Stephen Shaskan, PIZZA & TACO
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[1:09]needs a treat without a long spring. PageOneBooks.com. Welcome to Day Two of the second week of the
[1:17]July Book Blast. This is the, I guess, seventh day in all of my 10-day July Book Blast with episodes
[1:24]I recorded throughout the quarantine, some quarantine related, some not all of which deserve to see
[1:29]the light of day before the summer comes to an end. Today is Young Reader's Day. So I have a
[1:35]collection of children's books, middle grade, and all sorts of stuff that your kids might like,
[1:41]and how interesting to hear from children's book writers, which is exciting to me because I
[1:45]actually sold two children's books to Penguin Random House that I'll be coming out in the next year
[1:50]or two. So I have a personal affinity for children's book authors. Enjoy these episodes.
[1:55]Steven Shaskin is the author and illustrator of several picture books, including Big Two spelled
[2:01]C-H-O-O, Toad on the Road, Max Speed, the three Triceratops Tuff, a dog is a dog, and the new graphic
[2:08]novel series, which by the way, my little guy is like obsessed with, called Pizza and Taco.
[2:13]He also illustrated the picture book Punk Skunks in the graphic novel series Q and Ray,
[2:19]both written by his wife Trisha Speed Shaskin. Steven and Trisha live in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
[2:24]and love visiting schools and libraries reading their stories and inspiring
[2:27]young authors and illustrators. Hi. Hi. How's it going? Good. How about you?
[2:33]Good. Good. Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me. This is really great.
[2:38]Are these all your books in the back? You want to give me a little tour of that episode of these books?
[2:44]I have the three Triceratops Tuff picture book that I wrote with Simon Schuster and
[2:48]dogs a dog, the one right here in the middle. That one's my first book that I ever wrote,
[2:54]and that's with Chronicle Books back in 2011, and then Toad on the Road with Harper Collins,
[3:01]along with my books with my wife Trisha Speed Shaskin, the Toad on Punk Skunks, which is over here,
[3:07]I think, and then what else? The Q and Ray series also I wrote with Trisha, and so yeah, that's
[3:14]been a lot of fun too, but yeah, so those are my books. I work as an educational assistant and an
[3:20]after-school art teacher for about eight years in the public schools here in Minneapolis, and then
[3:25]from there I went on to be working in preschools for about 12 years, so I was a preschool teacher for
[3:31]12 years, and yeah, and then I slowly transitioned over here into making books for kids. I went to
[3:38]to Rhode Island School of Design for Illustration, but that was a long, long time ago. So that's
[3:44]what my original attempt was, and I made a lot of my own comics when I was in my 20s and
[3:50]poster designs for bands and other things like that, but yeah, just started focusing on working
[3:55]on creating books for kids in the past 10 years or so, so yeah.
[3:59]Wow, well that's exciting, so tell me the story of publishing your first picture book for kids.
[4:03]Well, a dog's a dog is always a real fun one. It was while I was working as a preschool teacher,
[4:08]and I was coming up with ideas for different books, and I always put in a lot of fun things and books.
[4:13]This was going to be backwards obviously because of the Instagram thing, but dog is a dog.
[4:19]A fun thing about this book is I always put a little bit of nonsense in my books,
[4:22]you can tell by pizza and taco being just two characters that are just like kids, so that type of
[4:28]of thing, so it goes, a dog is a dog, whether it's not your nice, whether it's sons on the beach,
[4:35]or glides on the ice, a dog is a dog, if it's skinny, or fat, a dog is a dog, unless it's a cat.
[4:45]And so this goes on having a lot of different animals coming out at costumes and so forth,
[4:50]until it comes back to being a dog. But I just like, I like putting humor in my books, I like
[4:54]doing that, and so this book came about, I did drawings for it, and I sent it out, and it took
[5:02]a year to have a response to it. I had nine rejections from different publishers, and then a year
[5:08]after I sent it out, kind of a book's contacted me, and they really liked it, but they didn't like
[5:13]the art, and so I had to work on the art more, and I don't have an example of my original dummy,
[5:19]but it changed a lot, so yeah, and I really am happy with the end results. So yeah, so that's
[5:25]the story of my first book, but yeah, and then from there, it was just trying to figure out what
[5:30]comes next, and then what came next was the three triceratops tough, which I got that idea from
[5:35]three kids in my preschool who were pretending to play the Billy Goats Griffith as dinosaurs,
[5:40]and I was like, wow, that's a really good idea. Of course it made it absolutely no sense the way
[5:45]they were doing it. I had to make it make sense, so yeah. Wow. So when you were young, when you were
[5:52]a little kid, were you drawing all the time, or what were you, is that that was that your thing?
[5:57]Did you always know you wanted to do that, and the kid thing came later? Basically here.
[6:01]Yes, that's all I did. I drew all the time. It was my favorite thing to do. I always wanted to
[6:07]be an artist. My parents actually, you know, like I, you know, after going to art school, I realized
[6:11]that not everybody who likes to make art was supported by their parents. My parents were always
[6:17]really big into it. My dad was a stock broker. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, but she also did
[6:22]accounting for things and other stuff. But they both really supported my art. My dad actually
[6:27]even though he was a stock broker, painted on the side. So he did oil paintings, landscape paintings,
[6:33]like in the basement. He always had setups for his art, and right now he sells his art at art fairs.
[6:40]He's retired. He's 86 now, and he's down in Florida, and like he puts on art shows and art fairs
[6:47]and things. So he's always been, they've always been really super supportive of my art. And so that
[6:52]was a lot of fun growing up and always having supplies, always, that was something that they never
[6:58]had a problem with me doing, you know, like so. Yeah, I always love making art. I also love comics
[7:04]growing up. So reading comics was my main thing to read. I was considered reluctant reader,
[7:09]but at the time I probably read like 3000 comics. So thinking about how many comics did
[7:16]I would go to the comic store at least once a month with my dad and like and spend all my allowance
[7:22]on comics. And back then it was 60 cents a comic. And so, you know, my allowance wasn't that much.
[7:31]But still, like, you know, like over the course of the month, they would save it all off and be
[7:35]able to get something. So yeah, and that's like, like with pizza and taco, which was really cool.
[7:39]It's because when I was a kid, I just love comics so much. And I had friends, a group of friends
[7:44]in elementary school. I grew up in Syracuse, New York. And I had a group of friends there. And we
[7:50]all made comics. And we all drew comics and, and loved to make art and talk about comics and
[7:57]everything. So it was just a really cool thing. Like I, you know, and I grew up on like, you know,
[8:02]like all like the, the richy riches and the casper, the friendly ghosts and, you know, underdog,
[8:08]you know, all those like kind of goofy ones. But also, then I got into superhero comics,
[8:13]like the X-Men and the teen titans and those books and collected. And I still have quite a number
[8:19]of my collection, but not, not all my collection. Over time, things kind of went on down. I think
[8:26]I went from collecting comics to collecting albums in high school and stuff. So yeah, when I was
[8:31]working on, on this book, it was a lot of fun because I just delved back into like creating comics.
[8:37]And I had been making picture books for so long. And, and suddenly, like, I'm, I'm working on it in
[8:42]this medium that I just loved. And, and I'm just sitting there in my, you know, I have my desk working,
[8:48]and just laughing and having so much fun creating this. And when Q&A first came out, it was just
[8:56]there was kind of this joy just, you know, like just because it was like, wow, I created a real comic,
[9:02]you know, and like I said in my 20s, I made a bunch of like my own, you know, like kind of scrappy,
[9:07]Xerox copy, you know, comics, you know, independent, you know, like adult comics, but still,
[9:13]you know, like this was kind of like, wow, this is a real thing. And I was really excited. And
[9:17]that's what brought me to a pretty pizza and taco. So tell everybody more about pizza and taco,
[9:22]because it is so fantastic. It's sort of like an advanced elephant and piggy of sorts,
[9:28]like these new characters blasting on the scene. Tell me how you came up with it and, and all
[9:33]the rest. Well, this is the book right here. And pizza and taco is because we do a lot of school
[9:38]visits with Q&A, especially when we do a lot of school visits, we would create characters of kids,
[9:43]original characters, original comic characters, and kind of show kids how they can create their own.
[9:48]And one of the things, one of the big rules is to keep it to simple shapes, because you're
[9:53]drawing these characters over and over and over again, like, you know, hundreds of times in just
[9:57]one book, you know, you're drawing each character.
[10:00]And so that was a really important thing to get across to kids, to just use simple shapes,
[10:06]and that type of thing. And then we give some background to the characters before you start
[10:12]writing a story. You want to have a little bit of a background and think about who are these
[10:17]characters? What do they like to do? What are they afraid of? What all these types of things?
[10:22]And one of the things is what's their favorite food? And every school that we went to,
[10:27]it was either pizza or tacos. That was their favorite food. And it's funny because it's like
[10:35]my favorite food is pizza and Trisha's favorite food is tacos. And so that's kind of, it kind of
[10:40]made sense. And I was like, oh, you know, and there's that weird nonsense of like, oh, well, why don't I
[10:45]just make this into a wine table? Why aren't pizza and taco best friends, you know? And we had
[10:50]characters like pizza man, because every once in a while somebody would pick a like a triangle head.
[10:56]And so then I started thinking about, well, how simple can I draw a pizza pizza pizza and a taco,
[11:02]you know, pretty much a triangle and a half circle. And so I started having a lot of, you know,
[11:08]like you can see like it's just like a half circle here and then the triangle shape, you know,
[11:12]just just trying to keep it as simple as possible. So I could draw them over and over again.
[11:17]I was really also inspired by the narwhal and jelly series. I just love that Trisha and I also
[11:23]teach like week long comic classes at the Loth Literary Center here in Minneapolis. And it was
[11:30]really cool to see because like kids would come in and they'd be drawing all of the narwhal and jelly
[11:35]characters. And just seeing that like I wanted something that kids could draw easily themselves
[11:41]because I think that's really powerful for kids. And I've been doing that with different things
[11:47]where I've had a couple of school visits this past week and online and showing kids how to draw
[11:52]pizza and taco, but also showing them how to draw other characters that might be food related
[11:57]comic characters, you know, and the kids are immediately drawn to it and just drawing immediately
[12:03]and showing me their drawings. And it's just really cool to see, you know, that kind of thing.
[12:07]And there was one kid who already had created because they knew that I was coming, they had
[12:13]created a whole book on spaghetti and meatball. Awesome. Yeah.
[12:19]And I love how hamburger and hot dog have cameos in your book.
[12:23]Yes. Those are important. Important, you know, supporting, best supporting actress and actor
[12:28]in the middle. Actually, I think they're both points, but they're not very nice to hamburger and hot dog.
[12:34]And you know, some people have pointed that out, but I kind of, one of the things about
[12:40]pizza and taco is that they're kids and they have flaws and they're not perfect. And they're
[12:46]going to be jerks sometimes. And sometimes, even though this book, they're kind of jerks to
[12:50]each other and like, you know, that just happens. Like, you know, like, you can't have a best friend
[12:55]without having a best friend fight. You can't have, you know, like, you can't grow out without having,
[13:00]you know, kids around that you're not that friendly with, you know, it just happens. You can't
[13:05]be friends with everyone. And, you know, like, it's an unrealistic adult perception of childhood,
[13:11]you know, like, I think, you know, if you think back to when you were in kindergarten in
[13:15]first grade, there are kids that you like, and there are kids that you didn't like, and there are
[13:19]kids that, you know, you wanted to play with and kids that were like, oh, god, do I have to play
[13:23]with that kid again? And so, and I know, I'm not, I'm not saying that that's good. I'm just saying
[13:28]that that's real, you know, and, and, you know, flaws and characters are real and, and these characters
[13:34]have a lot of flaws. Perfect characters. So yeah. And how is it collaborating with your bike?
[13:42]What is that like, and how is the coronavirus sort of impacted your work together?
[13:47]Well, I'm actually working on dumbing out of the picture book that she just wrote while I'm
[13:53]working on. I just finished dumbing out the third pizza in Taco. The second pizza in Taco
[13:58]comes out next year and pizza in Taco. That's party ever. And so they throw a party, but like,
[14:03]I just finished dumbing out the third book, which is where they make a comment on that
[14:07]she just wrote. We work really well together, actually, which is really nice. Always when we're
[14:12]working on stuff, you know, she's written probably like three or four picture books since working on
[14:17]something to grant collaboratively last time. And most of them are things that I wouldn't work on.
[14:23]And now this last project, I was like, I really like this project. I think I could work on this
[14:27]project. And so when we work on projects together, it's typically something that we're both invested
[14:33]and we're not like we're not forcing it or it's something that we both really like and want to do.
[14:38]And that's really important. And we're also like really respectful of each other. We, you know,
[14:44]we have we have fights. But like when it comes to writing and creating books together, we're
[14:50]we've tried to make the best book we can. So we're really working on doing that. And so I think
[14:56]it's funny because I think we've got each other a little bit more wrong when it's a book that we're
[15:00]not working on when it's one of our own things, our own projects, you know, and we're critiquing
[15:05]our, you know, something that like I'll be critiquing something that she's working on that I'm not
[15:09]working on with her or she'll be critiquing something that I'm working on that that she's not
[15:14]working on with me. And yeah, we're a little like we tend to be like not as good friends.
[15:22]So, but yeah, but everything. And you know, for me, like the one one thing that was kind of
[15:28]crummy was with all the coronavirus stuff is that we basically ended up canceling probably like
[15:35]eight different events, like school visits and so forth. Because, you know, as of for us, it was
[15:41]pretty much it was March 14th, I think was the was when we started shutting down here in Minneapolis.
[15:47]And we had I think three events the next week at different schools to go to and different
[15:53]things like that. And ones that hadn't been figured quite out for, you know, for May and June.
[15:59]And and so that was kind of tough. But we worked from home. Anyways, we both have a studio in our
[16:05]house. We both have, you know, places where we work. And so that really has an effect. Luckily,
[16:10]I was on deadline. So like I just focused on that and then yeah, and then an on deadline again.
[16:17]So I'm so yeah, like for me, I really enjoy working at home and being isolated and doing
[16:25]this is how I focus. So yeah, I don't think I with all the school visits that we had. I don't
[16:30]think I would have been able to finish the second book and yeah, third book all in this time as well.
[16:35]So yeah. And do you have any parting advice for aspiring illustrators, artists, children's book
[16:43]you know, my advice is for kids more than for inspiring. And that's if you like something just
[16:49]keep doing it. And when I talked about how I had those friends in elementary school that I made
[16:55]comics with out of that group of kids, I think they were like five of us. Only two went on to be
[17:01]artists. And that's me and my another friend. And he does fine art. I do comics or I do and picture books.
[17:09]But I was probably out of those five friends, like probably like as talent goes like fifth.
[17:18]So but I just kept doing it. And nowadays they're like, if those kids who are now adults would be
[17:25]drawing again, you know, they wouldn't be as strong of a drawing artist as I am because they just
[17:31]stopped doing it. And so yeah. And they're having very happy lives doing this.
[17:38]Don't let other kids get you there. And if you see somebody else being a better artist in you,
[17:43]that's great. Just keep working at it. You'll get better and better. And if you like music,
[17:47]you like science, you feel like anything, just keep working at it. So yeah, that's my
[17:52]kids. I'm going to play this for my kids later. So thank you.
[17:56]Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. And
[18:00]thanks for the hours of entertainment you give in us during this quarantine with pizza and taco.
[18:06]Really grateful. So thank you. Okay. Thank you. Bye. Thanks so much for listening to young readers
[18:14]Tuesday, part of my July book blast. I hope you've enjoyed it. Thanks again for listening to my
[18:20]podcast. Moms don't have time to read books. If you liked this episode, please follow me on
[18:25]Instagram at zibi Owens and at mom's don't have time to read books and sign up for my mailing list
[18:31]at zibi Owens.com. So you can always hear about the latest things I'm up to. Thanks a lot.
[18:36]Thanks so much to page one books for sponsoring today's episode. I hope you'll all check out my
[18:40]summer beach bundle at page one books dot com. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at texture sound
[18:46]for the sound editing. And thank you to morning moon productions for providing this fantastic
[18:50]intro and now trim music. Thanks for listening. You could always email me at zibi Owens.com.