orchard in a small town north east of El Rito. Both women have long silver hair, wear lots of silver jewelry and are astoundingly persistent in their writing careers. One is Anglo and one is Hispanic.
As the book opens Little Roja is returning from the-- El Rito Library! Ta-da! She has a basket full of new books for her weekly reading pleasure. The covers of the fariy tales are taken from mini books I kept from my childhood. Mini mini books, I might add, found as the prizes in boxes of Cracker Jacks. As a child, Grimm tales were my favorite. They scared me half to death, were good for afternoon reading, not before bed reading. The Platero y Yo book is a nod to the importance of a relationship between an artist (in this case a writer) and his "animal", the natural world that surrounds him, and the beauty in life. I heard a few of these poems recited as lyrics to classical guitar music created just for them by the NM guitarist, Lynn McGrath. Since that time I have had an interest in illustrating the relationship between this man and his donkey and the world they inhabit together.
And yes, it was my original intent that this little girl came from a family of readers and that literacy and the reasoning powers it provided her were part of her strength.
>
> It's also a lot of fun to see what the duendes are doing on every page
> to cause chaos. I hadn't noticed until about the fifth reading that they
> are doing all sorts of things to the wolf's disguise to help Abuela see
> that he's an imposter. So even when they are making mischief, they are
> part of the world that supports Little Roja.
Those rascally duendes! They don't much care who receives the brunt of their mischief. They just like creating it. But funny how the universe just steps up and turns something rotten into something helpful. That's just the way it works.
Susan
>
>
> ---
==== CCBC-Net Use ==== You are currently subscribed to ccbc-net as: ccbc-archive_at_post.education.wisc.edu.
To post to the list, send message to...
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http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ccbcnet/archives.asp
To access the archives, go to...
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Received on Thu 25 Sep 2014 11:12:49 PM CDT
