{"id":4275,"date":"2017-02-21T06:58:12","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T12:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=4275"},"modified":"2017-02-21T10:06:33","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T16:06:33","slug":"matt-cordell-on-wolf-and-bob-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=4275","title":{"rendered":"Matt Cordell on Wolf<\/em> and Bob<\/em> … and More"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\nI’ve got a review over at BookPage<\/em> of Matthew Cordell’s<\/a><\/strong> January 2017 picture book, Wolf in the Snow<\/strong><\/em> (Feiwel and Friends). That review is here<\/a><\/strong>, and I invited Matt for a chat that we started early in the year to talk about the book, how it’s changed over the years (you’ll read below that he started working on it in 2013), what else he’s up to (including Liz Garton Scanlon’s<\/a><\/strong> and Audrey Vernick’s<\/a><\/strong> Bob, Not Bob!<\/em>), and more. <\/p>\n

Enjoy!<\/p>\n

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Jules<\/font><\/strong>: Hi, Matt! Happy 2017.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Matt<\/font><\/strong>: Hey, Jules! <\/p>\n

Jules<\/font><\/strong>: I was reading this<\/a><\/strong> just the other day, your late-2015 7-Imp visit, where you were schooling me (by request) in the ways of Radiohead<\/a><\/strong> — but also sharing images from Wolf in the Snow<\/em>. It was a sneak peek of sorts, and now the book is out. And<\/em> to all kinds of starred reviews. Congrats! When’d you start working on this one?<\/font>
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\nMatt<\/font><\/strong>: Wow. That was a while ago, huh? It’s good to be back at 7-Imp. Thank you for having me! Since that last post, we actually got to hang out in Knoxville over the summer. That was great fun! But, back to Wolf<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Yes, the reviews on this book have been staggering. I’ve come to expect that you never<\/em> know what to expect with book releases, reviews, sales, etc. So I seriously had no idea any of that was coming. In fact, in the months leading up to it, I was fretting — all, “what if they HATE it?!” But when did I start working on it? I actually had to go back and look, because it was a long time ago. It was not easy bringing this book to life. My general formula for writing picture books is to either mine my own childhood experiences for ideas or to tease out something that my own kids have inspired me to write. Wolf<\/em> was neither of those. It all started with this one image I drew back in the spring of 2013:
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\nI had zero for story idea. I just had an image that led to a small series of images. In some of my previous books, I had fun playing with vast amounts of white space. The bit of idea I had was to make another one of those white-space books — but with a specific purpose. Obviously, snow would be a good idea. The next step for me was to think of characters that would scream out on a white, snowy background. For some reason, my mind’s eye pictured a black wolf and a girl in a bright red coat. What would they be doing? Heck if I knew. Here are a few of the other images that materialized as I played with this wannabe book without a story:
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\nJules<\/font><\/strong>: So, were you initially going to name it Black Wolf in the Snow<\/em> (as seen in that last image)? And was it always (nearly) wordless, or did you attempt drafts with text?<\/font> <\/p>\n

Matt<\/font><\/strong>: Oh, gosh. There were so<\/em> many drafts. I’ve been looking back on it here lately (for the purpose of presentations, promo, etc.), and I found nearly 15 different revisions over the course of, like, a couple of years or so — leading up to the point it was an approved, ready-for-finals sketch dummy. Yes, the earliest version was Black Wolf in the Snow<\/em>. It was that way for much of the time. At one point, I changed it to simply Howl<\/em> and then quickly changed it back and shortened it to Wolf in the Snow<\/em>. <\/p>\n

I fought for a long while, trying to figure out what the story was. From the beginning, I had the characters and setting in place but didn’t know what to do with them. So I started to do some research about wolves. The biggest thing I picked up on was how wolves are largely misrepresented in our culture and in history and literature (“Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Three Little Pigs,” etc.). Wolves are really demonized as being these vengeful, bloodthirsty beasts, out to sink their teeth into humans (or anything that moves) any chance they get. But it’s quite the opposite. Because of this misconception, over time wolves have been attacked and hunted and populations decimated — to the point where they are quite fearful of humans. This observation inspired me to turn these two characters, this girl and this wolf, into a story that is all too common and relevant in today’s world: How we often assume the worst of people we think we know well but truly know very little about. These two characters are clearly afraid of each other because of what they think they know about each other. But by the story’s end, they have somehow connected and helped each other and have been forever changed by the experience.<\/p>\n

In the earliest drafts, it was only the child and the adult wolf. There was always going to be a blizzard and the girl is lost. The first drafts were, indeed, not wordless. In fact, I had this symmetry thing going on where the wolf and the child were thinking the same thing—fear, anger, cold, etc.—but in their own voices. So we could actually read\/hear what the wolf was thinking.
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\nIn that version, the girl and the wolf are lost. (It wasn’t clear why the wolf is lost, and that’s totally unrealistic, really.) And they encounter each other and get over their fear of each other to use their own different skills of deduction and keen smell, hearing, etc. to help each other get home. It was pretty bad.<\/p>\n

Other versions included one where the girl is lost and encounters a wolf in a hunter’s trap (like a bear-trap type of thing) and frees the wolf. The wolf disappears and returns to help guide her back to her home. It was pretty bad.
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\nOne thing led to another. The story became wordless, something I’ve never done. But for this book, it made perfect sense. These two are out in the middle of nowhere. There’s no talking. It’s freezing cold. The girl’s mouth is covered. All communication is body language and facial expressions. The inclusion of text started to seem extraneous and overly expository. And at some point, I added a wolf pup into the story, and things really started coming together. It became a child and a wolf pup who were lost at the same time and needed to find their families again. The struggle was more of a mirror. This all really helped and things started coming together.
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\nI got really hung up on trying to make this story as realistic as possible, trying to get the details of everything just right. What could really happen and what couldn’t? I read several books about wolves and humans. Watched documentaries. I looked for experts to talk to about wolves. I contacted the team that runs the Yellowstone Wolf Project<\/a><\/strong>, an initiative that reintroduced the grey wolf into Yellowstone Park from 1995-97 — after wolves had been completely wiped out in the park back in the 1930s. One of the team members, Kira Cassidy, was extremely helpful and supportive. Sidebar: The Yellowstone Wolf Project is fascinating and wonderful to learn about really — how and why it happened and the benefits to the ecosystem in the area after wolves came back. Here’s a short video that outlines some of it. It’s really, really cool:
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