Today I get to interview both the author and the illustrator of a fantastic new cumulative picture book.  It’s a brilliant pairing of creators, as well as use of the form with hilarious amounts of chaos that come together in the best way.

Charlotte Offsay has visited my blog several times.  She is the author of several children’s books including A Grandma’s Magic, Challah Day!, and The Big Beach Cleanup. When she is having a particularly loud day, she can always count on her two small bear cubs and husband to bring calm and quiet back to their home in Los Angeles, California.  You can learn more about her at her website or follow her on Twitter and on Instagram.

THE QUIET FOREST is a picture book that follows the cumulative format.  There is a mischievous mouse whose antics lead to a domino effect of chaos throughout the forest and voila!  It’s no longer a quiet forest.  The climax and the resolution, however, are a brilliant turn of events that I simply didn’t see coming with that framework for the story.  And the illustrations by Abi Cushman are spot on perfect!  I can’t imagine a better pairing of author and illustrator than this for the story.  I can’t wait to share this one with all of you.

Welcome back Charlotte!

Me: The very smart title of this story comes with an instant problem.  What gave you the idea for this book?

Charlotte: I had been wanting to write a story about spreading kindness for a while but struggled to find the right way in. Over the years I tried writing it as a concept book and as a character driven story with a narrative arc, but no matter what I tried, it felt too didactic. In early 2020, I was participating in Tara Lazar’s month long story brainstorming event, Storystorm, and read this article about cumulative structure. I decided it would be fun to challenge myself to write a cumulative picture book and thought that the playfulness of it might just allow me to tackle the theme of spreading kindness in a non-didactic way. As I was working on the book, I was also home in lockdown with my husband and two small children during COVID. Our time together greatly influenced the book as I saw how grumpiness and mischief could flow through our house, but with a moment of pause, kindness could turn the tide of our days for the better.

Me: I love that!  You use the cumulative format to glorious success here.  Was it always part of the text from the first draft?  When did you decide to use that format?

Charlotte: I am so glad you like it! The cumulative structure was a lot of fun to write but a bit of a brain teaser at times! As I mentioned above, I had tried writing similar themed picture books in other formats but once I tried the cumulative structure I knew it was the entry point I had been searching for and stuck with it even when it became quite the puzzle to write.

Me: This story is incredibly well written!  You have just enough repetition woven throughout that it’s not bogging the story down at all.  It took me a few reads to catch, but I was astonished to realize that even your sound words have a bit of a mirroring going on with them.  “Splat! Thump!” becomes “Thump! Splash!” and so on.  I have to know: how long did it take you to write this manuscript?  Please tell me it was a struggle to get to this level of brilliance!

Charlotte: Aww, thank you for your kind words and thank you as well for noticing the repetition. Yes, it was quite challenging to get all the components of this book to work together in the way that I wanted them to. For those reading this who haven’t seen the book yet, I knew I wanted the animals in the manuscript to build in size and to realistically exist in nature together. I also wanted the onomatopoeia of each animal to represent the inciting incident for the next animal, and I also incorporated alliteration in the build and then the wind-down of the cumulative structure. All this to say there were A LOT of moving parts. For example, I would get the alliteration to work on the mischief spreading for one animal in the first half of the book but then the alliteration wouldn’t work in the wind-down or spreading kindness section at the end. I ended up switching out a lot of animals and it became a puzzle that I worked for many months to unlock. I am delighted with how it turned out but it was absolutely a struggle for me to write!

Me:  Wow!  You left plenty of room for the illustrator to work and Abi Cushman brought so much joy and life to this story!  Did you have any illustration notes for a text this brief about what exactly the chaos was that was developing?  Or did she have room to play and create all that drama?

Charlotte: Abi Cushman is a dream illustrator and she really brought the fun to this book. I did have some art notes about the deer being splashed for example, but Abi cooked up a whole new layer to the story all on her own. I never imagined the moose painting or a mouse landing in a pile of pancakes for example, but it elevates the book and the humor in a way I hadn’t known was possible. My art notes were more for readers to be able to follow the sparse text than anything else.

Me: Abi Cushman’s illustrations are wonderful!  I especially loved all of the little details (from bunny slippers to backpacks and painting canvases)!  This is the best pairing of author and illustrator if I ever saw one!  Were there any illustration surprises for you?  Any favorites?

Charlotte: Oh, my goodness, SO many! As I mentioned above, I spent countless hours trying to make sure the animals could realistically exist in a forest together, so I laughed out loud with delight when I saw the pancakes and painting moose. I never could’ve dreamed up the fun that Abi did and am delighted with how her creativity has elevated the book. I think my favorite spread is the bear in the cave, where Abi has illustrated just the eyes and it works so well to add the perfect amount of tension. Honestly though, I could go spread by spread and spend the whole day gushing- I have a framed print of the big bear hug in my office. 

Me: Aww!  I love that!  Your dedication to your brother William is very sweet, especially given the middle of the book (and the climax of your story, so I won’t spoil it).  Was this a dedication you always wanted to give while creating the story?  Or did that come about organically after you were done creating it?

Charlotte: The climax or the moment of pause that you are referencing in the story was actually inspired by daughter. During our days at home together during COVID while I was working on this book, my daughter would often respond to a tense moment or a loud day with compassion and kindness – mirroring her actions seemed like the perfect turning point for this story that I was looking for. The dedication though is for my brother and that came after I wrote the book. It seemed fitting as he can always hear the song amidst the noise.

Me: I love how many different types of books you have written and published: everything from how-to, holiday chants, passion projects and subjects close to your heart.  Sometimes new picture book writers are discouraged from doing this (as it’s thought they won’t be successful in publishing).  Were you ever discouraged by anyone (editor, critique group, etc.) about having projects that are too dissimilar?  What would you like new picture book writers to know about this?

Charlotte: I tend to write about whatever is taking up the most space in my heart at any particular moment. Over the years as you mentioned this has taken my writing in many different directions. But since my best stories come from the things in my life I care most about it has always felt to me like I have little choice but to follow my creativity regardless or the format or direction it takes me in. I will say that writing in a wide range of styles made it somewhat harder to find an agent who liked the range of my work – for example I would find that someone liked my humor but perhaps not my lyrical voice or vice versa. Fortunately for me, Nicole Geiger at Full Circle Literary liked my range of work and has been an incredible teammate and advocate. It has allowed me to work with a few different publishers, finding the right fit for my different types of writing with different editors which I very much love and enjoy. My advice to picture book writers on this topic is to just create the best material you can and to not worry too much about the rest. If the writing is good, the rest will follow, just don’t get off the rollercoaster before you get your yes. After all, it only takes one yes to change your path!

That is so true!  Thank you for stopping by my blog again today Charlotte.

But wait, dear readers!  There’s more!  I also interviewed the illustrator.

Abi Cushman has also visited my blog several times.  She is the author-illustrator of Soaked!, Animals Go Vroom!, and Wombats Are Pretty Weird. Abi is also the illustrator of The Quiet Forest by Charlotte Offsay. She lives deep in the wooded suburbs of Connecticut with her husband and two mischievous kids, who make her home very loud indeed. You can learn more about her at her website.

Welcome back Abi!

Me: This book reminds me ever so slightly of SOAKED because there is a cast of animal characters in a bit of chaos.  You were the perfect illustrator for this story!  What made you decide to take on this illustration project?

Abi: When I read the manuscript, I could see why they thought of me. It had this wonderful cast of forest animals who were all going to get disrupted in some way. There was so much potential for a range of facial expressions, which I love. And I could see elements of SOAKED! in it with the forest animals,  and I could also see elements of ANIMALS GO VROOM! because it features a chain of events and lots of chaos. It also has onomatopoeia. But what was really exciting about it was that I knew it would be quite a puzzle to figure out illustration-wise, and I thought it would be a fun challenge.

Me: I love the details of bunny slippers on the bear and the mouse’s backpack.  That is SO you!  Did you also invent the pancakes and the painting?  Or were there art notes about some finer points of what the chaos should look like?

Abi: Thank you! For the characters, I wanted a way to add color and personality to each of them so that they’d stand out from the background. At first, I didn’t have any accessories for the mama bear, and Catherine Laudone and Krista Vossen, the editor and art director for the project, encouraged me to think of something for her too. I decided that bunny slippers would be funny because she’s supposed to be kind of intimidating as a bear, but in the end, she’s a mama who was trying to sleep.

I started out my process by doodling on the manuscript and trying to come up with activities that would be visually appealing to kids. There were also some art notes with suggestions which I incorporated into my running list of ideas. After sketching little scenes and characters and trying all the ideas out, I thought pancakes would make the most fun splat sound. And the painting gone wrong would allow me to add a bunch of color everywhere.

Me: Some of your composition choices in this story blew my mind (like the shock of the first cave scene or the wonderful tilting forest).  Were those choices intrinsic to your creation process? Or were any of them ideas from someone else?

Abi: The cave scene and tilting forest spread were in my initial thumbnails. They were among the few layouts that didn’t change!  But a lot of the other layouts I had initially tried got changed up. For example, when the chaos was building up, I had originally laid it out with vignettes and single page spreads. When I got feedback from Krista, it was clear those compositions weren’t going to work out. So on my next round of revisions, I went for more full double-page spreads. Krista, Catherine and I bounced a lot of ideas around about the composition, and it was a very collaborative process.  I really liked how it all came together in the end!

Me: This is the first book that you have only illustrated (not also written).  Was it a nice change of pace?  Or was it a challenge when you weren’t also writing the story?

Abi: The process for illustrating a book I didn’t write was definitely different, and it was a great change of pace. When I write my own stories, I’m thinking about the pictures at the same time. So both the words and pictures evolve together.

But here, the text was already there for me, and the challenge was to imagine the world and how I was going to do some storytelling in the pictures. When I got the manuscript, I could see that Charlotte had been very clever in figuring out this puzzle in the text: how she used the text structure and alliteration to build up the story and then unwind in the end. That’s not something I would have thought to do as an author. So I loved that this was my chance to really collaborate on a story like this. I tried to push myself as an illustrator, and I learned a lot in working on this book.

Me: Was the editing process for just your artwork any different than before?  Did you have to do any revisions at all or make any major changes to illustrations?

Abi: We went through several rounds of sketches for THE QUIET FOREST. As I mentioned before, many of my layouts changed completely. The process was different from my author-illustrated books because when I’d get revision notes to those, it would be to say something wasn’t working, and then I’d have to figure out how to change the pictures or the text or both. But here, with the manuscript being edited already, the editor and art director were involved earlier in my illustration process. They were there with me as I was developing the world and the characters. I think both ways of doing things have merits, so it was cool to experience both processes.

Me: What is one thing that surprised you in illustrating this story?

Abi: I think one thing that was surprising was that no matter how many books I illustrate, it’s still really hard every time. I think that’s because every story has its own challenges. So for example, even though I’d already illustrated a book with forest animals, my challenge with this one was actually how I could make these characters different from the ones in SOAKED. How could another bear, another rabbit, and another moose come into their own in this story? I wanted them to be unique but still have my voice because that’s why I was chosen for the job. I tried to really imagine their individual personalities when I was drawing them, and hopefully that came through.

Me: It did!  I love that.  What future projects can we look forward to from you?

Abi: I have FLAMINGOS ARE PRETTY FUNKY, another installment in my “[Not So] Serious Guide series, coming out on June 4 from Greenwillow Books. I’m really excited about this book because it’s the first time I’ve written a sequel. And I think kids will love learning about how weird and tough and fabulous flamingos are. I was thrilled to bring back Joey the snake to this book to add his colorful commentary. 

Other than that, I am crossing my fingers that I might be able to add more books to the series. I’m also working on a very silly fiction picture book that is funny to me, and hopefully is funny to others as well. We’ll have to see what happens!

Oh my gosh! I can’t wait to read your flamingo book.  That sounds fantastic.  And I’m crossing fingers with you on future projects too!  Thank you for stopping by my blog again today Abi.

Dear readers, if you haven’t yet had a chance to check out THE QUIET FOREST, it released on Tuesday. This is a book I guarantee will be studied for the amazing use of cumulative format by picture book writers for years to come.  However, I also think that this is also an excellent example of leaving room for the illustrator to bring more to the table than you might expect and truly seeing your creations come to life.  I cannot recommend this book enough.  You won’t want to miss it.