Take one talented writer, one talented illustrator, and an incredibly talented musician to capture in biography and what do you get? Today’s picture book!

James Howe wrote his first book, Bunnicula, for fun. He has tried to bring the same spirit of playfulness and discovery to all the books he has written since. These include picture books such as Milo Walking, Brontorina, and Horace and Morris But Mostly Dolores and the beginning-reader series Pinky and Rex and Houndsley and Catina. He is also the author of The Misfits and Totally Joe, as well as numerous sequels to Bunnicula. Howe lives with his husband in an old house just north of New York City. You can learn more about him at his website.

Jack Wong has visited my blog before. His debut picture book, When You Can Swim, received the 2023 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award in Picture Books and the 2023 Governor General’s Literary Award in Young People’s Literature, Illustrated Books. Born in Hong Kong and raised in Vancouver, Jack holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 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.

THE MUSIC INSIDE US is a nonfiction picture book biography of Yo-Yo Ma. It tells the story of one of the most talented cellists of all time. It starts from childhood and talks of his emotional conflict during his teen years. It’s one thing to be gifted at something you’ve worked hard to perfect, but it’s another thing to know if it’s the right passion to pursue. It’s through this deeply emotional arc that readers are invited to be introspective. The text soars and the illustrations shine. The author’s and illustrator’s notes at the back are almost as good a read as Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. This is a book you won’t want to miss.

Welcome James and Jack!

Me: James, it sounds like you had a personal connection to Yo-Yo Ma when you rediscovered your love of playing the cello. Did you come up with the idea for this book after you started playing the cello again? Where did the origin of this picture book biography of Yo-Yo Ma start?

James: I had been studying and playing the cello for several years as a way of adding my own instrumental voice to Old Dogs New Tricks, the singer-songwriter duo I am a part of with my husband, Mark. Mark plays the guitar and together we sing harmonies and write the songs. I wanted to bring together my love of music with my love of writing books for children. I wasn’t sure what form that would take. Then somehow I became aware of a picture book biography of Itzhak Perlman published by Abrams. A lightbulb went on over my head! Surprisingly, there wasn’t a picture book biography of Yo-Yo Ma out there … but now there could be. I pitched the idea to Emma Ledbetter at Abrams who received it with great enthusiasm. Emma and I had known each other for years, having worked together at another publishing house.   couldn’t have been more delighted to merge my love of music (and the cello in particular) with a writing project that would celebrate the life of the great Yo-Yo Ma and  get to work on it with a wonderful editor who was also a good friend.

Me: Jack, this is the first book you have illustrated for someone else’s writing. What drew you to this story and made you decide to work with James’ text to bring it to life? How has this been a different experience than when you’ve both written and illustrated a story?

Jack: Admittedly, the very first thing that drew me to this project, from the moment I read the email subject header from my agent, was a name as big as Yo-Yo Ma’s — not to mention James’s himself! Then I read the manuscript, and found that James had explored a thread running through Yo-Yo’s life that deeply spoke to me: that of the struggle to find purpose when proficiency comes rather smoothly. Though I was certainly no child prodigy, I was particularly strong at both art and math as a kid, which led others around me to decide I was destined to be an architect. It wasn’t until many years later, when I was well down the road of an education towards that career, that I realized for the first time: I didn’t even particularly like buildings! So James’s choice of story really connected with me and felt like one that was well-worth putting out into the world. I felt it might even surprise some young readers that Yo-Yo’s immense and obvious talents didn’t automatically equal a straightforward path in life.

On the subject of illustrating someone else’s text: the most challenging part, I think, is that I’m typically most excited and engaged when even I don’t know what the illustrations are going to turn out like! When I’m illustrating my own stories, I’m usually exploring (read: muddling through) well into the final art stage, and the look of the book doesn’t truly emerge until a couple of months before the final deadline. With an author in the wings, it feels prudent to give a little more clarity than that! Nonetheless, I was incredibly fortunate that James, Emma, and my art director Melissa Greenberg all put a lot of trust in me and this process, so that it played out similarly to one of my own written-and-illustrated books.

Me: Both of you are talented creators in your own right. Yet this project is an incredible opportunity for collaboration. Have you met in real life? Have you communicated at all during the process? Have you gotten to know each other at all through this book’s creation?

James: Writers and illustrators usually don’t know each other.  It surprises people to hear that they rarely meet or speak, and have contact with each other only through the editor and art director.  This was true for Jack and me initially.  The editor, art director, and I looked at many illustrators before deciding that Jack was the perfect artist for this book, then crossed our fingers, hoping he would say yes.  He did (phew! and yay!), and we waited until he was freed up from another project and could begin work.  At first, communication was strictly via the editor and art director. Over time, he and I began to be in touch with each other by email.  He sent me sketches of work in progress and asked questions or made suggestions of changes in my text based on what his own research had unearthed or how the illustrations were evolving to tell the story.  This is part of the process I always find fascinating.  After I’ve written the text, the manuscript goes to the illustrator.  And then the magic starts to happen.  The vague images in my head come to life, or, even more exciting, the illustrator comes up with images I never even imagined.  The picture book begins to take shape as a picture book, a story told in words and pictures.

Over the course of 40+ years of writing somewhere around 100 books, I have worked with some great illustrators, a few of whom have become friends.  Meaning no disrespect to those artists, I have to say I have never worked with an illustrator like Jack.  He goes so deep – in meticulous researching; in thinking deeply; in looking for the psychological and emotional truths of the material as much as, or more, than the factual content.  His talent is prodigious, and so is his mind. 

And, though he lives in Nova Scotia, Canada, and I live in Yonkers, New York, I would say that our respect for each other’s talents has grown into friendship.  I hope you agree, Jack!

Jack: Coming from James, that is truly high praise!

I’m glad that James mentioned his singer-songwriter duo with his husband Mark, Old Dogs New Tricks — they make wonderful music that I’m grateful to have discovered because of our collaboration. The Music Inside Us was such a challenging project that, while I was working on the book, having songs of theirs like “But A Dream” and “What Saves Me” on repeat literally got me through times when I was ready to give up! The music and lyrics are fantastic, but more than that, the knowledge that the person who wrote and sang songs of such kindness was the same person to whom I was delivering these illustrations gave me this feeling of, “well, even if I fail, it can’t go over that badly” — it allowed me to find a little kindness to myself. I have to say: of all the ways that the author-illustrator relationship can go, I’m not sure how many can say that a friendship was forged quite in this way!

Me:  Let’s talk about research. Jack, I know you mentioned extensive illustrative research in your note in the back matter. James, you also mentioned digging into videos, albums, and books by Yo-Yo Ma. How long did it take each of you to do your research before working on the project? Was there anything that was problematic for you to figure out before you started creating?

James: There is a wealth of material available on Yo-Yo Ma.  Especially helpful were his mother’s book, My Son Yo-Yo, and an audio book, Yo-Yo Ma: Beginner’s Mind, written and read by Yo-Yo, that was published over twenty years after his mother’s book.  But there was so much more out there, including many interviews and appearances where Yo-Yo speaks for himself.  I had no trouble finding a lot of information about him.

I would say it took about two years of research, which after a time overlapped with the writing.  There were two challenges for me:  1) sorting out contradictory “facts,” such as his age when he first played at Carnegie Hall, and trying to find missing information, e.g. the name of the school he went to as a child. And 2) finding the arc of his story, so that the book would be more than a recounting of facts.

My only disappointment in researching and writing the book was that I was never able to reach Yo-Yo Ma himself, despite repeated attempts.  I really would have liked him to be able to fact-check the book, and of course as the book took shape, I wanted to know that he was happy with the approach I was taking.

Jack: It’s hard to say exactly how long research took. I often struggle with the notion that research should feel definitively “complete” — whether for an actual nonfiction book in this case, or a fictional book that still needs to be informed by real-to-life conditions (as was the case for my previous book that takes place in a garden, for example). Unfortunately, that sense of closure has never once come, and I’ve hurtled into the final illustration stage of every book feeling as if I hadn’t done proper research, even having done the things you would typically do such as reading articles and watching interviews.

I think what I’m really describing is the difference between linear and immersive learning, as one might consider in terms of learning a language. You can’t know what you don’t know: just as you can practice your vocabulary at home but can’t prepare all the words you’ll need when you have a real, spontaneous conversation, you can’t fully anticipate the questions you’re trying to answer until you dip your paintbrush and make your first mark on the final canvas.

As illustrations developed from rough, black-and-white sketches to resolved final art, I repeatedly ran into new questions — things that I hadn’t considered, things that made me say to myself, “now wait a minute!”, things that I couldn’t have anticipated until that moment of truth. For example, when I got to finalizing a scene about Yo-Yo reaching a level of mastery on his cello at roughly twelve years old, I suddenly realized that I needed to know what music I was depicting him in the midst of playing. What piece was it? Was it during a flurry of arpeggios in the middle, or the final note? Is that particular note played with an upbow (pushing the bow) or downbow (pulling)? And most importantly, how did these choices symbolically fit with the moment in the story?

Ultimately, I chose to depict Yo-Yo drawing out the final note of the prélude from Bach’s cello suite, as it was the piece that he had started learning at four years old and which would become his signature. I then watched a whole bunch of videos of Yo-Yo playing that piece, chose the version that best captured James’s ideas on the spread, and substantially redrew the image with this new purpose in mind.

Me: James, I love how you start the book with a question that Yo-Yo Ma asked and end with a quote by him as well. That question (i.e., “what is the purpose of music?”) seems to guide Yo-Yo’s journey of self-discovery, as well as exploring music all over the world. What made you decide to use a frame like this? Was that always a part of your manuscript or did it come about from revision?

James: As I said, finding the arc for his story was a challenge.  Here was someone who was born with a gift so great that he played a Bach cello suite from memory at the age of four!  He met with early success and went on to an unusually successful career and life.  There were no major obstacles in his way, no serious struggles, not even a character flaw that would provide the kind of “rags to riches” or “overcoming obstacles” storyline so common to biographies of famous people.           

Then I thought about how many times in his life, starting at a young age, he asked questions of himself (“Who am I when I am not a cellist?); of the world (“What happens when strangers meet?”); and of both (“How do we connect by listening to each other, teaching each other, playing with each other?”)  It was his endless and profound curiosity and his desire to be “more than a cellist” and make a difference in the world that gave me the arc I was looking for.

It’s hard to separate “always” from “revision,” since I am always revising my work as I go.  In all likelihood, this arc, or frame, dawned on me somewhere in the muddle, if we think of writing as “beginning, muddle, and end.”

Me: Jack, there are some incredible images in this book yet again. Your use of light in the first spread with the stairwell and then dark in the night sky at camp just blew me away. Did you do anything different artistically in this book than you have before? Was there anything new to surprise you as you created these illustrations? Any struggles?

Jack: Thank you! With this book, I tried a lot of different ways to illustrate something other than the text, to truly try to make my illustrations complementary to James’s words, rather than just a straightforward depiction. For one, this was simply the challenge I set up for myself; for another, I felt that it would be the best way to live up to James’s rhythmic and elegant text, which had a way of feeling already quite definitive on its own. But I was always aware that I needed a good reason to do so, rather than just doing it for its own sake.

The stairwell scene is a good example. The research that I had done gave me a glimpse into Yo-Yo’s family’s dynamic in his childhood: his father was stern and high-minded, his sister seemed to respond better to discipline while being talented in her own right, and his mother (whose biographical account I drew heavily from) often worked to soften the tensions between Yo-Yo and his dad. James’s text doesn’t say all of this explicitly — as a picture book text, it ought not to lay this all out in exposition! — so I conceived of the stairwell image as contributing a spatial representation of a “hierarchy” of relationships.

This continues on the next spread where James’s text reads, “[But Yo-Yo] wanted to play a BIG instrument.” I could’ve drawn Yo-Yo playing the cello, but that wouldn’t have added much to James’s point. Instead, I was able to bring more of my research in by depicting Yo-Yo carrying his cello. Having read about Yo-Yo’s childhood, I felt that if his parents were to grant his wish, they would be the type to make him live out the consequences of that wish; by the same token, Yo-Yo was so hard-headed from birth that he would no doubt have bore it with a stiff upper lip, not wanting to betray to his parents if he ever felt the cello was (literally or figuratively) too big to handle.

Me: Jack captured the spirit of this book so beautifully in his Illustrator’s note:

‘The music inside us’ that this book refers to is not necessarily a literal music, that you play or listen to, but any passion or strength each of us may have that seems to flow like music, moving us from within, wanting to be heard. Along with being something beautiful in its own right, it’s also a way for each of us to relate to the world.”

James, you are extremely gifted with words, refusing to let your creativity be defined by genres or even limited to text as you are beginning to explore music. Jack, you are extremely gifted with art, exploring the world through every work you create in such depth and beauty. How is this picture book about Yo-Yo Ma something that helps us to see the music within each of you? How does it help you relate to the world and/or help the world to relate to you?

James: Speaking as a writer – and as a reader – I would say that the “music” inside me – and other authors – is expressed through words: our choices of words, the way they are put together, their rhythm and flow, but most of all, how we writers are made known through them.  Any form of art is a form of connection between two people.  Much as Yo-Yo Ma uses his music to connect with others, so do all artists strive to do so.  This is certainly true for me.  And, as a reader, the most powerful writing is always that that gives me a sense of the human being behind the writing.  Mind to mind, heart to heart, soul to soul.  That’s what it’s about.

Jack: I’m incredibly lucky that I have found an avenue for my work. (I don’t know if this analogy really needs bearing out, but I suppose my music has a radio station and a listener tuning in!) So I think more about how this book’s message will connect with other, especially younger, readers. I was very excited to send this book to my two nieces — they’ve recently each found their respective interests (gymnastics and musical theatre), and I hope both of them will contemplate their new passions not only as something they’re “good at,” but something that, whether they know it or not, now shapes their worldview in some way: through the body, through performing, through competition and success and failure and resilience and growth. I have no idea how they’ll answer the questions posed by James in the book — and that’s the exciting part!

I love that. Thank you so much James and Jack for stopping by my blog today.

Dear readers, this book was publishing June 3. If you haven’t had a chance to track it down yet, I highly recommend it. It’s a fascinating nonfiction biography that delves into creativity in so many unexpected ways using beautiful text and imagery that asks the question: what is the music inside of you?