From doughnuts to pancakes, these two kidlit creators have nailed breakfast treats with plenty of humor.

Carrie Finison has visited my blog before. She writes poetry, stories, and books for kids, including the picture books Dozens of Doughnuts; Pigs Dig a Road; Don’t Hug Doug (He Doesn’t Like It); Lulu & Zoey: A Sister Story; and Hurry, Little Tortoise, Time for School! She lives outside Boston with her husband, their son, their daughter, and two cats who allow her to work in their attic office. You can learn more about her at her website or follow her on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Brianne Farley has also visited my blog before. She is the author of Worm Makes a Sandwich, Secret Tree Fort and Ike’s Incredible Ink. She also illustrated Dozens of Doughnuts by Carrie Finison, the Charlotte the Scientist books by Camille Andros, and No Buddy Like a Book by Allan Wolf. Brianne studied creative writing and art at Macalester College, then received her MFA in illustration from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She lives in Michigan. You can learn more about her at her website, or follow her on Instagram.

PLENTY OF PANCAKES is a picture book sequel to DOZENS OF DOUGHNUTS. While DOD saw bear LouAnn making tons of doughnuts to prepare for her hibernation, POP focuses on a different main character. This time it is opossum Topsy who is making the pancakes for LouAnn when she wakes up from hibernation. And just like the first book, there are unexpected complications that make the pancake plan harder to accomplish than anticipated. There are plenty of surprises and hilarious twists that will delight young readers here (making them beg for more).

Welcome back Carrie and Brianne!

Me: Carrie, once again I see your sense of humor shining through. I even see the same interrupted refrain. What a clever sequel this is! What inspired the idea for this story? How did the whole plot come together?

Carrie: I think, like all good stories, Plenty of Pancakes started with a question. Dozens of Doughnuts takes place in the late fall, as LouAnn the bear is getting ready to hibernate — by eating an unmentionable number of doughnuts, but who are we to judge? So I wondered, what happens when LouAnn wakes up from hibernation in the spring? Does she eat MORE doughnuts? Or something else?

In New England where I live, early spring is maple syrup season. For a long time I thought the plot would revolve around LouAnn feasting on maple syrup, with the other characters helping to tap the trees, harvest the sap, and so on. I don’t know why it took me years of pondering to make the leap from maple syrup to pancakes, but once I did the whole plot started to come together. Of course, I knew LouAnn couldn’t be the main character because she’d be asleep. Topsy the opossum was a natural fit. One secret fact about this cast of characters is that all the animals are hibernators — except opossums. Another fact I learned — baby bears are usually born while the mother is hibernating. With those real-life tidbits from the natural world, the new plot started to come together. I wanted it to feel familiar to readers of the first book, but also new and surprising. In addition, I wanted the story to have a subtle math element, as Dozens of Doughnuts does, and counting pancakes by fives seemed much more manageable for kids than maple syrup math!

Me: Brianne, you’ve been quite busy the last few years, working on a lot of different projects. What drew you to this sequel and made you decide to work with Carrie again to bring her story to life? 

Brianne: Dozens of Doughnuts is one of my favorite books to recommend and read out loud. Educators love the math element, kids love picking out their favorite doughnuts from the endpapers and trying to guess which animal is coming through the door next by spotting their tail through the window. I think they’re going to love Pancakes for a lot of the same reasons. It’s so fun to read out loud and the kids will have fun trying to find the pancake thieves hiding on each page.

Me: Both of you are talented creators in your own right. Yet this project is an opportunity for collaboration, especially as a sequel to a book you created together before. Have you met in real life? Have you communicated at all about this book during its creation? Have you gotten to know each other better through publishing together?

Carrie: One silver lining of the pandemic was that Brianne and I got to attend some virtual Dozens of Doughnuts events together. So we have had a few chances to talk and learn more about each other’s processes. That said, the creation of this second book followed the traditional path where author and illustrator don’t communicate directly. I finalized the manuscript with our editor, Stephanie Pitts, and once the text was finished Brianne took over and worked her magic. I tried not to get in her headspace beyond DMing her a few adorable baby bear pictures when I couldn’t help myself.

Brianne: I feel like we’ve met before! But no, we’ve only met virtually. I have so much respect for Carrie’s craft. The time and skill she puts into making these rhyming books fun to read over and over, and fun for kids to join in reading, is really impressive.

Me:  Once again this book has the most amazing end papers! And I love all the sneaky things Brianne has hidden in the pictures for young readers (those naughty bear cubs are a delight!). Were there art notes about any of this? Who invented what parts? 

Carrie: The endpapers were all Brianne’s doing and I LOVE them. Dozens of Doughnuts has an array of gorgeous doughnuts on the end papers, and people always ‘oooh’ when I open up the book. I like to have kids point to the doughnut that they would like to eat. So I was very glad that the Plenty of Pancakes endpapers will allow me to do the same thing. For the record, I like blueberry pancakes, sometimes topped with strawberries and bananas, but ALWAYS with maple syrup.

Brianne: The teacher at my son’s daycare told me they have been reading Dozens of Doughnuts in the mornings and picking out doughnuts from the endpapers to give each other. So cute!!

Carrie was an illustrator’s dream and gave very few art notes. For the first book, I spent a lot of time thinking about how anthropomorphized these characters would be. Would LouAnn be like Mother Bear in Maurice Sendak’s Little Bear books, in full Victorian dress with a parasol and puff sleeves? Would she be a very bear-like bear, living in a cave and maybe cooking on a campfire? LouAnn falls somewhere in the middle, living in a stone cottage and wearing a polkadot apron but no clothes. She hibernates and roars like a bear, but walks upright and has a pink mixing bowl. Answering that question told me more about how the other characters would dress and how “wild” they might behave in the art. 

In Doughnuts, you see the tail of each creature through the window as they ring LouAnn’s doorbell. I hoped readers would try to guess who was coming next before the page turn. In Pancakes, I wanted to have a similar Easter egg. I tried to hide the bear cubs on each spread. They get easier to find as the book goes on and the mystery is revealed.

Me: Carrie, I love that you have a different main character with the exact same problem as the first book (and yet all the same characters are here too). There are so many brilliant similarities! Was that always a part of your manuscript or did it come about from revision?

Carrie: I wanted the problem to be similar to the first book so that was always a goal, but it took a while to come up with WHO exactly would be eating all the pancakes. I didn’t want it to be the original characters from Dozens of Doughnuts because I figured they should have learned SOMEthing about eating up other people’s food. But you know who doesn’t have any boundaries about that? Babies! So having the babies eating the pancakes, unbeknownst to poor Topsy, worked out perfectly.

When I started the writing process, I was trying to make the manuscript unique, but as I went through stages of revision, I read through old drafts of Dozens of Doughnuts, and realized I could repurpose some of the old text in a new way. For example, in this scene from Dozens of Doughnuts, LouAnn has made four batches of doughnuts, all eaten up by her hungry guests:

While her guests eat the doughnuts, LouAnn starts to worry.

She cracks her last egg, and pours milk in a hurry.

Here’s a similar scene from Plenty of Pancakes, where Topsy is getting worried about LouAnn waking up soon:

LouAnn could awake any moment, she worries.

But there’s time to make more—as long as she hurries.

So you can see that the emotions echo each other and I re-used the worry/hurry rhyme, but in a slightly different way. There are dozens (haha) of small similarities like this hidden throughout the text of Plenty of Pancakes, and I hope it makes the book feel cozy and familiar to readers who loved the first book.

Me: Brianne, I loved the way you were able to bring back the exact same characters visually. This book has the same artistic look as the first book. Yet it makes me wonder, as your style has progressed since that first book, did you do anything different artistically in this book than you did for the first one? Was there anything new to surprise you as you created these illustrations? Any struggles?

Brianne: Topsy’s character design had to change a little bit, in part because she is so much bigger on the page now. She’s the center of attention! So, her fur and outfit are more detailed. I was surprised by how tricky it was to solve some of the visual problems in Pancakes. Without giving too much away, the repeating chorus of this book shows Topsy making a lovely batch of five pancakes, which are promptly stolen from under her nose. The reader can see who is stealing the pancakes, but Topsy can’t, and there are some sound effects we need to make sense of, and it all happens so fast! I got it in the end, but in my first pass at sketches I was like, ok, I think this book needs to be 100 pages long.

Me: Both of you have published numerous books for kids at this point in your careers and a book as fun as this one can feel “meant to be.” Yet we all know that rejection is happening for many other successful creators too. In these difficult publishing times, what keeps you both creating kidlit? What encouragement would you give to other creators who are trying to publish picture books in this market?

Carrie: It IS very tough out there, so it’s important to be realistic about that. It’s essential to study your craft, read a lot, write a lot, and find your way to a community of writers who give you honest feedback and help you improve — and to come to suggestions for improvement with an open mind.

I would also say, it’s important to please yourself and not try to chase or write for the market. Write the book that makes you laugh or makes you cry, or that feels like the story you MUST tell. That will shine through and give your manuscript a voice, and hopefully a place on a publisher’s list.

Brianne: I second what Carrie said! It’s a tough market, so you’ll really need to put in the hours to hone your craft. Find a group of peers whose opinion you trust. Be open to their feedback, but trust your own voice (a balancing act, I know!). Illustrators, spend a lot of time with your sketchbook and figure out what you love to draw and what annoys you. I don’t love drawing cars, I do love drawing characters with big emotions and the outdoors. Then, focus on the stories that are just so YOU! You’ll be spending a lot of time in the world of that story, so let it be a world you love and that will come through. 

Excellent advice ladies. Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today.

Dear readers, this book published in January. If you haven’t had a chance yet to track it down, I highly recommend doing so, especially if you loved the first book at all. This is an incredibly well written and illustrated sequel that has clever traces of the first all throughout. Trust me when I say, you won’t want to miss it!