Episode #132: Why did you start writing? with Corinna Luyken
Welcome back from a lovely summer break! To kicks things off again, we have a great kid question for Grace Lin and Corinna Luyken to answer: “Why did you start writing?”
TRANSCRIPT:
Grace Lin: Hello. I'm Grace Lin, children's book author, and illustrator of many books, including the middle grade novel Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and the picture book A Big Mooncake for Little Star. Today I'm here with Corinna Luyken, the author and illustrator of many picture books including The Tree in Me and My Heart. Welcome, Corinna.
Corinna Luyken: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Grace. It's an honor to be.
Grace Lin: I'm so excited that you're here. Are you ready for today's kid question?
Corinna Luyken: I am.
Grace Lin: Okay. Today's question is from a kid named Charles. And they ask why did you start writing?
Corinna Luyken: I love that question. Well, I think really what caused me to start writing, way back when I was much, much younger, when I was a kid, was that I love to play with words. I like the sounds of words, and I love playing with rhythm and sound. And so when I was quite small my mom would read to me. And we had a couple of picture books and longer books that we really would read over and over, because they were silly. And the sound of the words was silly. One of those books was the Rootabaga Stories by Carl Sandburg. And we would read certain stories over and over, and laugh at the language and laugh at repetition, he used a lot of repetition to make something funny. And so I have early, early memories of doing that, and also poring over the pictures in that book, which was pictures by Maud and Miska Petersham.
Corinna Luyken: That was probably my earliest memory of loving language. Eventually I just started to want to play with language on my own. I also love the feeling that I get when I read a poem and I get to the end. It's almost like chills when you get to the end of a good poem or a good story, and you feel like somehow that story or that poem changed you. Maybe sometimes you feel understood or sometimes you feel like you see the world in a new way. And your perspective has shifted. Maybe your perspective has gotten bigger. And I love that feeling, and I love that language can do that. So probably it's that love of language, that love of sound and of rhythm that caused me to start writing.
Grace Lin: That's so interesting, because that's not what I thought you were going to say. We're both illustrators, and I also began as an illustrator. And the reason why I started writing was so that I could illustrate. I remember very vividly sending out art samples to publishers, and a publisher reaching out to me saying, "I really like your work, but I've never been able to find any stories that go with your work. Do you have a story?" And I remember saying, "Yes, I do," even though I didn't. And then I started writing and [inaudible 00:03:03].
Corinna Luyken: Totally
Grace Lin: For you, it was the love of language, the love of poetry, the love of repetition. I think I have a love of story. And it's that love of story that makes me want to illustrate and tell stories through pictures. And to do that a lot of times I have to write.
Corinna Luyken: Totally. Well it's interesting, because some of my earliest love of writing and language was really poetry. And I think in a way I also experienced something similar, which was people would say, "We like your illustrations, we'll try to think of something for you." And then something about my style, what I was doing, they weren't really thinking of me for projects. So I did also get to that point where I was like, maybe I need to write my own. But then I realized, well, I love story and I love a good story and I love your stories so much, but I think I realized, okay I don't write story stories very often, I write poems. And then realizing, wait a minute, poems can be picture books. The same thing that makes a good poem, which is economy of language, and cutting out as much as you possibly can, lends itself to picture books. And it lends itself to leaving room for the pictures to tell a lot of this story.
Corinna Luyken: At some point I realized there's this thing I like to do, which is play with language and poetry, which I didn't really think was a career or a thing I could do. And then at some point I realized if I bring this together with the pictures, not only is it way more fun, it's so fun, I think, to go back and forth between the two and be like, what can I cut out, what can I cut out of the words so that the pictures can do the work here? But also it was sort of like, if I do this I might find a home for my stories, because people don't have to imagine what is a good story that would fit with your illustrations, because you've created it and there it is.
Grace Lin: Well, I think that's fascinating. And I think that's so great for our listeners to hear, because it shows that authors can come to their books with such different attitudes. You come to writing picture books almost seeing it as writing a poem. And I think that's such a beautiful way of doing it. And I see it completely as a narrative, a person's going to do something, like a story.
Corinna Luyken: Totally.
Grace Lin: And both ways work beautifully, and well, for a picture book. So I think that's really great for our listeners to hear.
Corinna Luyken: I always think there's as many kinds of picture books needed in the world as there are readers, and people who will read them. I love the silly stories and I love the exciting adventure stories. I love reading middle grade fantasy, it's probably one of my favorite things to read, aside from poetry. But I love poetry too. I definitely had that sense that, as a kid and then as I got older, I would find these poems that gave me such a good feeling. And there weren't a lot of books for people my age that did that, that maybe gave you that same experience or feeling you might get from reading a Mary Oliver poem, where at the end you feel this slowing down, but also this spaciousness. And you take a breath and you see the world differently. And I've always thought making picture books that are like that for much younger readers is something that I find excites me. It's something that I like to do. And I think the readers that will love those books need them just as much as we need the silly books or the exciting adventure books.
Grace Lin: Yeah. I agree. And thank you so much for answering today's question. And thank you, Charles, for asking it.
Corinna Luyken: Thank you Charles. It was a great question.
Grace Lin: Bye.
Today’s Kid Book Review comes from Grace Anne! Grace is reviewing, Book of Mistakes, by Corinna Luyken!
The book I would like to talk about is The Book of Mistakes by Corinna Luyken, who's the author and illustrator. This book is about how even if you make a mistake, you can turn it into something beautiful that you might not have thought of making if you hadn't made the mistake.
I like this book because it made me feel that I can be braver. Nobody's perfect. We are all going to make mistakes, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing. We just need to have a good attitude about seeing the possibilities.
Thank you so much Grace!
More about today’s authors:
Corinna Luyken is the author-illustrator of THE TREE IN ME; as well as the NY Times bestseller, My Heart, and The Book of Mistakes, which has been praised by Entertainment Weekly, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and more. She is also the illustrator of Patchwork written by Matt de la Peña; as well as Something Good and Adrian Simcox Does Not Have a Horse, both written by Marcy Campbell; Nothing in Common, written by Kate Hoefler; and Weird Little Robots, written by Carolyn Crimi. She lives near the Salish Sea in Olympia, WA with her husband, daughter, and two small cats.
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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