Saying goodbye to our loved ones is never easy, but today’s book shares a beautiful goodbye, as well as honors a beloved children’s book author.
Barbara McClintock has visited my blog once before and I got to meet her in person in 2019. She is an American illustrator and author of over forty books for children. Her books have received numerous awards and selections, including five New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book Awards, four ALA Notable Book selections, a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Award, a China Times Open Book Award, and a British Fantasy Award. One of her books is a bestselling title in Japan. She has lectured about her work nationally and internationally and is currently teaching classes on creating children’s books at Wesleyan University. Originally from New Jersey and North Dakota, she now resides in northeastern Connecticut with her partner, the illustrator David Johnson, and their three overly helpful cats. You can learn more about her at her website or follow her on Instagram or Facebook.
WHERE ARE YOU, BRONTE? is a beautiful tribute to Tomie dePaola who passed away in 2020. This is the last story he wrote after the passing of his dog. It’s written directly to the dog almost like a letter, but the words resonate so beautifully with Barbara’s art work that the book as a whole has so many layers. Yes it touches on grief (how could it not?), but that’s not really what it’s all about. It has beauty and depth and oddly enough, peace. It’s a way to cherish those we have long cherished and it somehow manages to honor all of those we may have lost along life’s journey. It’s an incredible gift.
Please note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher to review, but the opinions, as always, are my own.
Welcome back Barbara!
Me: I adore this book. I know Tomie dePaola was working on the artwork before he passed away unexpectedly. How did you come to be the illustrator for this project?
Barbara: Simon & Schuster Art Director/Designer for Children’s and Teen Books Laurent Linn called me in June 2022, an hour before I was to give a presentation at the Highlights Foundation. Laurent asked if I’d be interested in illustrating ‘Where Are You, Brontë?’, Tomie dePaola’s last complete manuscript that he wrote just before he unexpectedly passed away two years earlier. The story was about Tomie’s relationship with his beloved dog Brontë, and how he coped when Brontë died. My 14-year-old cherished cat Emma had passed away just weeks before, so the subject of finding a way forward through grief for a much-loved pet really resonated with me. Laurent had also recently lost his beloved cat, so we talked about the love and loss of a pet, and how our cats had left an empty space in our hearts. We cried, we laughed , and by the end of the conversation we both felt that I’d be a good fit for illustrating the text.
Me: Your illustrations in this book are phenomenal. They somehow both feel like Tomie’s work, as well as your own. I don’t know how you managed to do both things at the same time! Did you find your illustrations had to change for this project to match Tomie’s style? Did you study his work to do that? Or did you try to stay true to your own illustration style?
Barbara: I love the work of illustrators Diane and Leo Dillon and Alice and Martin Provensen. They all were masters of shaping their illustration styles to fit the tones, themes and time periods of the books they illustrated. You can always see their styles in whatever technical approach they took to create the variety of styles they used. Their approach seemed to be that every book they made was just a piece of a whole, making up who they were as artists.
I wanted to shape my style to reflect Tomie’s work with Where Are You, Brontë?, because I felt Tomie’s story telling ‘voice’ was every bit as much in his artwork as his writing. It was fun trying to get into his head to think how he would have approached making the pictures. And I studied his illustration work and his paintings to try to capture that sense of his work.
He was actually just starting sketches for the book when he died; Laurent Linn didn’t want me to see those sketches because he wanted my take on the book to be all my own and not influenced by whatever Tomie had started. I still haven’t seen Tomie’s sketches!
Me: Wow! I love that! Can you talk about your illustration approach for this book? I saw photos on your social media of watercolor work on this project. Was that the only media you worked with? Or were there other additions? Was it a blend of traditional and digital media?
Barbara: I created the sketches on Procreate but drew and colored the finished art by hand. I printed out the digital sketches and used a light box to trace the sketches onto Arches 90 pound cold press watercolor paper. I used markers, colored pencils, Windsor & Newton tube watercolors and gouache to create the illustrations.
Me: The story that Tomie wrote is deceptively simple and yet so full of heart. There are many pages where the lines are open to interpretation, and you take the ball and run with it. For instance, the page with the new pink collar where you illustrated six different scenes. These all feel so very like Tomie’s personality and really let him shine through in the story as well. What gave you the idea to incorporate so much of him (like his trademark love of scarves) into the book and develop him as a character in the story as well?
Barbara: I felt from the start that this book was about Tomie as much as it was about Brontë. In real life, Tomie picked puppy Brontë up at the airport, and his longtime assistant Bob drove the car home while Tomie carried Brontë on his lap. Bob is referred to again when Tomie ‘… waited for you to turn the corner. You would run like the wind to meet me.’ He talked about ‘the barn-studio’ and ‘Whenever I drew a dog for one of my stories, it turned out to be you!’ It’s all so specific to Tomie. And Tomie looked like an adorable version of Santa, with such identifiable traits – the scarves, popcorn, the array of pens, pencils, and brushes by his drawing board – who wouldn’t want to draw that!
I wanted to honor Tomie’s deepening relationship with his beloved Brontë, but the manuscript only fills one 8 1/2” x 11” piece of copier paper, so there really isn’t much description of that growing bond in the text. I realized I had to extend the story in my illustrations. I was inspired by Raymond Briggs’ 1978 wordless picture book ‘The Snowman’ about a boy who builds a snowman which comes alive at night. The boy gives the snowman a tour of his house, showing him ordinary everyday things that take on a sense of wonder and marvel. In turn, they go outside and the snowman flies above the countryside with the boy, returning home before daybreak. In the morning, the boy wakes up and rushes downstairs, eager to see his friend, but the snowman has melted.
The illustrations are done in a series of vignettes in boxes and some large spreads, and I thought that would be a great way to show Tomie and Brontë’s growing trust and love through a series of shared everyday activities. And there is also that theme of loss at the end of The Snowman, shown in a matter-of-fact way, that resonated with me for Where Are You, Brontë?.
Me: One of my favorite scenes in the whole book is the table scene where everyone is eating spaghetti. It’s so clearly an homage to Tomie and his work. I was so blown away by all the characters, people, and things you incorporated there. Was that your idea or someone else’s suggestion? How did you choose who or what to include?
Barbara: That was my idea; I thought if would be fun to show Tomie and Brontë heading out to a special dinner party (Tomie LOVED food!) and make it a big celebration of Tomie, with characters from his books at the party. There are three real-life people at the table, too – his favorite elementary school art teacher, Mrs. Beulah Bowers is sitting across the table from Strega Nona, and at the far end of the table are my editor Celia Lee and art director and dear friend of Tomie’s, Laurent Linn. I chose characters from some of Tomie’s most well-known books. And it can be a story-time guessing game to identify the characters!
Me: What is one thing that surprised you in writing and/or illustrating this story?
Barbara: I did mountains of drawings to try to nail down Tomie’s illustration style – not an easy thing to do at all! I kept failing to get it right. Then, as I looked at more of his non-illustration paintings, I suddenly figured out that I had to start with the color first, and the line drawing came second. That’s totally opposite to how I work, so it was a grand surprise and it was exciting to develop that new approach.
Me: Ultimately, this is a story of grief. Anyone who has ever loved an animal knows this grief and it just aches off the pages with the repeated refrain “Where are you, Bronte?” Yet it also feels as if it’s a beautiful goodbye to Tomie. Never once do your illustrations dip into the maudlin, so it’s hard to explain that vibe (until I read your author’s note of course). Was that something you thought about as you created the illustrations for the story? Was it something you intended to include?
Barbara: The entire story arch builds towards the loss of Brontë. And I somehow wonder if Tomie wasn’t sensing his own passing as he wrote the story. There is a beautiful circle back to Nana Upstairs & Nana Downstairs, his early book about his two grandmothers which is about death, grief, and wonder. The message in that book is that the grandmothers live on in memory and exist in a new way.
Tomie was a very spiritual person – his Catholicism was an important part of his identity. Seeing Brontë’s death through that lens, it becomes about life transformed. Love doesn’t die; it takes on another forum that will never die.
There’s hope in that, and in a spiritual sense, some form of joy and comfort as well.
And that right there is why I love this book. You said it so perfectly. Thank you for stopping by my blog again today Barbara.
Dear readers, this book publishes next week on May 6th. This is a book that will tug at your heartstrings in the best of ways with stunning art work that is reminiscent of Tomie dePaola’s work. Track down a copy as soon as you can. You won’t want to miss it!