If you ever felt a bit overwhelmed when learning something new, then today’s picture book is for you!

Jack Wong has visited my blog before.  His debut picture book, WHEN YOU CAN SWIM, was released last year and became a national bestseller, as well as winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award.  Jack Wong (黃雋喬) was born in Hong Kong and raised in Vancouver. In 2010, he left behind a life as a bridge engineer to pursue his Bachelor of Fine Arts at NSCAD University (Halifax, Canada), where he now lives with his wife and two cats.  You can learn more about him at his website or follow him on Instagram or Twitter.

ALL THAT GROWS is Jack’s third picture book release as author-illustrator.  It tells the story of a young boy who is experiencing spring with his sister and learning about plants.  How does she know so much about growing things?  It’s a quiet journey of wonder and curiosity through the natural world that is breathtaking.  I just love talking with Jack about his books because he dives so deep into the thought process behind their creation, which is mirrored so perfectly by his main character here.  There’s a deep internal monologue that is peaceful and beautiful at the same time.  This is a book I will read in my classroom over and over again as it’s all about learning anything new and the process we all go through.

Welcome back Jack!

Me: I do not have a green thumb (I have in fact joked with friends for years that I have a black thumb).  So I definitely identify with your main character who loves trees and nature, but can’t identify plants and views them as a bit of a mystery.  What gave you the idea for this story?

Jack: Most of my stories, the ones that I’m most excited about, are the confluence of several things going on in my life, and one story is able to touch on multiple things at once. That was the case for this story as well.

On one level it was born during the start of the pandemic which accounts for some of the scenes in the book that you have: characters walking, taking long neighborhood walks, starting their own garden. I mean, it could have been starting your own sourdough bread. You know all the kinds of things we did at the start of the pandemic, but those are the scenes that kind of represent that time.

My wife is the gardener in the family, although she previously had more of a casual interest.  Right about the same time as the pandemic started, very coincidentally, she was starting to get really interested, delving into gardening a lot more, and learning lots of new things. I was watching her go through that, and I both was able to watch her go through the process of learning about plants and put that into the character in the book.  I was the beneficiary of a lot of new things she learned and passed on to me. So that aspect also went into the character of the book.

At the same time, as you know, it’s a book about spring and a book about gardening. This book has this STEM subject matter on the surface (and I think that will be a really great draw for some kids and some educators). But I also really think that it’s a book about the process and the feelings that come along with being a beginner and learning something new, as well as being daunted and overwhelmed, and how to deal with that.  So in that respect the book really speaks to my experiences, having tried different things in life and pursued multiple careers, and knowing the feeling of what it’s like to begin again, plus learning to farm among all my other experiences as well.

So when I put those layers together, the book is really about what it’s like for a child to be confronting the complexity of the world for the first time, whether it’s through farming or something else. And that was also an experience that a lot of kids, not to mention everybody else, were going through in the pandemic: realizing that there’s actually a lot more going on in the world which that time brought to light. But there’s so much that all of us don’t really know, and we’re learning on the fly.  So I think ultimately, it’s a book that circles around those themes. And in that sense the book is also about turning our focus to smaller things, to our communities.  It’s about the roles that family members might take as educators.  The sister in the story is really someone who watches after the education of her little brother. The book was all those things swirling around all at once. And when I thought of a story that can kind of grab hold of all those themes at the same time, and put it into words and pictures in this one story, that’s when it really compelled me. 

Me: I absolutely love the illustrations in this book!  The softness, the dapples of light, and the darkness are just stunning.  Can you talk about your art process for it?  Did you use traditional media or digital, or a blend of both? 

Jack: The book illustrations were all rendered in traditional medium: pastel on paper.  Although there is a lot of digital manipulation that goes on, kind of in the polishing towards the final product.  However, interesting to note, for my book launch, I’m holding an exhibition of the original artwork at the local library, and because there’s all these little differences between the final art and the art in the final book, it’s actually going to be called “all that grows, a spot-the-difference” exhibit.

I just love the idea that we’re all taking this seriously as fine art, a visual art. I feel strongly about the work. I’m proud of it. But it’s also a unique opportunity that it’s at the library where someone who might not usually go to an art gallery, especially kids, who are, you know, only 6 or 7 years old.  They will encounter the art on the walls just as they’re running about, you know, having fun and whatever, and I love that we’ll be able to mix those two together and not have a boundary between higher and low art. I just love the fact that there’s going to be a spot-the-difference exhibit work, and there’s going to be a little contest where they’re all encouraged to fill out a form of like 5 differences they can find. I love those in those old spotlight magazines.

Me: It’s been said to new picture book authors and illustrators that they should have work that is similar in tone and/or look.  You now have three books published as an author-illustrator and each one looks so different.  What made you decide to use a different medium for each book?  Does it worry you that others might not be able to recognize all of your projects as all coming from you?

Jack: I think we all understand that each story deserves a particular artistic representation, an artistic style, and you know, if that weren’t the case, we wouldn’t have publishers that want to pair authors and their manuscripts with particular illustrators.  Even if you’re one author, each book is going to be paired with a separate illustrator based on what the feel/theme/tone of that story is. I think we all understand that. You know every story doesn’t deserve the same illustration approach.

So it kind of follows that as an author-illustrator you either A) write stories in the same style or tone, or you write stories within a range that is covered by one style. There are some authors who do an amazing job of that. I heard an interview with John Klassen once, where he’s only able to draw characters that look deadpan. So he ends up writing stories are deadpan, he ends up illustrating characters that are deadpan, and he’s able to build out a range of stories from that, but with kind of a similar illustration style that kind of seems to fit his writing. 

You have that option. or B) if you happen to be an author-illustrator that writes stories that don’t stick to one tone, or theme, or style or kind of voice, it kind of follows that you are not just one illustrator, but many illustrators for your different stories, just as if you were a different illustrator for each manuscript. So that’s the best craft focused explanation of how I think through that question.

In terms of that real worry that we all might have about how it’s perceived in publishing, well, I think I would just be kind of bored: to be thinking about what I should write, based on the one illustrating style I’m allowing myself to have. So I’m just following my interests in what I’m doing.

And also I feel that even if I were to stick to one illustration style, there’s no guarantee that the next book or the next contract is going to come. So I might as well make each book exactly what it needs to be, and let that be my best effort at doing what publishing wants me to do.

Me:  That’s brilliant.  I love that.  And I love that you leave a little mystery in the book.  The reader never finds out what exactly is growing in that mystery patch in the garden.  Even the knowledgeable sister didn’t know!  Why was that important for you to include?  Why did you want to leave a little mystery like that for young readers? 

Jack: Within the context of the story, it is just the little mystery at the end that keeps you kind of wondering. If the reader sees it as a just a little mystery, that’s a great takeaway for me. It’s actually quite central to the theme of the book.  If I were to boil it down into a pithy statement, it would be that learning. or even life in general, isn’t about knowing everything, because we can’t know everything. And it’s really about how we deal with not knowing.  That’s the journey that the protagonist goes on: from a place of feeling overwhelmed (and possibly in his own childlike way, inadequate in some way to his sister, and by extension the world), and he comes to a conclusion of being able to live within that space of not knowing, and is still able to act. 

That ending was really there from the start.  There was no other way of ending it for me. There were lots of changes to the different scenes of the story : the way it’s worded and the examples I use.  However, the fact that the story ends with him, discovering something that neither he nor his sister knows, and there’s this moment—the first moment where he’s assertive in what he’s going to do next. Yeah, that was there from the start. 

Me:  What is one thing that surprised you in the creation of this story?

Jack: As much as the book is kind of encouraging us to be able to live in uncertainty, the creation of the book actually necessitated that I do the exact opposite.  That was a surprise.  Because I needed to draw the flowers for the book, I really had to know the anatomy and get into it.  Even though the character never finds out what the mystery flower is, I actually know what the mystery flower is, and I had to look for the right mystery flower.

There were multiple choices for what the mystery flower would be, and I had to pin it down, the one most likely for the season they’re having or the fact that it’s in the shade.  I had to know everything about this mystery flower, and I needed to take real life reference photos of it out in the wild and then draw it.

It’s just really funny that I actually have such a different journey than the character in the book, in the limited sense of gardening.  I had a slightly different relationship to nature than what the character ended up with.  I spent three years obsessively researching, photographing, and documenting plants.  What the seasons are like, when plants bloom within the season, and all that stuff. But I think in general, the themes and messages of the book still apply at a larger level, just maybe not in the production of the book.

If you had to illustrate it, it would make sense that you would have to know all those factors too, beside writing it.  The book came to me in written form first.  Then I did a dummy which was very rough, and I sent it to the publisher.  Afterwards, it took about three years before it was published, so I passed through three more spring seasons.  The writing was already done. I could have left it in the space of ambiguity I could have shared the viewpoint of the protagonist, and not known what the mystery flower was.  Yet because I was illustrating it, I spent the next two spring seasons, really, obsessively researching and documenting everything. So it’s really the illustration of the book that drove me, which is really weird.  I don’t know how else to describe it, except I didn’t follow my own advice.

Also, a really quick anecdote about that.  My editor and I did discuss whether or not to just make up a flower, so that it truly is a mystery flower.  Meaning that even if someone tried to look it up in a book they wouldn’t be able to find it.  Then it’s a mystery to all of us. I could’ve used an illustration style that was more loose and less representative, then I wouldn’t have needed to do that research. But it didn’t feel authentic to the story that way. For me, it was as equally authentic to delve into the passion of learning, as it was to live in ambiguity.

So really that’s two surprises. The character experiences both those things, and I end up experiencing more of the delving into, you know, really wanting to learn a lot about this new field.

Me:  I sense a love of nature in your work (and you have said as much in previous interviews).  Yet I wonder if you identify with the main character in this book?  Do you have a green thumb or do you find plants a bit of a mystery as well?

Jack: I don’t have a green thumb, although I have volunteered on organic farms, and I love farm work.  Volunteering on an organic farm is such a rich experience where you are guided through what to do. Your task for the day is to pull up the weeds, so you do that, and I love that work.  But on my own I don’t really have much of green thumb and have never started a garden at home on my own.

I’ve helped my wife a little bit, but I do find plants a bit of a mystery.  I also have this kind of Meta level of wondering about why we need to know the names of nature. I’m not sure that theme is touched upon in the book. But, for example, when I’m walking through the forest, one way of enjoying nature is to be able to point to that tree and say, “Hey, that’s a that’s a birch, and that is a tamarack.”  I get satisfaction as I walk through the woods by identifying these things, in admittedly anthro-human terms, to kind of pin them down by category and by species, so that they’re known rather than unknown. I’ve often wondered how we can have a relationship with nature without seeking to label it. And that’s something that may be the topic of another book.

But I find myself, for example, when I go somewhere, and I don’t know what the plants are, I think, “Oh, I really wish I knew.”  Then I wonder, why would it matter? How does it change the experience of being in nature, of opening our senses to the smells, sights and sensations? Why does it matter that we need to know what plant that is? I often try to figure out where that balance is.  There’s no answer to that. It’s just interesting. 

Me: I heard that you may be working with one of my favorite authors (James Howe of BUNNICULA fame).  Is it true?  Can you talk about any other future projects you’re working on?  What else can we look forward to seeing from you?

Jack: It is true! I’m working with James on the picture book biography of the cellist YoYo Ma which he has written and I’m currently illustrating. That book is coming out probably in 2025.  I’m also thrilled to report that James is a lovely celebrity and just the most open, engaged, and generous person to work with.  This is actually my first illustration project where I’m illustrating someone else’s work, and getting to know that productive tension of working with an author, of coming together as two halves.  So maybe the way he originally pictured the book in his head, is not exactly how I’m going to do it. I couldn’t have picked a better person to experience that for the first time with and be guided by because he’s such a veteran in the industry.

I also wanted to mention a book he released last November: MILO WALKING. It feels like a companion book to ALL THAT GROWS.  Milo is another child character who is going on walks and noticing things in nature.  It has James’s trademark wry sense of humor, something that ALL THAT GROWS sorely lacks.  We didn’t know each other and yet we were both working on these books, both finished years before we started working together.  

After that project, I’ll be working on my next book with Scholastic, which isn’t a follow up or direct sequel to WHEN YOU CAN SWIM, but it is with the same amazing team: editor Andrea Davis Pinkney and Patti Ann Harris. It’s an unnamed project that we are looking for the same emotional impact.  It’s a story that we haven’t quite nailed down yet, but it’s exciting to be working on that next.

Congratulations on both of those projects.  They both sound amazing.  And thank you for stopping by my blog again today Jack.

Dear readers, ALL THAT GROWS, releases tomorrow.  Keep your eyes out for this one.  It’s a quiet story that slowly grows to full bloom, just like learning something new.  This is one you won’t want to miss.