Sarah (00:03):
Step back in time with me. It’s August, 2018 and we are in Northampton. Massachusetts. Northampton is a picturesque vibrant town in Western Mass. Now I live in Washington State, but I’m here in New England because my oldest two daughters and I have been invited to the home of Tomie dePaola, the iconic children’s book illustrator, and a man I have a blooming friendship with, through my work at Read-Aloud Revival. Before our visit with Tomie however, we’ve rented a car and made our way to Northampton for a special breakfast date with another favorite author.
(00:47):
The sun is bright today and it’s hot, but the trees lining the streets are swaying a gentle breeze, and the sky is blue, blue, blue. People are bustling along the town streets, having amicable conversations and petting one another’s dogs. Ah, here we are. Sylvester’s.
(01:12):
Like I said, two of my daughters, Audrey and Allison, they’re 16 and 14 right now, are with me and we’re about to have breakfast with none other than Jeanne Birdsall, author of the Penderwicks. Oh, you know the Penderwicks I hope? The first in the series is simply called The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale Of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, And A Very Interesting Boy. It’s a contemporary series about Rosalind, Jane, Skye, Batty and their friend Jeffrey. And it’s heavily inspired by Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.
(01:52):
When I found out I was coming to new England to meet up with Tomie, I reached out to Jeanne Birdsall, who I had recently interviewed for Read-Aloud Revival, to let her know I’d be in the area and would she be up to meeting for coffee? She said, “Yes, breakfast,” and she knew just the place. That’s why we are meeting at Sylvester’s. Sylvester’s shows up in my favorite of the Penderwick books, book number four, The Penderwicks In Spring. Sylvester’s is the restaurant that Jeffrey and Batty were going to have breakfast at.
(02:27):
So anyway, we arrive and slide into a booth with the one and only Jeanne Birdsall. She is a wonder, I really could not have predicted what would happen next.
(02:44):
I’m Sarah McKenzie, and this is the Read-Aloud Revival, the podcast that helps your kids fall in love with books and helps you fall in love with homeschooling. In this episode, I’m going to tell you about the surprising idea that popped into my head while spending that morning with Jeanne Birdsall. Actually, the idea that popped into my head didn’t stay just an idea. It became something much bigger resulting in our newest project here at Read-Aloud Revival. We are launching a boutique publishing house.
(03:17):
In this special edition, I’m peeling back the curtain on what happened to that seed of an idea that was planted when Jeanne Birdsall showed me her gardens. And yes, of course it has to do with books.
(03:31):
Now, if you’ve been around here long, you already know that reading aloud is a parenting power move. There is no single better way to set our kids up for academic success while also forming warm, rich relationships with them and helping them grow in both empathy and fortitude. When we read a story, we’re rooting for the same heroes, fearing the same villains, we’re crying and laughing, and seeing the world with fresh eyes together. Here at Read-Aloud Revival, I’ve spent the past eight years diving into the best picture books I could find. I’ve interviewed some of today’s finest authors and illustrators, and I’ve traveled all over the country, meeting thousands of families with the singular aim of helping them have the best read aloud experience possible.
(04:21):
I’ve maxed out my library card again and again, in my effort to find the most beautiful best made, read alouds for you. It follows then doesn’t it, that we’d start making those kinds of books ourselves? Well, today it is my enormous pleasure to introduce you to Waxwing Books, our brand new boutique children’s publishing house. I wrote our first picture book, A Little More Beautiful: The Story Of A Garden, and today I’m going to tell you all about it.
(04:52):
“In a little town not far from here, lived in old lady named Lou Alice. She was sly as a fox and swift as a bird. Every day, Lou Alice went for a walk, past the library, through the city park by the town hall, and back home to her little house. Lou Alice decided to leave each day more beautiful than she found it. One afternoon, rather than passing the town hall, she went inside. “I would like to plant a garden here,” she said to the man in charge. ‘That is too much work for you, Lou Alice,’ the man responded. ‘Go on home and don’t worry about the town hall.’ Lou Alice, however, was sly as a fox and swift as a bird and under the light of the moon, she planted that garden. Sow, tend, water, mend.”
(06:00):
A Little More Beautiful is the first of several stories coming from Waxwing books. Now, a picture book is an art form. So much goes into it, not just the text and the illustrations, but the thing itself, the book you hold in your hands. It’s doing a lot of storytelling in its size and shape, in the typography, how the text and illustrations work together and appear, where those page turns are. A lot of hands and a lot of careful thought goes into making the picture books that you love most. And making a truly stunning picture book and doing it well, it’s a lot of work. Now, I have a tendency to take on projects that I do not know how to do. For example, this podcast. When I started this podcast in 2014, I didn’t know how someone gets their voice into iTunes. Of course, eight years and 10 million downloads later, we’re still here, hopefully making podcasts you love to listen to.
(07:08):
Motherhood is another example. I’m not sure any of us really knows what we’re doing when we launch into that project, but grace appears the moment we need it. Not a moment early or late. And it turns out that this new project of creating a picture book that is worthy of being read again and again, that demonstrates all of the beautiful elements that make a picture book stand the test of time and a delicious bonding experience for families, well, that has a steep learning curve. Also, we decided this wouldn’t be our only picture book, it’s just the first. We’ve created a boutique publishing house and getting that publishing house off the ground has been an interesting adventure.
(07:51):
In this episode, I’m going to show you how the sausage, how the picture book, was made. By the way, pre-orders for A Little More Beautiful: The Story Of A Garden, open Wednesday, August 10th, and you can secure your copy in our first print run by pre-ordering the book on Kickstarter. Make sure you’re on our email list so you don’t miss out when those pre-orders open. There are some super fabulous Kickstarter only rewards like a brand new book bag, plus all kinds of goodies for everyone who orders on Kickstarter. So, head to readaloudrevival.com/subscribe to make sure you’re are notified when those pre-orders open, or you can just text the word Waxwing, all one word, to the number 33777.
(08:44):
Now, let’s head back to Sylvester’s, to that morning in 2018, when my daughters and I were meeting Jeanne Birdsall for breakfast, I want you to hear from Jeanne herself and from one of my daughters too, this is how my oldest daughter Audrey remembers it.
Audrey (09:03):
I grew up reading the Penderwick novels and loved Jeanne Birdsall’s work. And so getting to meet her was such a delight. And I remember we were sitting in the corner seat of a little bistro and she was talking about all the things she was passionate about and all the work that she did. And she was just wildly and abundantly exactly who she was. It was so fun to see an author that I had read and loved the work of, be a whole person in front of me and get to see all of who she was and all of that interested her and just get a taste of what it was like, her life was like.
Sarah (09:38):
I think Jeanne can’t be anything other than herself, and what a joy. She asked my girls all about their interests, the books, they like, their hobbies. What it’s like being my kid. We had such a good time. And after breakfast, Jeanne asked if we might like to take a walk to visit her favorite local, independent bookstore and follow that up with iced tea in her garden. Ah, yeah, yeah, we’d like that.
Audrey (10:08):
Later that afternoon, we went to her garden where we had iced tea and there were butterflies flying throughout onto her different flowers and plants. And it was just really beautiful to get a taste of her tangible life outside of writing and what fueled her and how she was inspired and what brought these characters in these stories to life.
Sarah (10:29):
As we walked through the town, genie pointed out a government building that had pretty flowers along the side, it hadn’t always looked that nice. She told us, in fact, for a long while she passed this building and was just astonished by how poorly the grounds were tended.
Jeanne (10:47):
I was just appalled at how gross it was, with the weeds and every once in a while, two hostas next to each other. Further down the street, somebody had left a couple of pots of sedum. I went past them three days or something, then I said, “I’m taking these sedum.” But I couldn’t put them in my own yard, that felt too awful. So I planted them in … I just went up and put them in the courtyard garden and then I kept going back and forth. And I thought, “What if I just started working on this?”
(11:19):
So it just started a little bit at a time, taking out the really bad things and then splitting things from my own garden and putting them in there and then buying things. It was very gradual. And the only person that really knew I was there and saw me was this wonderful custodian named Ron. He didn’t tell anybody I was there, but what happened was that people, as they noticed, then what are they going to do? I mean, it started looking better and I still take care of it.
Sarah (11:48):
I looked with wonder at this vibrant woman, little did I know that a little seed of a story of a woman who was determined to make her world more beautiful, even when no one else noticed. And even when she went completely without credit, was taking root and wouldn’t let me go. What I heard all during our day together was that this was a small, joyful way that Jeanne Birdsall leaves each day a little more beautiful than she found it. She, as you might imagine, has some really compelling ideas about what a garden is and what a garden does.
Jeanne (12:30):
One thing that gardens represent is place, is security, is home, because you don’t make a garden that you can keep moving around. People will say, “Your house is my favorite house in town.” I always want to giggle because there’s some really gorgeous, really gorgeous, houses in this town. And it’s the garden. I think it’s what it represents, that somebody loves their home enough to surround it by a garden.
(13:10):
The other thing that a garden represents for me is hope for the future. I talked about the lilacs and I have about a dozen scattered all over and I have ones that are five years old now that are about as tall as me, but haven’t yet bloomed because they’re too young. When I plant anything that isn’t going to bloom right away, it feels like trust in the future. Giving beauty to the world is so hard to quantify, that I almost don’t believe I’m doing anything. The things that come easily to us and that we love doing, I think there’s this sense that good works have to be difficult and take something out of you.
Sarah (14:00):
Gosh, I feel that. I think a lot of us do. We’re skeptical of the things that come easily to us, like we’re not sure they really count. If it doesn’t seem difficult or arduous, we question, is it even worthy? Is it even valuable? But whether it’s writing books or tending a garden at a local government building Jeanne Birdsall leaves each day more beautiful than she found it.
(14:28):
Months later, I was interviewing another amazing author as part of our family book club in RAR Premium, our online program for families to share books together. This time the author was Kate DiCamillo, an author I’m sure you’ve heard of, Because Of Winn-Dixie, The Tale Of Despereaux, The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane, Mercy Watson. There are a lot of others. She’s a multiple time Newberry Award winner, and she’s brilliant. Writing of course is how Kate DiCamillo leaves the world more beautiful than she found it. Well, she probably doesn’t describe it that way exactly, but if you read Kate’s books, you know that’s what she’s doing. So during our interview, I asked Kate about writing every day. That’s hard. How does she do it?
Kate DiCamillo (15:18):
I get up early while it’s still dark and I have the coffee baker set to go off automatically. I come downstairs for a cup of coffee. I go in and do two pages and I do the two pages before the interior voice that says, “You don’t know what you’re doing,” the critic is how I think of it, before that voice wakes up. And so then the most important part of the day is done before I can talk myself out of doing it.
Sarah (15:50):
Now, she said all of this kind of offhand, but it made a lasting impact on me. She puts her coffee pot on a timer the night before, she sets herself up to succeed ahead of time by doing that. When her alarm goes off in the morning, no excuses. She knows a pot of coffee is hot, fresh and waiting. What if I tried that? So, I did. The next story that came out of me sprouted right from that seed that Jeanne Birdsall had planted months before, about a woman who makes the world more beautiful, a woman who was dismissed, told she’s a liability and to go on home and leave the work to someone else more fit for it. A woman who creeps out in the quiet of night and plants a beautiful garden to make the world more beautiful.
(16:43):
“And the little garden grew. Town hall workers sighed as they arrived each morning, they didn’t know why they felt happier than they had before. Wasn’t the world a beautiful place? Sow, tend, water, mend. Then one day, Lou Alice was moved from her little house to a new home. She missed the library. She missed the city park. She missed her little garden outside the town hall. No one noticed that Lou Alice was gone. No one but a little girl. This little girl had keen eyes and a sharp mind. She noticed when Lou Alice made each day more beautiful and she missed her.”
(17:40):
Now, in this story, this little girl carries on the traditions of the old woman. And yet she also knows she must do something of her own to make the world more beautiful and to make Lou Alice’s world more beautiful. The girl knows she has to bring something else, something she specifically was put here to do. I asked Jeanne, what is it about a garden that feels personal to you?
Jeanne (18:04):
I always want it to look like the way a child thinks a garden should look, flowers here and there and they didn’t really match, and they’re different heights. I love seeing children pass by and just … The best compliment I ever had was when I crouch down to weed and people walk by and say stuff, and it’s always nice thank goodness. But this one little boy said to his father, “When I grew up, I’m going to have a bright garden just like that,” it was … That’s pretty wonderful to think of it, that a child would take that and maybe then want to make it something of their own too.
Sarah (18:50):
Now, I should mention the story didn’t come out exactly like I’ve been reading it here. I wrote, well, I’m not sure how many drafts, but a lot of drafts and each pass got the story a little closer to what it wanted to be. Now, I read picture books for a living and I could easily look at my words and see that they still were not where they needed to be. The story, like a garden, needed a little work, a little fertilizer, a little weeding, pruning, tending. So, I sent it to Caroline Starr rose, another author I love, who also offers critiques for other writers. I love Caroline’s books, Maybe, Bluebirds, Jasper And The Riddle Of Riley’s Mine. She’s also got some fabulous picture books. Anyway, Caroline has a service she offers for authors where she’ll look at a manuscript and offer feedback.
Caroline (19:49):
When you came to me saying, “I’m writing picture books,” and you sent them in and I think, “Oh my word.” I mean your scope, your interest, your ability, just the variety of things that you were attempting, it was brave. It was clever, it was insightful. I was so impressed.
(20:06):
With a picture book, I do like to do a quick read through. I try not to put any comments on the manuscript. Sometimes I can’t keep my hands off. I try to get a full sense of the story before I start commenting but sometimes I can’t stop myself. I do keep a few notes. And what I do is I start a document immediately that will end up being the editorial letter because when I do these critiques, I leave line edits within the manuscript itself, and then I create an editorial letter as well, which is what my editors do for me too. Line edits would be honing in on a specific word or sentence and asking questions with the comment box feature in Word Doc. And then the editorial letter is more comprehensive.
(20:52):
It might explain some of those specific comments that I might have had on the third paragraph on the second page, but it’s a more comprehensive look at the piece. It might have very specific things to say, but it’s an overarching, here are a list of ideas and things that I think need to happen to help strengthen this work. So, if there’s a place I’m confused or if there’s a place where I stop and feel distracted, you’re going to hear that from me.
Sarah (21:19):
And I did hear from her. Actually, I pretty much never feel like any picture book text I’ve written is ready for anyone else’s eyeballs until Caroline has looked at it and offered her feedback. She’s very, very good at what she does. So, I rewrote the story a few more times based on Caroline’s very helpful suggestions and time marched on.
(21:48):
About a year after my visit with Jeanne Birdsall, I went back to New England to see Tomie dePaola again. I was developing a little habit of visiting him in the summer at his home and barn studio. And while I was there, he asked to see the manuscript of my story. Yikes, that was nerve wracking. Let me tell you, Tomie dePaola took writing for children very seriously. To his mind, only the best stories deserved to make their way into the hands of our kids. So for an hour, he took my four page story and critiqued every inch of it. It was a refining fire, kind of painful at times, if I’m being honest. There were scowls and suggestions. And in fact, this is where he began to say quite frequently, “Oh, Sarah.” Usually when he was critiquing some turn of phrase I’d used or when he thought I was trying to be overly clever.
(22:50):
Actually Tomie dedicated one of his final books to me using that exact phrase. “Oh, Sarah.” Really, he did. Look at the dedication inside the Cat On The Dovrefell and you can see it for yourself. It became a term of endearment between us. Okay, so at the end of his incredibly intense critique, he told me, “I love it. I would like to illustrate this book.”
(23:20):
I rewrote the story a few more times based on Tomie’s feedback. And then I got an agent. My agent pitched the book in New York to several big publishing houses, with Tomie as a potential illustrator, but nothing really happened. It just wasn’t the book they were looking for. This is all quick to say, but it actually took a long time. It took a couple of years, actually.
(23:46):
Sadly, early in 2020, Tomie fell. He passed away unexpectedly following a surgery and grieving him was harder than I imagined it would be. I still miss him every day. I still hear his voice in my head. “Oh, Sarah.”
(24:11):
Now, my husband, Andrew, who’s always been my biggest cheerleader had been saying for years that I already knew what made a beautiful picture book. He’d say I actually had pretty sizeable opinions on what makes a beautiful picture book, go figure. “You specialize in recommending the very best picture books at Read-Aloud Revival,” he said, “So why don’t you just launch your own publishing imprint?” Yeah, because that’s kind of a big deal. Being able to read a picture book and know it’s a work of art is very different than being able to make one. That, I was sure, was out of my depth.
(24:52):
But around Christmas of 2020 something welled up in me, a desire to stop waiting, a desire to make this book, this book that I loved and that Tomie loved, come to life. A desire to make the kinds of books I knew I wanted on my kids’ shelves. Books that engage and inspire and delight, that are good, and tell the truth without being preachy, that are beautiful and thought-provoking, and make you want to spend a little more time with them than is strictly necessary. Books that parents will love to read aloud and that our kids will beg us to read to them again and again. Books that delight everyone in the family, no matter their age.
(25:35):
And so, in keeping with my habit of wading into territory where I have no idea what I’m doing, we decided to create Waxwing Books, a boutique children’s publishing imprint that makes the kind of books we know families want. And we’re starting with A Little More Beautiful: The Story Of A Garden.
(25:56):
On the next episode of the podcast, I’ll take you behind the scenes of making this book. See, we needed a team to create the caliber of book we were dedicated to making. We wanted the best of the best we needed pros. And we found them. We found an illustrator.
Breezy (26:15):
I’m Breezy Brookshire, and I’m the illustrator of A Little More Beautiful: The Story Of A Garden.
Sarah (26:21):
We found an editor.
Michael (26:23):
I’m Michael Green. I run a company called GreenHouse editorial, and I was fortunate enough to work on A Little More Beautiful, and very glad that I did. It’s been a fun process.
Sarah (26:34):
And we found Cara Llewellyn, an amazing and very accomplished art director.
Cara (26:40):
The short answer I always give to neighbors and stuff when they ask me what I do, is that I take a Word document from the author and sketches from the illustrator and I make it look like a book. Basically shortening maybe a year’s worth of work into one sentence.
Sarah (26:57):
You’ll meet each of them and hear about the process of how we are making this book come to life in the next episode. And you’ll see how the early conversations with Jeanne Birdsall and Caroline Starr Rose and Tomie dePaola nurtured a little seat of an idea for a book into something rather beautiful.
Jeanne (27:16):
It feels like another way of the garden paying forward, that it became a story for you.
Caroline (27:23):
I cannot express how gorgeous your book is, I’m just … you’ve never created a whole book before. How did you do that? I wouldn’t have the first idea to know what to do. That’s amazing.
Sarah (27:40):
In the meantime, head to waxwingbooks.com to make sure you get your copy of A Little More Beautiful: The Story Of A Garden in the first print run. You’ll do that by pre-ordering the book on Kickstarter. And you’ll be the first to know when that Kickstarter launches if you text, Waxwing, all one word, to the number 33777. And if you’re listening to this episode after the Kickstarter is complete head to waxwingbooks.com and you can order a copy of the book for yourself.
(28:12):
I am delighted to have you along on this journey. A Little More Beautiful is just the first in a line of books we’re making at Waxwing and this is our commitment. Every book we make is a book your kids will love to read and a book you’ll love to read aloud. I’ll be back in two weeks with the next installment. Until then, go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.
(28:40):
Pre-orders for A Little More Beautiful: The Story Of A Garden open August 10th, 2022. This episode was written and narrated by me, Sarah McKenzie, and produced by the team at Yellow House Media. Until next time, go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.
