Mac Barnett and Christian Robinson are coming to my local children's bookstore at the end of the month. Woot! Woot! I'm so THERE!
I've been digging in, looking to learn a bit more about them before I show up at the event. So far, my research has taken me off on a Jon Klassen tangent (Jon and Mac have teamed up on a number of picture books). Here are some inspiring words from both Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett that I transcribed from YouTube videos.
Inspiring words from Jon Klassen
(accepting a 2012 Boston Globe Horn Book award for Extra Yarn)
"By nature [picture books are] suggestive. The author isn’t telling the whole story, and the illustrator isn’t telling the whole story. The negative space in between those two things is the story. And the people reading it are filling that up with whatever they’re bringing to it.”
"The more general these books are and the more latitude they give us to wander around and sort of fill it up with our own experiences and really get personal with them, the more we can’t help meeting each other in them, the more we can’t help but make it a collective thing and sort of join up inside this weird extra spot that the book didn’t even mean to make."
Inspiring words from Mac Barnett
(accepting a 2012 Boston Globe Horn Book award for Extra Yarn)
"I think the picture book is uniquely positioned as a storytelling medium. The great divide in fiction is between the commercial and the literary. Commercial fiction has to entertain first, and literature should provide some sort of insight in what it means to live. I think that distinction is usually rigorously policed by writers and critics and readers and marketing departments. But in picture books that border is more porous. It’s a popular art. A picture book must be entertaining, but it’s also expected to convey some truth. Books that try too hard to please can end up pandering. And books that strain for meaning can end up moralizing. But the best picture books meet this dual obligation, and we get to write literary fiction that people actually buy. What a world!"
"The tradition of the picture book is a tradition of experimentation. … It’s the bold books—the experiments—that drive our form."
"There are no formulas. There are no dogmas. There are no rules except for this: ‘Try to write books that are honest and good.’"
I've been digging in, looking to learn a bit more about them before I show up at the event. So far, my research has taken me off on a Jon Klassen tangent (Jon and Mac have teamed up on a number of picture books). Here are some inspiring words from both Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett that I transcribed from YouTube videos.
Inspiring words from Jon Klassen
(accepting a 2012 Boston Globe Horn Book award for Extra Yarn)
"By nature [picture books are] suggestive. The author isn’t telling the whole story, and the illustrator isn’t telling the whole story. The negative space in between those two things is the story. And the people reading it are filling that up with whatever they’re bringing to it.”
"The more general these books are and the more latitude they give us to wander around and sort of fill it up with our own experiences and really get personal with them, the more we can’t help meeting each other in them, the more we can’t help but make it a collective thing and sort of join up inside this weird extra spot that the book didn’t even mean to make."
Inspiring words from Mac Barnett
(accepting a 2012 Boston Globe Horn Book award for Extra Yarn)
"I think the picture book is uniquely positioned as a storytelling medium. The great divide in fiction is between the commercial and the literary. Commercial fiction has to entertain first, and literature should provide some sort of insight in what it means to live. I think that distinction is usually rigorously policed by writers and critics and readers and marketing departments. But in picture books that border is more porous. It’s a popular art. A picture book must be entertaining, but it’s also expected to convey some truth. Books that try too hard to please can end up pandering. And books that strain for meaning can end up moralizing. But the best picture books meet this dual obligation, and we get to write literary fiction that people actually buy. What a world!"
"The tradition of the picture book is a tradition of experimentation. … It’s the bold books—the experiments—that drive our form."
"There are no formulas. There are no dogmas. There are no rules except for this: ‘Try to write books that are honest and good.’"
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