Maira Kalman, DARLING BABY
[0:01]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:05]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:07]If you like this podcast, you will love my new anthology called Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.
[0:12]Check it out, and you'll hear from 49 authors about all sorts of things
[0:16]Moms Don't Have Time to Do. All the authors have been on this podcast.
[0:19]Also, check out my TikTok at with Sivi and Tracy.
[0:22]My other podcast, Sex Talk with Sivi and Tracy.
[0:25]Check out Moms Don't Have Time to Write on Medium.
[0:28]And of course, my new publishing company called Sivi Books.
[0:32]And now, back to our daily author interview site and a quick hello from some of my kids.
[0:37]Hi, hi, hello.
[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:41]Myra Coleman is the illustrator and author of Darling Baby.
[0:45]Myra is an illustrator author and designer who has created many beautiful books,
[0:49]including Fireboat, the heroic adventures of John H. Harvey, Bold and Brave,
[0:54]10 Heroes, who won Women the Right to Vote by Kirsten Dolan-brand,
[0:57]who, by the way, I also had on this podcast, if you want to go back and listen to that.
[1:02]13 words by Lemony Snicket, and Daniel Handler's Why We Broke Up.
[1:06]She has been called Genius Magic and Inspiring.
[1:10]But her grandchildren call her Appie.
[1:12]Welcome, Myra.
[1:13]Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Darling Baby and all your other work.
[1:21]Thank you.
[1:22]To be here.
[1:23]Well, congratulations.
[1:24]I understand this book is inspired by your new grandchild.
[1:28]Yes, at this point, she's not that new.
[1:30]There's a second one, but it was definitely inspired when she was born and I entered into the whole world of the grammar.
[1:40]And what does that like?
[1:42]That's sublime.
[1:43]You know, of course, the cliche is all of the love without any of the responsibility.
[1:47]So it's an extraordinarily clear and pure with human complications of life.
[1:54]But it's an incredible gift.
[1:57]And it's your heart soon.
[1:59]Oh, it's amazing.
[2:01]My mother started talking about being a grandmother when I was like 18.
[2:05]So I'm like giving little time, please.
[2:09]I won't ask you how long she had to wait.
[2:11]She had to wait.
[2:12]I had kids when I was 30.
[2:13]So not too well.
[2:14]Not too bad.
[2:15]Not too bad.
[2:16]Yes.
[2:17]So your career has been amazing.
[2:21]I mean, just looking at, like, I think the kids and I have read almost every book of yours.
[2:25]I interviewed Kristen Jalen Brand about Bolden Brave, which you illustrated.
[2:29]What Pete ate a disease, the Thomas Jefferson life, Liberty, and the pursuit of everything, which, by the way, was also on the kids reading list as was looking at Lincoln.
[2:38]I mean, all these books, Max makes a million swami on rye.
[2:43]Next up, Grand Central.
[2:45]I mean, it's amazing.
[2:46]And those are just the kids' books.
[2:48]How did you get started in doing all of this?
[2:51]And, you know, what do you love about it?
[2:53]Like, what is most exciting to you about what you do?
[2:57]Well, I thought I was going to be a writer as a child and as a teenager.
[3:02]And then my writing became so honest written, I thought, I better do something else.
[3:07]But I knew I wanted to tell my story and I thought I'm going to do drawings.
[3:12]And so I started with that level of, I'm just going to draw until I narrative relating to literature.
[3:19]And I did that for about 10 or 15 years and then had children.
[3:24]And I thought, okay, this mayhem is very inspiring of having children running around the house.
[3:31]And it allowed me to go back to what I wanted to do, which is to write and then to incorporate painting.
[3:37]So I can use both sides of my brain and it's so liberating to write for children that I'm in heaven.
[3:44]And don't think I'll ever stop.
[3:47]We also, by the way, loved your but cake as giant cake fans.
[3:51]So actually, my husband gave that to my son.
[3:54]And that's like his special little book.
[3:56]Anyway, yeah, we're just like big fans. Sorry. Now I'm just repeating myself.
[4:00]It's lovely here. Thank you.
[4:02]Couldn't say it enough.
[4:05]So you basically telling stories through pictures is still another.
[4:10]I mean, that is, that is a form of writing, right?
[4:13]It is a form of telling the story and getting the message out, as you said.
[4:17]What, where does that compulsion come from?
[4:20]The desire to, you know, tell a story, entertain someone else, get it on paper.
[4:27]Like, tell me about that.
[4:29]Well, if I had to be psychological about it, I would say that it's the desire to be realized as human being not invisible.
[4:37]I think that at an early age, whatever the forces were at work in my DNA and my family,
[4:44]I want to be present with through expressing myself that way.
[4:50]It was not questioned for me if that was my life.
[4:52]It wasn't searching and wondering.
[4:54]It was, I know I'm going to do this.
[4:56]I just don't know how it's actually going to be realized.
[4:58]And that incorporating humor and writing and painting, I thought,
[5:02]this is a very, very good job to think about.
[5:05]And it hasn't left.
[5:06]It sustains you in a way that's very real.
[5:09]Of course, to find your work is the most nourishing thing you could possibly do.
[5:13]You know, besides having a family that you love.
[5:16]But the work is sometimes more consistent in the family.
[5:21]But you know what I mean.
[5:23]You know, you're really your brain is producing something.
[5:26]So the answer is who knows why.
[5:29]What was your family like growing up?
[5:31]Where did you grow up?
[5:32]I was born in Tel Aviv and we moved here when I was four.
[5:36]And there was a very large family.
[5:38]And the women, as I've written in the book about my mother, Sarah Berman's closet,
[5:43]the women really were the center of the story in many, many ways.
[5:47]The men were okay, but they were peripheral.
[5:50]I say the men were fine, but the women were wondrous.
[5:53]And they told stories and communicated with each other in big cakes and did the laundry and took care of everybody.
[6:02]Basically.
[6:03]So that's the legacy that I come from.
[6:05]A lot of ironing and starching, you know,
[6:08]starching and ironing, which I still do.
[6:10]And that sense that the daily life of a human being can be the most interesting and the most important thing.
[6:17]You don't have to go anywhere else that you're just this life that you're living is incorporated into your work.
[6:23]And I never wanted to see a distinction between work and life.
[6:26]It's all mixed into the batter as, you know, as to send the metaphor.
[6:31]And I grew up in the Bronx and then in New York City, which I always say is coming to New York.
[6:38]You can want to come from New York coming in the 1950s.
[6:41]And I have to look at my, I don't have to.
[6:44]I do look at my life and say what, what a great thing.
[6:47]So I've been really lucky.
[6:50]That's amazing.
[6:51]Well, as you can tell by the sirens, I am also in New York right now, but maybe you can tell.
[6:55]I don't hear them.
[6:56]I don't hear my own sirens every five minutes.
[6:59]Oh, okay.
[7:02]Oh, my goodness.
[7:05]So when you start a project like darling, baby, like what do you start with?
[7:10]Do you start with one illustration and go from there?
[7:13]Do you start with the idea?
[7:14]When do you start the actual artistry behind it versus the words?
[7:19]Like what's your process like when you're creating?
[7:22]Every book is different, but every book is basically the same
[7:25]that it's worn out of something that I love.
[7:27]And it's something that I'm talking about in my life.
[7:29]I'm not trying to sort of artificially find an idea.
[7:33]It kind of bubbles up from daily conversation.
[7:36]Darling, they grew out of being with my granddaughter at the beach when she was five months old.
[7:44]And I kept a diary of what happened to us, but happened to me, what happened to us.
[7:50]And it was with drawings and writing.
[7:53]And it was all there.
[7:54]But this book is very, very close to the diary that I had and that I kept.
[8:00]And just a little bit more elaborate, more painting.
[8:03]So it was a love letter to her, of course, to my granddaughter Olive.
[8:08]And it was a love letter to just being alive.
[8:12]Oh, that's beautiful.
[8:14]So amazing.
[8:15]So do you paint there where you are now like in your home?
[8:19]Do you go somewhere to paint?
[8:20]Like what, where how do you get that done?
[8:22]So the book evolves and I'm doing, you know, all the children's books,
[8:26]there are drafts of writing and sketching.
[8:30]I have a studio, a separate studio that I go to because when the kids were little,
[8:34]it became clear that if I didn't have a separate studio, what things went in bad.
[8:39]So to go to a space, you know, a rule of one's own as we always say.
[8:44]And that's where I work.
[8:45]I wake up very early.
[8:46]I hate working at night.
[8:47]So I'm finished working by about six o'clock.
[8:50]And that sense of, oh, okay, a lot of work has been done.
[8:54]A lot of work can be done from the morning to the evening.
[8:58]And that's it.
[8:59]It's a very quiet, I lead a very quiet existence and certainly with COVID.
[9:03]I used to travel a lot more, of course, these years none.
[9:07]But it's also been interesting to me that travel,
[9:10]and I'm walking, taking a walk around the block is exhilarating on some.
[9:15]You know, you could say that sounds idiotic.
[9:17]It's exhilarating from the Paris.
[9:19]Okay, I won't make that from Paris.
[9:21]That would really be.
[9:24]But on one level, it's kind of true.
[9:28]Because you just don't know what you're going to see.
[9:30]And it's all this fantastic serendipity and surprise.
[9:35]So I'm a big fan of very little.
[9:38]I'm a big fan of little things.
[9:42]That's funny.
[9:43]Well, I mean, sometimes the littlest moments are the things that inspired the biggest stuff.
[9:48]Right?
[9:49]It's like one second or one funny thing your child says that's enough to like,
[9:54]write a whole essay about or, you know, it's just a little,
[9:57]it's that glimmer of like the shimmer.
[10:00]and it that makes you on a, you know,
[10:02]snatch it and smack it down on paper.
[10:04]Very true.
[10:05]And so what projects are you working on now?
[10:07]What's coming next for you?
[10:08]Well, now I'm working on a few books for adults.
[10:12]One is a, I did a little pamphlet with my son
[10:15]that we self-published to raise money for good causes.
[10:21]And that little pamphlet was called Women Holding Things,
[10:23]a little booklet, which is now becoming a book for adults.
[10:27]And that will be published with Harper's.
[10:29]Assuming the supply chain issues are resolved,
[10:34]hopefully within the next, within, you know, in a year.
[10:37]And that's about women holding things,
[10:39]both literally and metaphorically,
[10:41]from a cabbage or a violin or balloons to holding a grudge
[10:45]or a holding, you know, holding onto your dreams
[10:49]or holding your family together.
[10:51]So it allows me to go back and forth
[10:53]between the very mundane.
[10:55]Oh, look at that incredible woman
[10:57]working through the part tearing balloons,
[10:59]holding balloons to thinking about my grandmother
[11:02]not being allowed to marry the man that she really loved
[11:06]and what she held through her whole life.
[11:08]So a kind of a memoir, I don't know.
[11:12]And then a few other projects that I'm working on,
[11:14]some embroidery, some product development things.
[11:19]Why couldn't your grandmother marry the man she loved?
[11:22]She wasn't orphaned.
[11:23]And the family that the man she fell in love with
[11:28]was considered the prince of the family.
[11:31]This is a Belarus.
[11:32]So she married, she was allowed to marry his brother.
[11:38]They said, you know what?
[11:40]Can't get this one.
[11:42]But here's the consolation prize, that one.
[11:45]And that one was my grandfather.
[11:47]Oh my gosh.
[11:48]Wonderful man.
[11:49]But who somehow maybe her heart was broken at that time.
[11:54]I don't know.
[11:55]We never, of course, those are things that we do.
[11:57]Certainly what they wouldn't have discussed with children.
[11:59]This is kind of the stories that filter through the family
[12:02]from this end and that cousin.
[12:04]And so she always looked beleaguered and terribly said,
[12:08]which I sometimes do too, as does everybody.
[12:11]And so that's part of the story of what happened
[12:15]to my grandmother a little bit.
[12:18]That must have been crazy, like every family event.
[12:21]And then there's the man she really wanted to marry right there.
[12:24]And the man she really wanted to marry was a cunning business
[12:29]man who employed his brother.
[12:32]Oh my gosh.
[12:33]And I won't feel no more about my family than anybody does.
[12:37]But the brother became a huge success.
[12:41]And the man she married just wanted to pray
[12:44]and eat potatoes.
[12:46]And he left alone.
[12:48]Very, very simple.
[12:50]The man she married was a wonderful man.
[12:52]And the man she didn't marry was not a wonderful man.
[12:55]But who go tell somebody what they should or shouldn't love?
[12:59]Wow.
[13:00]That is so interesting.
[13:01]Well, there's a novel for you right there in your spare time.
[13:04]Well, there are so many stories to tell.
[13:07]So I condensed this into one page within the book.
[13:10]I talked about my mother and how she wasn't happy with her.
[13:14]husband was my father.
[13:16]So the thing about women holding things
[13:18]is the sense of what do you hold all your life?
[13:22]What responsibilities and obligations and sorrows
[13:25]as we all do?
[13:26]And also women are very exhausted all the time
[13:29]because of all the things that you have to hold.
[13:32]But anyway, that's the book.
[13:34]Wait, so now I'm curious.
[13:35]When you got married, what kind of man did you find?
[13:39]I married a tremendously amazing, fabulous man
[13:43]who we met when we were in summer flunk out of class at NYU
[13:48]when we were 19.
[13:49]And we fell in love immediately.
[13:52]And we're together for, I mean,
[13:55]this is the 60s.
[13:56]So there was a little bit of breaking up and experimenting.
[13:59]But we ended up being together for 30 years.
[14:01]And he died at the age of 49.
[14:03]It was an insane fate.
[14:05]But we had the most fantastic relationship of great friendship.
[14:10]And probably what I learned, maybe a subconsciously
[14:14]of who knows is that I wanted to be with somebody
[14:16]who's my deep and true friend.
[14:19]And so somehow, look, guided me.
[14:21]Look, guided me to flunk out of NYU.
[14:26]So look, we always say that a bad comes good.
[14:29]And there I was in this terrible,
[14:31]and actually all the people in that class
[14:33]were so interesting.
[14:35]And such crazy out of the loop of everything
[14:39]that I thought, this is a fantastic group of people.
[14:42]At any rate, I met, and his name was T-board.
[14:44]He was Hungarian.
[14:45]He also had come to America when he was seven
[14:48]during revolution.
[14:50]And so it was a very good, it was a very good marriage.
[14:53]No.
[14:54]Well, I'm really sorry to hear he passed away.
[14:57]But how wonderful that you got that time.
[14:59]And a lot of them are together.
[15:01]Oh, wow.
[15:02]Oh, my gosh.
[15:03]So it was deeply nourishing, as we say.
[15:07]Well, well, you've had the most interesting life.
[15:09]I mean, I feel like it's just scratching the surface.
[15:12]I feel like that's it.
[15:15]There's nothing else.
[15:18]I make a good plum cake.
[15:20]That's about it.
[15:21]Crumb cake or plum cake?
[15:22]The one that's in the cake book is the New York Times
[15:26]plum tort, which is most popular and most requested
[15:30]New York Times recipe, I'm told, or I'd read.
[15:33]And so I've been making that a mile a minute
[15:36]during this plum season, which is now a movie.
[15:39]My family, of course, I knew that from the book.
[15:41]And I forgot.
[15:42]But my family, my husband's family, his grandmother
[15:45]made a crumb cake that they started a whole business
[15:47]around called Nini's treats.
[15:48]And so my sister-in-law, Nastyl,
[15:51]like runs the company and found a factory
[15:54]to reproduce her famous crumb cake.
[15:56]And it's really yummy.
[15:57]So how do they sell them in the city?
[15:59]Yeah, you can order them on gold belly.
[16:01]So they ship everywhere, nationwide.
[16:03]But they're really yummy, Nini's treats.
[16:05]Nini's treats.
[16:06]I'll send you one.
[16:07]I'll get your address.
[16:08]I'll send you a Nini's treat.
[16:09]I love that idea.
[16:11]I will do it.
[16:12]They're delicious.
[16:13]Amazing.
[16:14]OK, last question.
[16:15]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors, slash
[16:17]illustrators, slash grandparents, anything you want?
[16:22]Don't do it.
[16:23]Don't do it.
[16:25]My only advice is do what you love.
[16:27]You can't.
[16:28]There's nothing else to say.
[16:30]And either it will work out or it won't work out.
[16:33]I think that the perseverance of what you need to do
[16:37]what you really need to do is the issue.
[16:39]So do what you need to do.
[16:42]That's all there is.
[16:44]Love it.
[16:45]Amazing.
[16:46]Well, my right was so nice getting to know you.
[16:48]Thank you for your time.
[16:49]And for all of the illustrations, which
[16:52]and books that have pervaded my household for a very long time.
[16:57]So thank you for all of it.
[16:59]Thank you.
[17:00]I'll lead you to speak to you too.
[17:01]All right, take care.
[17:02]Thank you.
[17:03]Bye bye.
[17:05]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[17:07]to Read Books.
[17:08]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at ZB Owens,
[17:11]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[17:14]Also sign up for my newsletter at ZB Owens.com
[17:16]and sign up for my virtual book club
[17:18]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[17:20]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[17:22]Hey, thanks for the sound editing.
[17:24]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[17:26]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.