Sophie Blackall, IF WE WERE DOGS

[1:24]Sophie Blackall: Welcome to Totally Booked Live at The Whitby. I am thrilled to be here with Sophie Blackall,

[1:30]Zibby Owens: who has been on my podcast before and is now back with If We Were Dogs. Congratulations. Thank you, Subi. It's lovely to be here and to see all of you. If we were dogs, how would we be sitting right now? Oh, well, I think at a table with hats and having demolished pretty much everything in front of us.

[1:50]Sophie Blackall: Tell us about your new book.

[1:53]Zibby Owens: Every book I do comes about in a completely different way, and I think I have done 60 of them now, which suddenly makes me feel very old. This one came about in a fractured way. There were three things, three short stories, if I may. One, I met a nine year old child who began talking to me in the middle of a sentence the way children do, which is what I love about them, she said, And also I had never met this child before. And also, she said, I love dogs, but I'm worried that people might not know I love dogs, and I'm starting school in the fall, and they might not know, so I have to get dog everything. I have to get a dog backpack and dog socks. And she listed this whole thing. She had this plan, and I thought, this is amazing. This is gold. That was one. Number two, I split my time between Brooklyn, New York, and up in the Catskills where we have a farm dog that lives nearby called Diesel who is a golden retriever and is the most exuberant dog you have ever met in your life. Diesel owns the valley, turns up on our doorstep, will sit overnight waiting for us, and when we open the door in the morning, he is there saying, Hi, hi, hi. I've been here all night. Are you ready? Let's go and play. I've just rolled in a skunk and isn't this great? And I love you and let me lick you and again, skunk. And you can't he's irrepressible but adorable. So Diesel was the inspiration for the big dog. Then at Prospect Park, where I live in the city, there's the rambunctious dogs rolling and wrestling and fighting and and howling, There's always one dog who would rather be reading a book. I started to think about this contrast and how alike they are to children in a way. Then, ZB, I don't know if you remember this, there is absolutely no reason you would, but I ran into you I remember. Oh, you do remember this. It was Pankotidien. Pankotidien. My husband Ed had ended teaching. He was about to lose his fancy pants medical insurance and come on to my terrible artist's freelance insurance, and so he was doing all of his medical appointments, and he went in for a regular checkup and came out with an appointment for open heart surgery. And suddenly, our lives changed, and I saw you there, and we had just gone in for the pre op appointments, and the next day was he was going to go in. And I don't know if any of you have had that experience. I'm sure many of you have or know someone who has, and suddenly everything in your lives, it's distilled, and I have a I just have a drooping microphone here, which is now in my lap, and it's quite cozy, but I'm not entirely sure this is where it should be. So, oh, thank goodness there are technical people who can come and do the right thing. Thank you. It was sort of like I was starting to lean into it. Ed was in hospital, and those of you who have had experience of hospital know that it is traumatic and miraculous, hopefully, and also at times boring. You spend a lot of time with the person you love most in the world who is unconscious or asleep. I was working on a grown up memoir, having spoken a lot about memoir today. I was delighted to hear all of the other writers today talk about grappling with writing because writing is so hard, but I always think it's only me and I think everybody else can just write fluidly and easily. I was grappling with this book and I couldn't. I couldn't do it in hospital, but what I could do was this book that popped into my head, If We Were Dogs. That was a very long winded way of telling you how this book came about, and I didn't even tell you what it was, which is two kids pretending to be dogs, but one of them has all the ideas and the other one at a certain point gains the courage to turn around and say, I have an idea too. How is your husband? He is very well, thank you for asking. Yes, he was on the miraculous end of the hospital experience.

[5:54]Sophie Blackall: Grappling with writing is so common, but when you're in it, it feels like it's impossible. If the material is not coming easily, it's just never going to come. How did you then work through it? Did you abandon that project, or did you turn to this and say I'll do an intermezzo or something? This was definitely the sort of palate cleanser or the little sorbet.

[6:21]Zibby Owens: But I was talking to other writer friends about this and the grappling I have come to love because if I love the subject matter and if I want to stay in this world, it's a thrill to go back into it. And I see it as a puzzle to be solved, and I just have this perhaps unearned faith and confidence that I will solve it in the end. So the grappling, although sometimes it feels so incredibly difficult, it gets me in that world for a little bit longer and I get to stay there. And then for you, where does the art visual piece come in? With this particular book, If We Were Dogs, it came first and I drew this picture in hospital, which ended up being the cover, and sent it to my editor saying, I don't know what this book is, but I think it is about these two dogs and there's a big dog and a little dog, and they are sitting at a table and I have no idea what they're doing. She said, You will figure that out. You will go into your room, into the room in your head, you will figure that out, I know you will. That's another thing, to have an editor who has that much faith and confidence

[7:27]Sophie Blackall: that you will figure it out is a great gift. For the rest, for this book in particular, when you did the illustrations, how does it work when you illustrate a story like this? I mean, the illustrations themselves, just so those in the audience in person can see, are a huge piece of the story and are charming and amazing and detailed and quirky and everything that you always do with all of your work. How So how do you tackle the rest of it? Did you write the rest of the words? Did the other images pop into your head? What happens after the first image?

[8:05]Zibby Owens: How did you finish it? Then I had to figure out the story. This story is about a relationship between two friends and it is purposely ambiguous, so they might be siblings, they might be friends. One of them is the kind of friend who has all of the ideas and knows exactly what is going to happen and is very loving and wants the best for their friend. But the other friend may not necessarily always want to do what their friend wants to do. I think so many of us have been in that kind of a relationship that can be a little dominating or a little overpowering. And so it is about the small dog gaining the courage to turn around and say, Actually, I don't want to do that. And it doesn't mean I don't want to be your friend. And the most wonderful thing is kids get this completely. And I've just been on the road for the last two weeks all over the country talking to children in schools, which has given me so much faith in the next generation and particularly at this time. And also that first graders are so smart, and they all have this experience, and they do a lovely thing in so many schools where they do the sign language pointing to you and pointing to their chest when they, agree with something. And so you look out in an auditorium of a thousand children, and they're all making this sign, which is, I I know this. I agree with you. I have experienced this. Let's let's get there. It's a lovely moment of connection and it is this thrilling thing of being seen for small children who have very little power or agency and it

[9:41]Sophie Blackall: was very rewarding. When did you know you had this gift

[9:45]Zibby Owens: to both tell stories, to illustrate and to really reach kids where they are? Oh gosh, it's interesting to call it a gift. I do think it is a gift in that I can't quite believe I get to do this and I feel so incredibly lucky. And I was talking to my dear friend and collaborator, Kate DiCamillo. I don't know if any of you know Kate. Think she's often been called our country's one of our country's greatest writers, especially for children, but for children of all ages. Because I do believe picture books are for everyone, that is my little aside in parentheses. It is something I always wanted to do, Sibby. I was the kid who was seven years old in Australia, up a tree, reading a book. The book was Winnie the Pooh. And for the first time I thought, This writer has written this book for me. And I talk to kids about this. Have you had that experience? And what is the first book that made you feel like the writer was talking to you? And they all have, which again gives me so much confidence that there are kids who still love reading, who want to read, and who have that experience of connecting with an author. And then the illustrator, Ernest Shepherd, was a marvel to me and I would trace his drawings over and over again to try and understand how he had built these characters with so few lines. And I had the epiphany up at tree, age seven, someone did this and they're a grown up and this was their job and if they could do this, maybe I could do this too. So it was a single-minded purpose from the age of seven. Wow.

[11:24]Sophie Blackall: We've talked to other authors today who got a lot of no's before yes's. Is that your experience or what was it like getting started in this world?

[11:31]Zibby Owens: Yes. I mean, was dogged about it and for many years I illustrated other people's manuscripts and those were all gifts too. Then at a certain point, editor said, Why aren't you writing your own stories? I mumbled something about having a few half finished manuscripts in a drawer, and she gave me a great gift, was to set a deadline, to invite me to lunch, and to say, Give me three bring me three stories. And I've done that for other people since because sometimes that's all we need is that push and someone to have that kind of faith in us that you can do this. Let's have lunch, lunch is always good, and bring me three stories. And she bought two of them on the spot, and then that was that. Then I started writing. Which were those? One of them was called The Baby Tree, and one of them turned into Negative Cat. Wow.

[12:22]Sophie Blackall: When you collaborate with other people, tell me what that experience has been like for you. That is a very exciting thing because

[12:31]Zibby Owens: sometimes doing all of it myself I can become paralyzed. There are so many decisions to make. Any one of them could go down any number of paths. And so to have one part of it already set and I'm then responding to that can be freeing and exciting and can send me down paths I might not have anticipated. And then to have got to this point where I'm so lucky and so fortunate to work with extraordinary writers whose work is astonishing and I have that feeling that I talk to kids about it, I have that feeling that they are writing just for me, and sometimes they say they are. Kate DiCamillo sent me stories all through last summer and each one, she said, I'm writing this to you, which, again, I'm using the word gift too much, but each one was a gift. I mean, the more gifts the better. This is true. Gifts and lunch. Gifts and lunch.

[13:30]Sophie Blackall: Last time we spoke you were about to launch Milkwood, and now it's up and running and looks amazing. Can you talk a little bit about this residency and farm and everything that's going on

[13:43]Zibby Owens: up there? Yes. Oh, thank you for asking. During COVID, we bought, my husband and I, a dilapidated dairy farm in Upstate New York with the idea to turn it into a creative retreat and residency for the children's book community specifically. We've been running it now for five years. Every year we have 12 retreats or residencies with 10 people each, so only 120 spots, but we get about 1,500 applications for those spots, which has just shown us that there is this incredible need for community. And because it began at the tail end of COVID, it was also a time where I felt that the publishing industry was very fractured and people were eating each other alive and all of our conversations were happening online and in tiny little bite sized tweets. I yearned for a place where we could sit around a table and have the kind of in-depth, protracted conversation that can last days, where you might shift your viewpoint a little or at least expand your own ideas to encompass somebody else's. That is really what this book is about at its heart as well. It is that recognising somebody else's humanity, perhaps feeling slightly differently and having a different viewpoint, but acknowledging that we are all different and that we can meet someone halfway or we can at least listen to them and reconsider our own. We may end up sticking exactly with what we thought. We may be dogs or we may turn into something else. Milkwood has been that. We have had people from, I think, 20 different countries come. We have a retreat for librarians and educators who are embattled at the moment, and to give them a place where they can come. We feed them cake cake's important and cocktails and they get to talk to each other and share their experiences. We talk about books. We have a library of 5,000 picture books, which is just a celebration of the enormous legacy that has gone before us, and it is a joy. It has changed our lives. We've never worked so hard and it's really one of the most surprising and wonderful things that could have happened.

[16:12]Sophie Blackall: Can you make more of them? I feel like there's a need. You need to scale it, open them all over the world. It does feel

[16:20]Zibby Owens: slightly miraculous. Is like an ark or something, a refuge, and it's wonderful.

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[19:12]Sophie Blackall: How do you think we can all build in more community in the day to day when we can't necessarily go to an artist residency and, you know, there aren't events all the time that pop up? But for those who long to be in conversation and in community, What is your answer to that? I think I think books are such a wonderful

[19:32]Zibby Owens: bonding thing that so many people can talk to one another about a book. Even I I see people on the subway, and not as many people as I wish were reading, with so many of us are on our phones. But then when you see that little people making eye contact over a book and then maybe a tiny little shy conversation, It's so important to have the in person human conversations, and they're becoming it seems to be a real effort to make that happen now. Maybe it does mean that we have to go to a retreat or come to something like this where we get to spend the day together and actually talk in person and meet someone new and learn something we didn't know before, to keep it human and to keep talking to each other. If there's cake, then that just makes everything easier.

[20:24]Sophie Blackall: Or a brownie, a little delicious Sorry. We don't have cake. No. The brownie. That's good. Preview into this conversation, I would have a cake roll out right now. Next time. Next time. What

[20:37]Zibby Owens: makes you happy these days? Oh, I'm generally a happy person. I feel incredibly lucky about this. In spite of everything, in spite of how concerned I feel about just about everything that is happening in the world today and the planet we live on, spending children time with children makes me so happy. With this book around the country, one of the questions I ask kids is, if they were an animal, what would they be? And a five year old told me that she would be an eagle, and I paused, she said, because then I could eat worms. And I said, Oh, would you have to be an eagle to eat worms? And she nodded very seriously, Yes. And I said, So you can't eat worms just now as you being a person. She shook her head sadly, like, No. And I thought, what's stopping you? If this is your goal in life is to eat worms. But

[21:41]Sophie Blackall: but but if she were an eagle very unhappy parent a few minutes later.

[21:46]Zibby Owens: I do go around schools just spreading kind of, you know, descent and subversion. But I loved this kid and I just wanted to talk to her all day about, you know, this this deep desire to to eat worms. It it made me think of I was talking to Do you know Myra Kalman, the Oh, yeah. She's an actress. She said a couple of days ago that the earliest books in our lives give us the right to dream for the rest of our lives, And it is that that a picture book does for children which enables them to imagine being an eagle or a dog or a duck or anything else that they do naturally in their own lives, but that gets ironed out of us pretty quickly. But if we have books early on, and if we continue to read, and we won't continue to read unless we have books early on, Not to get on my soapbox, but literacy rates are at an all time low in this country, and I think a lot of parents try to push their children past picture books onto early readers and chapter books. Picture books are a child's first immersion into a world of art, but also it's something that they have control over in their lives. Children will gravitate to reading the same book over and over again, and often people will steer them away from that. But studies have shown that a child who reads the same book over and over again will retain many more vocabulary words than if they read individual many individual books. But it's not only that. Psychologically, a kid knows how this story is gonna end, and there's a safety and comfort in returning to that book each time. And then over time, those books that are our beloved first books, those books that give us the right to dream as grown ups, are imprinted on us, and we're imprinted on them. And all of us probably have had that experience of returning to a book that we've loved, and we've left a little part of ourselves in them. And I was thinking about that listening to Nate Burkus before talking about the rooms that we leave a layer of ourself, our houses are parts of our identity. Books are too. The books that we read, the books that we share, the books that we return to, they all have become part of who we are, but we've left a little part of ourselves in them, and we can find that when we return to them. That is so beautiful. Oh my gosh. Do you have more coming down the pike that we can get excited about? Oh, so many. So many. And I am still grappling with the Grown Up book, which is such a lovely place to grapple because it's about the sea and it's a love story. And so I get to just return to the sea. I saw the Instagram Oh, yes. What do you call that? Yes. It's called a cyanometer. It was an eighteenth century way to measure the blue of the sky, but I painted one to measure the color of the sea.

[25:01]Sophie Blackall: Well, Sophie, I'm such a fan of your work. My kids and I have spent so much time I know they're not just for kids, but now as a grown up I get to read without my kids too and just enjoy your beautiful colors and illustration and the happiness and joy that you can feel throughout all these pages. You for all you do to connect all of us. Oh, and thank you for all you do to connect all of us, Siby. It's a pleasure. I hope we run into each other again, not near a hospital. Yes, me too. Okay.

[25:29]Zibby Owens: With cake. Thank with cake.

[25:33]Sophie Blackall: Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.