Episode #103: How can you write such funny books? with Tom Angleberger
Welcome back to Kids Ask Authors! Today we are joined by special guest author, Tom Angleberger and Grace Lin who will answer this great kid question: “How can you write such funny books?” Thanks for joining us!
TRANSCRIPTS:
Grace Lin: Hello, I'm Grace Lin, children's book author and illustrator of many books, including the middle grade novel, When the Sea Turned to Silver and the picture book, A Big Moon Cake for Little Star. Today, I am here with Tom Angleberger, the author of the Origami Yoda books, the Inspector Flytrap series, and many, many more. Hi Tom.
Tom Angleberger: Hi Grace. How are you?
Grace Lin: Good, I'm so glad that you can join us today.
Tom Angleberger: Me too, thanks for inviting me over.
Grace Lin: So are you ready for today's kid question?
Tom Angleberger: Now, is this a question about a kid or a question posed by a kid?
Grace Lin: It's a question posed by a kid. So all the kid questions are real questions that kids are asking authors.
Tom Angleberger: Really. Okay.
Grace Lin: And today's question is from a person named Hazel, and Hazel wants to ask you...
Hazel: How can you write such funny books?
Grace Lin: How can you write such funny books?
Tom Angleberger: Oh, that was nice of Hazel, I appreciate that. So how do I write funny books? Well, let's see. Here's the thing. A lot of people don't really think I'm all that funny in person. So I try to be funny on paper when I can. And one of the things that I think is really funny is when something happens over and over again, like maybe it's only a little bit funny the first time, but by the 10th time, it's really funny. And by a hundred times, it's hilarious. And so that's like Inspector Flytrap. He has his assistant, Nina the goat and Nina the goat likes to eat stuff she's not supposed to eat. And that's like slightly funny the first time she eats something. And then hopefully it's double funny the second time and triple funny until by the end of the series and she's eaten a thousand crazy things, hopefully it is actually starting to get really funny.
Grace Lin: That is a very good tip! How do you make such funny characters though? I know that's something that she's very, very interested in.
Tom Angleberger: Well, all right. I wanted to write a mystery book, but all the... and of course I didn't want a person, you know, I don't need Encyclopedia Brown solving mysteries. I wanted something fun and funny, like an animal. But if you start looking around every single animal, there's already a detective. I mean, obviously there's like Dog Man, but then there's like, there's Freddy the pig and there's a duck. There's that duck that solves mysteries, there's every animal had already been taken. And so what was left? Well, maybe a plant, you know, what is a plant? Well, a plant can't talk. Well, what if it had a mouth? Well, Venus flytrap has a mouth, so he can eat flies. And so you just, you come up with something and you just keep asking yourself, "Well, what would be sillier than that? What would be even sillier than that? What would be even sillier than that?" And finally, you get to a certain point where anything any sillier is too silly, and then you go with a thing that's too silly.
Grace Lin: So... do you ever get to a point where it's so silly, you can't do it?
Tom Angleberger: I don't think I've ever gotten to that point. You just have to find a way to do it. Like the great thing about the Inspector Flytrap universe is you can just throw anything in there you want to. Like in one of the books, Didi Dodo, she's a sort of like a spy more than a detective.
Tom Angleberger: She needs to get to the top of a tall building. Well, I could have had her get in an elevator or something, but I wanted her to get there using her roller skates in some way, because she was always using roller skates. So then I realized I needed like a ski jump that she could go down the ski jump. But then in the middle of the city, you can't have a ski jump in the middle of the city. That would be silly. So that's too silly, so you'd actually do it. I actually thought of a way to have a ski jump in the middle of the city, which was to have a goat selling used ski jumps at a used ski jump lot. The worse it works, the better it is. If you have a really good, clear, clever solution, well that's not going to work for a silly book. You need to have like the worst possible solution.
Grace Lin: Well, I think that's wonderful and I'm going to definitely take your advice to make some really good, silly stories from here on in.
Tom Angleberger: You know, you don't have to make silly stories. If you're good at coming up with really clever stuff, you could make clever stories. You know, they don't have to be silly. I'm just not ever good at coming up with something smart, just always something dumb. So that's why [crosstalk 00:04:57]
Grace Lin: I think yours are very clever as well.
Tom Angleberger: Oh, that's nice of you to say.
Grace Lin: But thank you so much, Tom, for answering today's question and thank you so much Hazel for asking it.
Tom Angleberger: Yeah. Thanks Hazel! And thanks Grace!
Today’s BOOK REVIEW comes from Hazel! She is reviewing, DJ Funkyfoot: Give Cheese a Chance, by Tom Angleberger and illustrated by Heather Fox.
The book I would like to talk about is Dj Funkyfoot: Give Cheese a Chance, written by Tom Angleberger and illustrated by Heather Fox. This book is about a butler, named DJ Funkyfoot, who gets a job with President Horse G Horse for one day. And there’s just one teeny tiny problem of a war starting if the president doesn’t sign the peace treaty in time. Instead the President wants to play mini-golf—or should I say cool pirate themed mini-golf! What will happen if Dj Funkyfoot doesn’t get the President to sign the peace treaty in time? I liked this book because it was funny and it was a very silly story. It’s great!
Thank you so much Hazel!
More about today’s authors:
Tom Angleberger is the author of the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling Origami Yoda series, as well as Fake Mustache and Horton Halfpott, both Edgar Award nominees, and the Qwikpick Papers series. He is also the author of the transportation picture book McToad Mows Tiny Island. Tom lives with his wife, Cece Bell, in Christiansburg, Virginia. www.origamiyoda.com.
Grace Lin, a NY Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and her picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, was awarded the Caldecott Honor. Grace is an occasional commentator for New England Public Radio , a video essayist for PBS NewsHour (here & here), and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf. She is the co-host of the podcast Book Friends Forever, a kidlit podcast about friendship and publishing (geared for adults). Find her facebook, instagram , twitter ( @pacylin) or sign up for her author newsletter HERE.
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