{"id":5460,"date":"2021-11-14T00:01:15","date_gmt":"2021-11-14T06:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=5460"},"modified":"2021-11-13T16:59:54","modified_gmt":"2021-11-13T22:59:54","slug":"7-imps-7-kicks-769-featuring-steven-weinberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=5460","title":{"rendered":"7-Imp\u2019s 7 Kicks #769: Featuring Steven Weinberg"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nToday, I’m happy to welcome author-illustrator Steven Weinberg<\/a><\/strong>, who is here to talk about his new board book series, the Big Job Books, as well as the illustrated chapter book he released earlier this year, The Middle Kid<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (Chronicle, March 2021). <\/p>\n

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The Big Job Books \u2014 Fridge and Oven’s Big Job<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, Washer and Dryer’s Big Job<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, and Dishwasher’s Big Job<\/a><\/em><\/strong> (all released in August by Roaring Brook Press) \u2014 are unusually shaped board books (complete with googly eyes!) all about the large, busy machines (in this case, everyday appliances) of modern life at which young children stare in amazement. I don’t aspire to be a children’s book author myself, but the very premise of this series is so<\/em> smart, I wish I’d thought of it. The books are sturdy (for those small hands), funny, and instantly child-friendly. They are also engaging; Weinberg personifies these appliances as they demonstrate their roles in a household. There are no longer any newborns or toddlers in my life (though the house next door is for sale, and I may or may not have been consistently wishing for neighbors with a baby and\/or kitten), but the moment I meet one (human baby, that is, not kitten), I will be thrusting these books at the wee child’s parent.<\/p>\n

The Middle Kid<\/em>, formatted in spots to look like a composition notebook, captures with humor and poignancy the day-in-a-life struggle of a middle child who works to find his place in the family. A middle kid, Weinberg writes, is:<\/p>\n

The one who gets blamed when your little sister is CRYING.
\nThe one who gets BEAT UP when your big brother is mad.
\nNot the youngest. Not the oldest. SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE. …
\nRight in between.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I’m at it and before I introduce Steven, let me add: If you’ve missed them, by chance, don’t forget the AstroNuts books Weinberg has co-written with the great Jon Scieszka<\/a><\/strong> (book one released in 2019<\/a><\/strong>; book two, in 2020<\/a><\/strong>; and book three in September of this year<\/a><\/strong>). <\/p>\n

Without further ado, I turn it over to Steven. And I thank him for visiting. <\/p>\n

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Steven<\/font><\/strong>: I first made these Big Job books for my daughters, Amina and Felix. Like so many kids, they love the appliances in our house, because they\u2019re such cool, kinetic, process-based machines that do such tangible tasks. I love them too for all the obvious reasons, but I became especially fond of them when I realized they could not only, say, wash and dry my clothes but also entertain my children and give me a few elusive work-from-home-parent moments to myself!
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\nWith my kids in mind, the first versions of the Big Job books were little \u201cdummies\u201d I drew digitally on my Wacom Cintiq, printed out, cut, folded, and taped together with some blue tape. This way I could read these to them in something approaching a real book experience. I read them hundreds of times to my little familial test audience, and I can\u2019t stress enough how helpful that is. Reading handmade dummies aloud is how I work through every potential book now. For me, it\u2019s not a real book idea until I\u2019ve hastily taped it together and read it to Amina and Felix.
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\nI did all the line work for these books with a brush pen. I love painting, and sometimes I fear the joy of a brush is lost when I do line work in pencil or digitally. Brush pens have been a staple of my traveling sketchbook art kit since I made the graphic novel\/travelogue\/memoir To Timbuktu<\/a><\/strong><\/em> with my wife, Casey Scieszka<\/a><\/strong>, in 2011.
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\nI always wanted to do more than one of these books. I mean, how to choose between all of our favorite appliances? I settled on washer and dryer, dishwasher, and fridge and oven. Once I narrowed it to these three stories, I thought: Okay, it\u2019d be really cool if they could all stack in an unusual but very satisfying way. Dishwasher makes sense as a square; washer and dryer as a vertically-stacked rectangle; and \u2026 OH! WAIT! Could fridge and oven be a weird \u201cL\u201d? This ended up being a massive, self-imposed design challenge, but I wouldn\u2019t have wanted to do it in any other way.
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\nThe \u201cL\u201d layout probably makes Fridge and Oven\u2019s Big Job<\/em> my favorite of the three books. It\u2019s such a wild frame through which to progress a story. I think I\u2019d never be comfortable that it visually worked if I hadn\u2019t gotten to test-read it aloud so<\/em> often to my kids. I also love this book, because I\u2019m totally outing my mom\u2019s recipe for chocolate chip cookies. Well, I\u2019d foolishly thought this was a secret family recipe until asking a few years back and she said: \u201cOh, that\u2019s just what\u2019s on the back of the Tollhouse bag.\u201d I still can\u2019t make them as good as she can, though.
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\nBut okay, as any self-respecting parent would say, I actually do love all of these books equally. My favorite moment from Washer and Dryer\u2019s Big Job<\/em> is when I make the reader literally spins the book to simulate the best part of being a dryer.
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\nOverall, I wanted to celebrate the realities of life with kids: dirty dishes piling up; the French press you wish was still full of hot coffee; and, of course, the dishwasher you will endlessly be filling, emptying, and refilling until the end of time. (See: Dishwasher\u2019s Big Job<\/em>. I love you too!)
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\nI also wanted to celebrate googly eyes! I wish I could take credit for those on the cover. My amazing editor, Kate Meltzer, at Roaring Brook had that idea. The really fun part of making board books \u2014 something I\u2019d never done before \u2014 is that the printing technology is changing so fast. Sometimes you just have to ask if it\u2019s possible to do something new, and it very well might be. Kate dared to ask about googly eyes. It was complicated. There was a lot of making sure things lined up exactly<\/em> right (as you can see on this cover sketch full of confusing markings), but I think it was very worth it.
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\nSo if the Big Job books celebrate the messy cycles of daily family life, my early reader chapter book, The Middle Kid<\/em>, celebrates the endless frustrations of being stuck in the middle between an older and younger sibling in which there\u2019s never enough pizza, where your big brother beats you up, where you\u2019re always blamed when your little sister cries, and on and on and on …!
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\nYes, I based this book on my childhood but purposefully set it where I live now: the Catskill mountains in upstate New York. Before moving out here eight years ago, I lived in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Rabat, Beijing \u2014 basically, a lot of spectacular cities. They\u2019re delightful, but it turns out I am such a sucker for painting mountains, and the fact that I get to do that out here every day is one of the best parts of living here.
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“My mom and dad look in the box. Then they look at me. The box is empty.”<\/em>
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\nGrowing up, my favorite book was Hatchet<\/a><\/strong><\/em> by Gary Paulsen<\/a><\/strong>, and his recent passing<\/a><\/strong> saddened me and got me thinking again about how as a little kid I was fascinated by the almost horrifying amount of freedom that boy has in the woods. It was something I really yearned for, growing up in the suburbs of Bethesda, Maryland. That\u2019s another reason I wanted to set this book in the mountains. Kids can have an added level of agency when nature is involved. Parents become so secondary. I like working with that as a storyteller.
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\nMy other main reference for illustrating The Middle Kid<\/em> was my notebook from first grade. Every morning, our teacher had us write and draw quietly, and while I was honestly kind of scared of her (she was so stern!), I loved the feeling of escape once I got into it. I collaged it in directly up there on the top right of this page spread [below], and I used it as inspiration for the book\u2019s endpapers and case.
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“I am in the basement. Alone. Finally. I am drawing the tree house from the woods. At first, I draw what I remember. Then I add what I want in my own tree house.
I really like that part of drawing.”<\/em>
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\nI\u2019ll end here on my other favorite escape, besides the woods and drawing: books. My mom (of the famous Tollhouse cookie recipe) is a librarian, so the library has always been a very special place to me. I made sure it was for The Middle Kid<\/em> too. This is the library I wish was right down the road from me and my family: warm, full of people, and with a view Thomas Cole<\/a><\/strong> would have painted.
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“We get to the library, my favorite place.”<\/em>
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All images reproduced by permission of Steven Weinberg.<\/em><\/p>\n

* * * Jules’s Kicks * * *<\/strong><\/font>
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Note for any new readers: 7-Imp\u2019s 7 Kicks is a weekly meeting ground for taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week, whether book-related or not, that happened to you. New kickers are always welcome.<\/p>\n

1)<\/strong><\/font> The 2021 New York Times\/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children\u2019s Books<\/a><\/strong> were announced on Friday. <\/p>\n

2)<\/strong><\/font> Leonard Marcus’s Horn Book<\/em> tribute to Eric Carle<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n

3)<\/strong><\/font> This tweet sent my youngest daughter into hysterics. It is<\/em> pretty damn funny. <\/p>\n

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Little boy saves cat from science experiment \ud83e\uddd2\ud83d\udc08\u2764\ufe0f pic.twitter.com\/JcQEPhHtwE<\/a><\/p>\n

— \ud835\udd50o\u0334g\u0334 (@Yoda4ever) November 9, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n