Today’s picture book is perfect for any family gatherings that involve food (and a lot of that seems to be happening this time of year).

photo credit: Laurel Golio

Susanna Reich is an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction for children and young adults. Her books include Fab Four Friends: The Boys Who Became the Beatles, and Stand Up and Sing!: Pete Seeger, Folk Music, and the Path to Justice. Her honors include the Rip Van Winkle Award for Outstanding Contributions to Children’s Literature, Tomas Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, International Latino Book Award, NCTE Orbis Pictus Honor, ALA Notable & Best Books for Young Adults, and School Library Journal Best Books. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her husband, children’s book author Gary Golio.  You can learn more about her at her website or follow her on Facebook.

PASS THE BABY is a rhyming picture book about a family gathering for a big feast.  Yet they always find time to ohh and ahh over the littlest attendee.  This is a delightful romp full of family and chaos (as every gathering inevitably is), and you can tell that from the cover too.  The illustrations by Raúl Colón are full of color and joie de vivre!  There is constant movement all throughout the text AND the illustrations that you are almost driven as a reader through the book at a break-neck speed.  It’s an incredible feat!

Welcome Susanna!

Me: Can you tell us a little bit about your writing journey.  How long have you been writing?  What brought you on your journey to this particular book?

Susanna: I danced professionally and then worked as a floral designer before starting to write in the early 1990s. My husband and I had been studying T’ai Chi with the children’s book illustrator Ed Young, and we became friends. Ed’s enthusiasm for picture books inspired me to write. I didn’t succeed in selling those first attempts and eventually turned to nonfiction after my local children’s book librarian told me there was a need for biographies of women. She was right! I connected with an editor at an SCBWI conference, and my first book, Clara Schumann: Piano Virtuoso, was published in 1999. Since then I’ve written mostly nonfiction and some middle grade fiction. I didn’t get back to writing a fictional picture book until Pass the Baby.

Me: I love that this is your first fiction picture book, despite writing so many others.  I also love the premise of your story: a baby that gets passed around at a family meal.  That almost always happens at large family gatherings!  What gave you the idea for this story? 

Susanna:  The book was inspired by a real event, but the details of the story are imaginary.  My nephew’s friend brought his wife and baby to a family dinner. Everybody had a great time playing with the baby; she was passed around the table all through the meal. Afterward it struck me as a good idea for a picture book.

Interior from Pass the Baby. Text © 2023 by Susanna Reich. Illustrations © 2023 by Raúl Colón. Used with permission from Holiday House Publishing, Inc.

Me: I find it fascinating that your story never once mentions if this is a holiday gathering or a regular weekly occurrence.  This is not a story just for the holidays, but it could apply to any time.  That makes it so much more marketable!  Was that a conscious choice on your part?  Was that always your plan with this manuscript or did someone suggest that change?

Susanna: My extended family, like many, gets together on all kinds of occasions—holidays, birthdays, graduations, when someone is visiting from out of town. So from the beginning I thought of this as an ordinary family gathering, not tied to a specific holiday. Something most people could recognize and relate to.

Me: Your story has such a jaunty rhyme that speeds you through the book.  Was your manuscript always this tight?  How many revisions did this manuscript undergo?

Susanna: I’ve adored rhyme since I was very young. I think it goes hand-in-hand with my love of music and dance. With Pass the Baby, once I settled on the rhyme scheme, it didn’t take that long to write, probably a few months. Working within the constraints of the structure was like solving a puzzle. I don’t know how many drafts I wrote—I just kept revising in the same WORD document.  

Me: You have had numerous books published over the years and won multiple awards.  What does your writing process look like?

Susanna: I work on one book at a time.  If it’s nonfiction, I start with research. I love research and will spend months, even years, learning about a subject and taking detailed notes. Only then do I start writing. At that point I’m so familiar with the subject that the writing goes fairly quickly. I revise as I write, then revise again and again until I’m satisfied with the result.

With middle grade fiction the process is different. Research may be required, especially if it’s historical fiction, but mostly I spend a lot of time thinking about the characters and laying out the plot so I know where I’m going with the story. Then I go through many drafts.

Writing a fictional picture book like Pass the Baby is different again. The plot is very simple but it takes time to get each sentence just right. Every word choice is very important and very deliberate, and I have to think about page turns and how each spread might be illustrated. Once I have a draft I’m happy with, I’ll make a mock dummy so I can check the pacing and see how the whole thing is working.

Interior from Pass the Baby. Text © 2023 by Susanna Reich. Illustrations © 2023 by Raúl Colón. Used with permission from Holiday House Publishing, Inc.

Me: This isn’t your first time to be so fortunate as to work with illustrator Raúl Colón.  His illustrations are gorgeous: his use of colors, his style, etc.  I also love that you never once specified ethnicity of this blended family (though there were hints) and he ran with it.  Were there any illustration surprises for you?  Any favorites?

Susanna: I was thrilled when my editor told me that Raúl would be illustrating Pass the Baby. We’d worked together before, on José! Born to Dance, and I had complete confidence that he’d come up with something wonderful. There’s so much emotional warmth in his work. You can tell the family really enjoys being together and takes the baby’s shenanigans in stride. And he really nails the humor. Kids laugh when I read it aloud, and I love that! Throughout the book there are sly little moments that say a lot. For example, in the spread where the baby flings banana at the kitchen door, the focus is on the baby and the mess she’s made, but in the corner we see part of the mother’s face, and her presence complicates the image and makes it much more interesting.

I always intended the family to be diverse and yes, I included hints in the manuscript and explained in an art note what I had in mind. My goal was to write a book that showed a diverse family finding joy in being together and celebrating food and family.

Me: Any advice for other new picture book writers?

Susanna: Read as many picture books as you can, join SCBWI, find a good critique group, and don’t give up. The most important word is perseverance. When I was a young dancer I read a book about the great ballerina Galina Ulanova. One of the chapters was entitled “Talent is Work,” and that idea really impressed me. We don’t have control over how much talent we’re given, but we do have control over how hard we work to manifest that talent.  

I love that.  That is great advice.  Thank you for stopping by my blog today.

Dear readers, if you haven’t had a chance yet to check out this book (which came out in October), I highly recommend it.  It’s a jaunty ride full of joy and humor that would be a fun read at any family gathering.