Sophie Blackall, IF YOU COME TO EARTH
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[1:34]Welcome to the first day of my children's book blast. The first episode that I'm releasing today is If You Come to Earth by Sophie Blackal.
[1:44]Inspired by the thousands of childrens, she met and travels around the world for Save the Children in UnifSef.
[1:50]Two-time Cal Decot Winter Sophie Blackal has created an ambitious yet child accessible book of everything.
[1:58]Sophie Blackal, for those of you who might not know, is also the illustrator of the Ivy and Bean series,
[2:03]which my older daughter is obsessed with. She's also illustrated a bazillion other books,
[2:08]including Finding Winnie, The Baby Tree, Are You A Wake, Big Red Lollipop,
[2:14]another favorite of ours, Red Butterfly, Ruby's Wish. That was also great. And so many other
[2:20]books. And I was just thrilled to have a hard to heart with her. Hello. How are you? Good, thank you.
[2:27]How are you? Oh my gosh, I tried to like take a shower and get dressed in time for this call. And I
[2:31]just ran out of time. I took my dog for this log walk. And then I was like, oh my gosh, it's
[2:38]later than I thought. So anyway, why don't we talk about your beautiful new book, which is just
[2:44]amazing with your characteristic, beautiful illustrations and all the rest, these positive
[2:50]world messages and everything. Tell me a little about what made you write this book. And why now?
[2:56]Well, I happen to have it right here. I prepared. It's called If You Come to Earth. And I have been
[3:04]incredibly fortunate to work with UNICEF and Save the Children and had traveled with them
[3:09]to various countries over the years to Bhutan and Rwanda and Congo and India. And meeting children
[3:16]in all of these countries was something I think about every day, you know, it was just incredible
[3:21]privilege. And but on some level, it was frustrating because they couldn't talk to them for the most
[3:27]part. Often they would have very little English and I run to some French and that's about it.
[3:32]Thankfully, I couldn't communicate with them. And that was, I would leave these tiny village
[3:38]schools on the top of the mountain where there had been maybe five or 10 kids and we'd spent
[3:42]the day together and we'd giggle and draw pictures because that is the way that I communicate with
[3:47]anyone if I can't talk to them. But I would leave thinking, I don't ask you, I want to ask you
[3:53]about your life. So I want to ask you what you dream about what you mean, you know, what makes you
[3:57]love. And so I could do as much as I could do with drawing. But I found to make a book that would
[4:05]be for all kids in the world about all of us and the planet we share and the things that are familiar
[4:11]to us so that kids might see something they recognize in a book and also the things that we don't
[4:16]know about each other and the things that are surprising and unfamiliar. So that was the goal.
[4:23]I had no idea it would take so long because essentially it is a book about everything in the world
[4:28]and every time you put something in you're leaving something out and so it was helpful to find
[4:35]an narrator so I could blame the child. Well, it's this child's view of the world and everybody has
[4:41]their own view. So the emissions of omissions are theirs and not mine, but it did take seven years
[4:49]and it did take a village as most books do, but especially this one. Which part of the village
[4:55]was most helpful to you? It was somebody asked me recently what was the best part about making this
[5:00]book and I said without a hesitation it was the village because you know people are extraordinarily
[5:07]helpful when you ask them questions and I'd always been a little bit shy and I would
[5:12]kind of avoid, you know, talking to a stranger, but with this book I talked to so many strangers
[5:17]because I wanted to know the people I was putting in the book. Everybody, almost everybody in the
[5:23]book is somebody I met or saw with my own eyes or chatted to on the subway or in Central Park or
[5:30]you know on a very in Bhutan, a little tiny part bird or just along the way so all of these people
[5:36]have cameos in this book and to me it was kind of putting real people in this or even if they look
[5:43]like a cliched representation of somebody that that person was real I saw them I spoke to them
[5:48]and those people's stories are intertwined on every page of this book and to me when I open
[5:54]it it's this rich tapestry of humanity and that with every interaction I felt more grateful that
[6:02]I'm alive and part of that and for all our differences and especially now almost everybody has a
[6:09]smile and a story to tell you if you open and that was a big blessing for me. It's true so now that you
[6:16]have sort of united in this book like I feel that the world is so fractured right now I feel
[6:24]like this is the most divisive time I mean I've certainly lived through not that I'm so ancient
[6:28]but yeah in our in a in recent history I feel like it just keeps getting worse and you've been
[6:34]like this little soldier going around the world collecting a little you know more like a male lady
[6:40]or something right you're getting misses from everybody and mixing it all up so with that unique
[6:46]point of view like what can we do like how can we highlight the fact that we're all just human
[6:51]we're all going through the same stuff love and loss and what we put in our mouths for breakfast
[6:56]and you know just all the same stuff how do we make that message like rise to the floor.
[7:01]I think for me I think there are two ways that became sort of clear to me with this book for me at
[7:08]least and and it's a sort of macro and and micro kind of thing but the one is to talk to people
[7:15]and I think when you actually hear somebody else's story and again the kind of cliches of walking
[7:21]someone else's shoes which you kind of really do but but to hear somebody else's story
[7:26]makes them real to you and you know I always think that that with curiosity comes a certain
[7:33]empathy if if you're curious enough to ask another person instead of to make assumptions
[7:38]how are you feeling what do you feel about that I don't know I can imagine what your response might
[7:42]be but I don't know and so I should ask you and if you're willing to tell me then that is a gift
[7:47]and then I will learn something and that goes for people on who have very different political
[7:52]views to me they have signs in their back yard that I feel need to disagree with
[7:57]and yet they all come and help me fix a flat tire you know there's in Congo I met some of the most
[8:03]wonderful generous warm people who felt that being gay was a terrible sin and two of our four kids
[8:11]are gay so there there are so many things like that that I think oh we just see things so
[8:16]differently and yet there's this warmth and generosity to you and I think if maybe if you met
[8:21]my kids you might think differently and maybe if I you know listen to your stories I might
[8:27]be able to see more clearly what it's like to be a farmer and you know how difficult that has been
[8:32]and so so I think that's that's the micro and then I think the macro is whenever there's something
[8:38]global and a pandemic is one of those things but also a comet or an eclipse when we
[8:45]instead of looking down at our feet or you know inside our own heads we actually look out and up
[8:52]and realize that we are this one tiny planet in a vast vast universe and I think about the
[9:01]pale blue dot and Carl Sagan I'm a big Carl Sagan fan and him saying in that picture that was
[9:09]taken from Voyager 1 4 billion miles from Earth this this spec that's us that's here that's
[9:16]everyone we know everyone we love everyone we've never met suspended on a mode of dust in the
[9:22]sunbeam that's that's all we are and so if we can't learn to live together on this planet you know
[9:31]there's no hope for us so to try with the daily conversations I think wow you're like you should be
[9:37]like a mother to recent like world icon I feel like you know I mean it we need voices like yours
[9:45]to drown out the other voices honestly like this is such this like just so speaks to my beliefs
[9:52]in my heart and and what I think is important to and it's you say it in such a beautiful way and
[9:57]it literally illustrated so it's
[10:00]amazing. Have you always been this sort of holistic,
[10:03]strong word, but you know, so globally minded and, you know,
[10:06]a uniting type of force, like has this been in your DNA forever?
[10:10]Is it something that's grown out of you in adulthood?
[10:12]I don't know. I mean, I've always been really
[10:14]conflict of us. You know, I was one of those kids,
[10:17]oh no, you know, let's not fight. Have it your way.
[10:19]You know, it's just that I think I really think having had the
[10:24]opportunity to work with with UNICEF and save the children,
[10:27]you know, open the world to me in a way that I'll be forever grateful for.
[10:31]I mean, to walk into a village in the jungle in Congo where
[10:36]children had never seen anyone they didn't know before.
[10:39]I was extraordinary and to her spend this day with them and
[10:42]and then to walk away and think, I will remember this for the rest of my
[10:45]lives, but in my life, I don't know what, I don't know what
[10:48]you will think, but I think about those kids all the time,
[10:51]wonder what they're up to, and I hope they're well and surviving,
[10:55]and yeah, I don't know, I don't know.
[10:59]Had you always been an illustrator? Like, did you love to draw for me
[11:02]young age? Tell me about the progression of that part of your life?
[11:05]I was very fortunate that my mother was a single mother,
[11:08]but she really worked hard to make sure we always had art supplies.
[11:12]And even in my case, I would go, I lived in a country town in
[11:16]Australia and after school. I was allowed to walk home because
[11:20]that was the 70s and that's what you did. And I would walk home past
[11:23]the butcher shop and stop in and ask them for some of the paper,
[11:27]the big sheets of paper that they'd roll sausages up in and
[11:30]they knew me and they were very kind. They'd roll up paper and give me a
[11:34]couple of slices of baloney into the bargain. So it's a fantastic deal for me.
[11:38]But I always, always drew and my brother and I lived in
[11:42]most of our lives up trees with books and we had a rope strong between the trees
[11:46]and a basket and we would send books back and forth to each other and
[11:50]he was older so really I just wanted to read anything he was reading
[11:53]you know the hearty boys and all those kinds of adventure stories and
[11:58]and Winnie the Pooh and yeah so we just we're very lucky to grow up with
[12:03]books which so many kids don't you know it's a it's this
[12:08]privilege that I completely took for granted as a kid. My father is a publisher
[12:14]in Australia and so you know not only did we have books in every room of the
[12:18]house but but he was making books as well so I got to see that which was
[12:22]thrilling you know to turn a story and then put it you know into paper and
[12:25]ink and bind it into this beautiful physical object so I've always
[12:29]loved I can't imagine not having books around me. We
[12:33]we just downsized as empty nesters from a four bedroom apartment in Brooklyn
[12:38]into a cozy one bedroom which we thought was just this delightful
[12:41]corner building for with light but it is the noisiest corner
[12:46]so you can probably hear soon you'll hear a fire engine and a garbage truck
[12:50]and then I'm in Manhattan and usually there's that runs back and forth here too
[12:54]so I get it you know right. And so then how did you get your start
[12:59]illustrating professionally? It was what I always wanted to do I was one of those
[13:02]kids who uh yep that's what I'm going to do. I think it was Winnie the Pooh that
[13:07]I would look at Ernest Shepherd's drawings and trace them onto this butcher
[13:10]paper and try and figure out how you know break it down like how did he make
[13:15]those lines and how did he put so much character into those tiny sketches
[13:19]and then I just sort of said about doggedly getting
[13:22]to do that and I remember being sent my first manuscript
[13:28]and just getting goosebumps and thinking this is this is it was a book called
[13:31]Ruby's Wish written by Sherynian Bridges and it's a true story of her
[13:35]grandmother who grew up in China and she was one of the first
[13:37]girls to go to university and so it was it fed into all of my kind of
[13:41]feminist you know goals can do anything principles and it was this wonderful
[13:46]story and I had just spent time in China and so so everything kind of came
[13:50]together and it was it was just thrilling
[13:53]and I still there in most days I think it's almost too
[13:56]lovely to to consider that this thing that I do is work you know it's
[14:01]it's like you actually get to do this and call it works
[14:04]traveling and drawing in books and children all my favorite things and
[14:08]and they're all combined so very lucky.
[14:11]Oh my older daughter I have four kids as well and my older daughter was so
[14:15]excited that I was talking to you because she has met all the IV and V
[14:19]and we have like walls of IV and V
[14:22]Oh that's slant just waiting for my next kids to get
[14:25]interested and of course we've read like just so many of your beautiful
[14:29]picture books and all the rest too.
[14:32]That's lovely particularly rewarding to be able to hear
[14:35]from you are in are you remarried now not to keep prying into now I feel like
[14:39]it. We were actually going to get married this summer but we decided we
[14:43]couldn't have a wedding if we couldn't hug our friends and family so we're
[14:47]going to try and do it again next year. We are building a retreat for
[14:53]children's book writers and illustrators. Yes I wanted to talk to you
[14:57]about that. What's it called again the Millwood I wrote it in Millwood Milkwood Farm?
[15:00]It's called Milkwood yes from from Dylan Thomas's Under Milkwood
[15:04]so this is this great big project that we're doing and we thought we would get
[15:07]married there at the same time but with with COVID everything has slowed down
[15:11]a little bit but it will happen and in the meantime we're building this
[15:15]thing that I'm thinking of more and more as a kind of
[15:17]arc for people to come and to be together and to
[15:22]eat and drink and walk and talk and and draw and write and think and in
[15:27]lovely wildflower meadows in the in the cat skills and it's I think it's
[15:31]going to be some sort of I hope some kind of sanctuary where we can
[15:35]you know where we can stop and be quiet and and be noisy and be all the
[15:40]things in the same place that we haven't been able to do you know to
[15:43]gather together I think it's something that people are
[15:45]yearning for. I know I am. How do I sign up?
[15:50]Save me a bed or whatever. How is it going to work seriously?
[15:54]It will be it will probably sleep 10 to 12 people so there'll be quite
[15:58]intimate things and there'll be a lot of different ways that it will work
[16:01]there'll be long weekends or peers to get together because that's something
[16:05]that we don't get to do much in the industry. We
[16:07]we meet for conferences and and we gather in you know grim hotel bars and
[16:11]begin conversations that we can never finish and I share a studio in
[16:15]Brooklyn with three other picture bookmakers which is every day
[16:19]joy you know where this where this family and this we have this in-built
[16:22]community we've been together for years and we
[16:25]work together we see each where invested in each other's books and we
[16:29]we throw our ideas around and are inspired by the way each other works
[16:34]and most people don't have that I've realized most writers and and
[16:37]illustrators work in relative isolation and and so to be able to share this
[16:42]kind of thing you can come for a long weekend and get a little
[16:45]taste of this and be fed really well and and with a wonderful bath all
[16:49]those things are very important for being creative I've found cocktails
[16:54]very very good so and then there will be longer week-long workshops for
[16:59]people who are thinking about getting into publishing or writing books
[17:02]for children or illustrating and and then hopefully there will be
[17:06]sort of industry gatherings so agents and editors and librarians and
[17:10]educators and and then things for community groups for school visits and
[17:14]all those sorts of things so it's a hugely you know far
[17:18]ranging ambitious organic project but we'll we'll start
[17:23]slowly and see what happens I love that I have a two-book deal with
[17:26]fangolin random house for children's book myself and I wrote one of
[17:29]those which lord knows when it's coming out and then I still have to
[17:32]write the second one but I don't know that doesn't make me appear but
[17:35]maybe I can sneak in on one of your long weekends absolutely need any help
[17:39]with that project or a supporter thank you let me know
[17:42]as well thank you I'm serious I wouldn't say that if I didn't mean it
[17:47]you know you're basically doing like Yatto for children's books right
[17:50]yeah yeah that's the idea yeah anything
[17:54]do you have any advice for aspiring authors or aspiring
[17:58]children's book writers or illustrators or really anybody
[18:02]anybody I could just sit and listen to your
[18:05]whatever you have to say just you know you're waiting time
[18:08]I think I was talking to some people who have been wanting to get published
[18:13]for a long time and and and I think there's often this
[18:18]this sense of there's this track and you have to stay on it
[18:21]and if you don't meet these goals by a certain time then you're you're not
[18:25]you're failing at that and and I just don't think it should be like that at all
[18:29]I think that I was talking anyway I am now I'm
[18:32]I'm attacking a lot stay on the single linear train of thought that's okay take
[18:36]I found I had a brain scan recently for these rotten
[18:42]migraines and and I got a picture of the inside of my brain and it was so
[18:46]thrilling to see to see all of these weekly lines because that's exactly how my
[18:51]thoughts work and there are I love maps and there's a map called a
[18:55]meander map I don't know if you've ever seen these and it's the
[18:58]it's the map of the the course that a river takes over centuries
[19:02]and so you can look at like a meander map of the Mississippi and it looks like
[19:06]the inside of a person's brain and just I love that idea of the way that
[19:10]thoughts move and intertwine and and I think that in our daily lives is how
[19:15]we get our ideas and how we should be inspired and how we should work I
[19:19]think for me anyway I work on 12 different things at once and while I'm
[19:24]working there are different compartments of my brain that are
[19:27]that are dedicated to different things the book that I'm
[19:31]close to finishing is right up the front and that's almost just busy work at
[19:34]this point and then the one that's waiting in the wings is a little bit
[19:37]behind and that's where I'm doing heavy research and and going down dead
[19:42]ends and rabbit holes and and then way at the back are all the books that are
[19:46]just bouncing around in this kind of great
[19:49]coffee of jumbled ideas and ricocheting and that's the most fun place back
[19:55]there because anything can happen and I so I think I did the advice of
[20:00]just to encourage everybody to keep their ears and eyes open and to walk around thinking,
[20:06]not, this is this one track I'm on, but I could go this way, I could go this way, and there's
[20:12]something to be gained from all of those detours, even if it's not readily evident down the track,
[20:18]you'll think, oh my goodness, that note that I wrote for years ago has just suddenly crystallized
[20:23]into an idea or the thing I bought at a flea market because I didn't quite know why, but I couldn't
[20:28]walk past it that I stuck in the draw suddenly, you know, has opened some key to something that
[20:34]was locked and so I'm all about, you know, the scrap books of the brain and and any excuse
[20:42]really to go to flea markets, I think that's really, you know, what I'm indicating, which is
[20:48]something we're not doing right now, but hopefully we'll again. And what are some of the 12 projects
[20:53]you might be working on right now? Like what's coming next? What can we expect? Well, I mean, this
[20:57]was such a, I got into one thing, you know, seven years and really kind of illustrating the world
[21:04]and thinking about it. I involved so many people in it, like there's a page in here, I'm going to
[21:09]show you a page now. Yeah, there's a page in here of colors how to paint all the colors in the world.
[21:15]And I asked the internet for color names because I had all of these paint tubes and I thought,
[21:22]oh, it would be fun to give them names. I love going into paint stores and looking at the paint
[21:25]names and my partner Ed and I play a game where we pocket a bunch of the paint swatches and then
[21:30]we fold the names back and we have to make the other person guess which names go with which colors.
[21:35]It's good on car trips when you're coming back from the hardware store. But the internet gave me
[21:41]about there were about 1500 submissions and they were just so wonderful. Like one of them was
[21:46]don't get me started, Jen, from what pink, you know, just brilliant and vacuum bag dirt and,
[21:53]you know, they're so good. So right now I'm writing to all the people two years later to thank
[21:58]them for their color name. This was another one, the page that's about birds. Of course I asked
[22:03]people their favorite birds around the world and they all came in and I formed a giant bird with
[22:09]all of them. So this is a front and center, but one of the other books I'm working on is a book for
[22:14]grown-ups and it's called Prusst's bedroom. This painting you might be able to see behind me,
[22:20]I did after it's a little bit of a story. The book Prusst's bedroom is going to be about
[22:27]my favorite writers' houses which I am visiting around the world. It's been suspended for a minute
[22:32]and it's part memoir and part biography of these writers and a little bit sort of travel going to
[22:38]all these places and it's Herman Melville and Dylan Thomas and Virginia Woolf and Jane Austen
[22:44]and Beatrice Potter and a bunch of writers. But when I was 18 I was in Paris thinking I had
[22:50]discovered it as all 18 year olds do and I found myself at the Musée Cannavale in the sort of the
[22:58]history of Paris Museum and I was I'd been up all night and you know it's just so wonderful
[23:04]to wander Paris at dawn and to arrive at this museum and I found Prusst's bedroom and I had never
[23:12]read a word of Prusst but I thought it was just an impossibly romantic and I took a snapshot
[23:18]which when I got home to Australia much later printed and put on my wall and I lived with all through
[23:26]college and when I moved to the state so I brought this photograph with me it's always been on my
[23:30]studio wall and then one day I thought I'd make a painting of this bedroom because there was something
[23:35]monastic about this bedroom and I loved the the cell-like room and then this this decadent gold
[23:43]like dragon scales of a quilt I made the painting. Then a couple of years later we were in Paris
[23:50]around Musee with my partner Ed and our four kids and we found ourselves outside the museum and I said
[23:56]oh kids we can let's go and see Prusst's bedroom and we went in there and my son ran ahead and
[24:02]we turned the corner and there it was except it wasn't Prusst's bedroom it was somebody else's
[24:09]bedroom and my 18-year-old self had seen the label on the wall and taken the photograph but the
[24:16]label actually referred to the next bedroom because I didn't like the look of it all it was quite
[24:21]tower there was a lot of ugly furniture in it and I thought oh no that can't possibly be Prusst
[24:25]bedroom must be this one and so I've been living you know under this painting and dining out on
[24:30]it for for years and in fact the someone at the French consulate said oh I hear you did a painting
[24:35]of Prusst's bedroom can we use it for the anniversary of Swan's Way and thankfully I was out
[24:41]of the country because otherwise it would have been my ever lasting humility and shame that
[24:46]they would have had to gently say um actually poor layouto's bedroom and not Prusst's bedroom at
[24:53]all so that is the introduction to this book of I thought after that the least I could do would
[24:58]be to wait to read Swan's Way so I'm working my I've read Swan's Way now my I'm slowly working my
[25:04]way through remember it's things past and it's an interesting sleepy read with people
[25:10]a bit and I don't have you ever read Prusst's I did I read Swan's Way in college yeah I think I
[25:17]have to read it about six times before it's you know maybe all in there there's so many
[25:23]laugh out loud and then there were bits that I just read the same page five times and couldn't
[25:28]retain it at all yeah I should probably go back that's a wonderful story love the yellow bed
[25:33]spread well congratulations on your book release and getting it out this book about the world
[25:41]out into the world it's really exciting and I'm sure makes you feel so accomplished and you know
[25:46]to have that sort of closure on such a giant project that's gone on for so long I know enjoy the
[25:50]success that follows and and let's stay in touch yeah I'm not far away and well I want to keep
[25:58]I already started following the Milkwood Farm Instagram account so I'm very interested I will be
[26:03]tracking the progress thank you lovely lovely to talk to you you too have a great day all right bye
[26:12]bye thanks for listening to this episode in the book last week I hope you enjoyed it
[26:17]I hope you enjoyed today's episode I know I enjoyed recording it don't forget to check out my new
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[26:35]request to join it's for anyone who wants to feel body better in their body tomorrow than they do
[26:40]today and it's a supportive group of like-minded souls who just need the community to achieve their
[26:46]moms don't have time to lose weight thanks for listening to this episode of moms don't have time to read books
[26:52]don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibioans and at moms don't have time to read books
[26:57]also sign up for my newsletter at zibioans.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[27:02]of authors on zoom every other week thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the
[27:07]sound editing and thank you to morning moon productions for providing this fantastic intro and