I think today’s book may be the first poetry graphic novel that I’ve ever seen. Yay for poetry in more genres!

Vikram Madan grew up in India where, despite spending his childhood rhyming and doodling, he ended up an engineer. After many years of tech work, he followed his heart back to being creative and is now the author/illustrator of over a dozen books, including the Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor winning OWL & PENGUIN series, the acclaimed funny poetry collections BEWARE THE DRAGON AND THE NOZZLEWOCK, A HATFUL OF DRAGONS, THE BUBBLE COLLECTOR, and LORD OF THE BUBBLES, the early reader chapter series BOBO & PUP-PUP, and the graphic-novel-in-rhyme series ZOONI TALES. His books have been honored by Kirkus Reviews, American Library Association, Junior Library Guild, New York Public Library, Bank Street College of Education, School Library Journal blogs, and others, and have appeared on multiple Best Books of the Years lists. You can learn more about him at his website or follow him on Instagram or BlueSky.

BEWARE THE DRAGON & THE NOZZLEWOCK is a hilarious collection of illustrated poetry. It’s not exactly a picture book at 130 pages but come on. EVERY single page has illustrations on it! Vikram chose to do this book in the style of a graphic novel. I just had to track this down to read and I was delighted I did. It’s hilarious. Once upon a time, I compared his previous poetry collection to Shel Silverstein (which I believe was well deserved because of his love of silly word play AND his black and white illustrations). He is now being compared to a mash-up of Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky for many of those same reasons (and again, it’s well deserved). However, he is also an illustrator and he created everything you see in this collection. This is truly a labor of love and it shines through. I can imagine a whole new generation of young readers falling in love with poetry just because of this book (which thrills and delights me all over again at the possibilities).

Welcome Vikram!

Me: You are an author, an illustrator, and a poet. Whew! That’s amazing! Can you talk about your journey?  When did you start writing and creating art?

Vikram: I grew up in India and spent my childhood rhyming and doodling, publishing my first poem in a children’s magazine at age 11, and cartooning my way through high school and college. Despite that, I studied engineering and ended up working in tech. By 2012 though, I was painfully aware that the life I was living did not feel authentic and, after much agonizing, I quit my career (without a plan!) to try and follow my ‘creative heart.’ I started taking painting lessons, and decided to combine my love for poetry and cartooning into a Shel-Silverstein-like book of funny poems, titled THE BUBBLE COLLECTOR, which I self-published. The challenge of selling a self-published book convinced me to look at traditional publishing, and though it took many more years, eventually I found an agent and a publisher for my first traditionally published book A HATFUL OF DRAGONS, which came out in March 2020 just as Covid hit. Since then, I have had the good fortune of also being able to write/illustrate several early readers and graphic novels, including the Geisel-Honor winning OWL & PENGUIN series. BEWARE THE DRAGON AND THE NOZZLEWOCK is my second traditionally published poetry collection (and my 11^th traditionally published book) and at the end of the day, I am just happy I still get to keep rhyming and doodling.

Me:  May you forever continue to do so! I saw that you dedicated this book to your mom who gave you her love for words and poetry. Is that where you first learned to love poetry? What made you want to write poetry for young readers like this?

Vikram: My Mom loved poetry and, one birthday, bought me a thick treasury of illustrated children’s poems. That book, which I must have read hundreds of times, was probably instrumental in instilling in me both a love for language and for playing with language, which I hope comes across in the poems I write now.

I don’t specifically see myself as writing poetry for younger readers – my target audience is everyone who enjoys humor and rhyme from age 6 to 106 or older. (I can happily attest that many adults enjoy my books too). I don’t shy away from advanced vocabulary in my work because I don’t believe in writing down to the kids – I think kids should read up! How else will they learn about things they don’t know if they won’t encounter them in what they are reading? 🙂

Me: I wouldn’t exactly call this a sequel to A HATFUL OF DRAGONS, but it’s almost as if you took the original concept and expanded it. From 64 pages to 128 here; black and white line drawings to full color graphic novel here. Once again this is another fun and silly collection of poetry. What gave you the idea to make a graphic novel of poetry this time?

Vikram: Many readers and reviewers loved how visually rich A HATFUL OF DRAGONS is, including having poems that incorporate short comics. For a follow-up poetry book, I wondered if I could go ‘all-in’ on the visual format and challenge myself to make a book that could be both a poetry collection and a full-color graphic novel.

A downside of the graphic novel format is that the poems have to be narrative in nature (i.e. tell a story that unfolds over, or can be expressed in, a series of panels), so not all poems can be illustrated this way. While I wasn’t completely sure I could write a whole book of just narrative-ish poems, I created a proof-of-concept with just three poems and pitched it to my editor. Happily, they liked the idea and we signed a contract for a full 128-page book.

Most of the book was written after the contract was signed, and the book really shaped itself through the writing journey.

Me: As you both wrote and illustrated this book, which came first, your poems or the illustrations? Or did you work on them in tandem? How did the editing process go?

Vikram: I think visually but start with words. While writing a poem, I can loosely envision how the illustrations might unfold. Sketching out the illustrations often makes me rewrite the words. Words and images keep playing off each other until, slowly, a unified whole emerges.

My poetry editor, Rebecca Davis at WordSong, helps me be better than I think I can be and regularly saves me from myself and from mediocrity. 🙂 She thinks deeply about the poems and sends me detailed comments, pointing out places where things aren’t working or could be better (e.g. when I use cliché expressions). I try to ‘solve’ the problems she identifies and then we repeat the process till we both feel satisfied with the end result.

The part of the editing process I usually dread is the copy-editing. A copy-editor will sometimes, rightly, flag my use of language as being incorrect – e.g. I took too much poetic license, or mutated an expression to force a rhyme – and then I will have to go back and change portions of a poem, sometimes dramatically.  

Me: Your poetry has such a cadence and rhythm to it. And I absolutely love the allusions to poems by Robert Frost and Lewis Carroll here. Did you use any poetic forms? Did you have any favorite poems in this collection?

Vikram: Rhythm, rhyme, meter, cadence, the sound of words spoken aloud are all very important to me and I try hard to share my joy for these with readers.

I think of poetry as making art with words, and I marvel at – and am inspired by –    how poets of the past were able to take ordinary language and shape it into such fine works of art. I therefore cannot resist tipping my hat to some of them in my own work. I hope readers will enjoy my good-humored dig at Robert Frost in the poem ‘Deep, Dark, and Lovely’. And for those who enjoy the poem ‘Ballad of the Ghost Guppies’, I invite you to look up the poem ‘Phantasmagoria’ by Lewis Carroll.

There are a numerous poetic forms and rhyming patterns in all my poetry collections, everything from concrete poems, limericks, monorhymes, narrative poems, chants, block form, circular poems, tongue twisters, various stanza types (couplets, quatrains, etc.), and more. As a poet, I feel a responsibility to show young readers a variety of ways in which we can express ourselves. Variety in form also prevents the book from feeling monotonous and can help keep readers engaged.

In terms of personal favorites, I am particularly pleased with the poem ‘Phoenix’, as the circular form clearly mirrors the bird’s endless life cycle. I also had fun working in the prefix ‘imp-’ as many times as I could into the poem titled ‘A Hatful of Imps’. As a dog owner, I get a little teary eyed with ‘Ghost Puppy’.

Me: Were there any poems that got cut out of the collection?  Or any poems you wish you had included?

Vikram: I spent 9 months writing the first draft of poems for this book and crafting the interplay between the poems. In the end only one poem did not make the final cut. Happily, removing that one poem made room for two new ones, ‘Beware the Dragon’ (which birthed the title) and ‘Ghost Puppy’, both of which make the book stronger.  

In contrast, my original manuscript for A HATFUL OF DRAGONS was 150 pages, with over 100 poems. During the editing process, that book got whittled down to 64 pages and 30 poems. See my earlier comment about my editor saving me from mediocrity. 🙂

Me: Any advice for other new picture book writers, illustrators, or poets?

Vikram: For poets looking to improve their rhyming craft, I have two suggestions:

(1) Read some books on prosody (i.e. ‘the formal study of versification and metrical structure’).

(2) Read a lot of 19^th century rhyming poets – they were masters of the craft!

I feel that, if we, as poets, are bestowed with the privilege of putting poetry in front of readers, especially young readers, it behooves us to respect that privilege and demonstrate as high a bar for the art as we can. IMHO, be it writing, sports, music, dance, theatre, art, sculpture, science or any other field… humans are most inspired when they see the best a field has to offer. If the kids are watching, let us show them the best of what is possible so that at least some of them can be inspired to rise up and surpass us.

Here, here! Well said Vikram. Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today.

Dear readers, this book actually came out in November! I’m sad it’s taken me this long to share, but share I must. It’s an incredible feat of poetry, silly word play, and a graphic novel that might appeal to a whole new crowd of readers. The possibilities are endless! I guarantee that this book is well worth a read.