What can one oak do?

Maria Gianferrari is a picture book reader/writer, tea-drinker, dog-lover, and birdwatcher. Maria writes books that honor our bonds with creatures both domestic and wild and that celebrate the natural world around us, including Fungi Grow and Just One Oak, illustrated by Diana Sudyka; Ice Cycle: Poems about the Life of Ice, illustrated by Jieting Chen; Being a Dog: A Tail of Mindfulness,illustrated by Pete Oswald; Bobcat Prowling, illustrated by Bagram Ibatouilline; and Be a Tree!, illustrated by Felicita Sala. She lives with her family in Massachusetts in a house encircled by trees. You can learn more about her at her website or follow her on Instagram, BlueSky, or Facebook.

Diana Sudyka is a Chicago-based illustrator. Early on, she created screen-printed gig posters for musicians but currently her illustration work focuses on young adult, middle grade, and children’s books. She has illustrated several volumes of the award-winning book series The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart and Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley, as well as the picture books Would You Come Too? by Liz Garton Scanlon, Sometimes Rain by Meg Fleming, What Miss Mitchell Saw by Hayley Barrett, How to Find a Bird by Jennifer Ward, and Fungi Grow and Just One Oak by Maria Gianferrari. You can learn more about her at her website or follow her on Instagram or BlueSky.

JUST ONE OAK is a nonfiction picture book. Maria and Diana previously collaborated on FUNGI GROW (all about mushrooms). This time it’s the oak tree that gets the glow-up treatment and wow, is it worth it! I had no idea about half of the things this book talked about. (We don’t have native oak trees in Alaska.) Oak trees not only help plants and animals, but they help humans too. They are a keystone species and do much more than I ever anticipated.

Please note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher to review, but the opinions, as always, are my own.

Welcome Maria and Diana!

Me: Maria, you have once again managed to capture the amazing scope of a keystone species so beautifully. What inspired the idea for this manuscript?

Maria: Thanks—that is so kind of you to say, Jena! I have always loved trees, and have a special fondness for oaks in particular, but Doug Tallamy’s The Nature of Oaks brought everything into focus for me. It gave me a deeper appreciation for the importance of oak trees as keystone species and cornerstones of ecosystem balance. I learned so many new things, and was astonished about the multitude of creatures who rely on oaks for sustenance and shelter. It inspired me to write an ode to the oak, to celebrate it for all its wonder and beauty and importance.

Me: Diana, your work here is glorious! The colors and textures, the variety of animals and insects, and the hand lettering! Everything you’ve put into this is incredible. Can you talk about the mediums you used to create these illustrations? Are you a traditional or digital illustrator (or a blend of both)?

Diana: Thanks so much for featuring our book and taking the time to chat! I am a traditional media illustrator, but in the last 5 years, I have increasingly used digital tools. As with all of the books I illustrate, the work for Just One Oak was primarily done in watercolor and gouache on paper. Final stages of the illustrations get a fair amount of digital work done, though. This can include everything from cleaning up files, to enhancing colors and details and incorporating last minute changes. 

Me: Both of you are talented creators in your own right. Yet this project is an opportunity for collaboration, especially as you’ve worked 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?

Maria: Yes! As you know, we also co-created Fungi Grow, and back in the fall of 2023, I had the good fortune of being able to do some events in Evanston, IL where Diana lives. Prior to meeting in person, we had emailed and zoomed several times, but it was so lovely to be able to hang out in person. I got to see Diana’s studio, her charming and cozy home and wildlife-friendly yard. Best of all, as an animal lover, I was very delighted to meet Junco, her dog, and her sweet, shy cat Pumpkin. She now has a new cat named Toshi—I hope I get to meet him too one day!

During the making of Just One Oak, we communicated by zoom and via email back and forth to try to ensure that both my text and her art were as scientifically precise as possible. We were honored that Doug Tallamy reviewed our book for accuracy! Diana is a kindred spirit—a fellow nature and animal lover. I wish we lived closer to one another—it would be so nice to be able to hang out on a regular basis!

Diana: Yes! As Maria stated, we worked together on Fungi Grow! It was a great experience both on that book and Just One Oak to work with such a talented writer and kindred spirit.  I really appreciate Maria’s respect for nature and scientific accuracy.  We definitely have a lot of overlap in our interests. Both of us have read Doug Tallamy’s The Nature of Oaks.  I remember lamenting to Maria about the loss of oaks in this part of northeastern Illinois, and my love of these extraordinary trees. I was starting to look into understanding keystone species, and why oak trees are able to support such diversity and volume of  life. I was so excited when Maria told me about her idea for a picture book on oaks. The timing couldn’t have been better, and  I was thrilled to have been asked to illustrate it. I too wish we lived a lot closer to each other so that we could hang out regularly! 

Me:  Just like the previous book you both worked on (i.e., FUNGI GROW), this book has text and illustrations so intricately woven together it’s hard to tell who is creating which part of that experience. With such a deliciously sparse text, was there a vision as to what would go with each spread? Were there art notes about any of this? Who invented what parts? 

Maria: Diana is a master! I love working with her! She always comes up with the most delightful spreads infused with joy and charm and cute critters! Since I was using a “just one oak” refrain that focused on one theme at a time, it naturally evolved into double-page spreads. I always want to leave space for Diana to work her magic. Most of my art notes were general and revolved around suggestions for setting and creatures who would live in those particular habitats. For example, the acorn masting spread has a desert-like setting, so it is inhabited by a scrub oak, scrub jay, prickly pear and a javelina and her adorable reds. Some of my suggestions were scientific/technical in nature (as to how an acorn sprouts a taproot), and some were just requests to include specific kinds of oak trees, or favorite creatures, like wood ducks—I love them! It’s a very collaborative process.

Diana: Both in Just One Oak and Fungi Grow Maria would include notes about specific species of plant, fungi, insect, and animal she wanted included. She also would provide a lot of visual reference material, which is super helpful.  It was particularly helpful with a lot of the insect species, especially the spread that depicts some of the different caterpillar and moth species supported by oak leaves. Some of the visual distinctions can be pretty subtle, so it’s wonderful to have Maria’s expert research and reference material.

It’s always clear, though, that there is a lot of space left for my own interpretations. 

Both in this book and in Fungi Grow much of the illustrations were born out of my time spent outdoors exploring native habitats around where I live,  my own reading research, and then combining it with Maria’s. It’s a  collaborative endeavor that is born out of mutual respect and trust. Maria has to put a lot of trust in me to bring her words and research to visual fruition and that is something I don’t take lightly! 

Me: Maria, I love that you didn’t start with an acorn growing from the beginning (like most books about oaks traditionally do), but start with the life an oak tree sustains. Then go on to elaborate on that in so many different ways (as well as talking about the beginnings later). Was that always a part of your manuscript or did it come about from revision? Were there a lot of revisions of this manuscript?

Maria: I just re-read a bunch of oak tree books for a book list blog post I was creating, and I noticed the same thing about beginning with an acorn! Since Just One Oak’s aim and theme always revolved around its importance as a keystone species, rather than looking at an oak’s life cycle, the opening always began with a broader view of how it supports ecosystems and maintains biodiversity, with some tweaks here and there. Most of the edits were about tightening the language, and re-ordering the spreads as well as edits to the sidebars and back matter.

Me: Diana, I remember loving the work you did in FUNGI GROW. I was pleasantly surprised over and over again. There were spreads that felt like they could hang in a gallery. This book feels like it belongs as a companion to that first book. Yet you’ve illustrated other books that have felt slightly different from these two. Did you do anything new artistically for these books than you have done for others? Was there anything new to surprise you as you created these illustrations for this second book? Any struggles?

Diana: I find it difficult to articulate the dynamic of making work and how my  process has evolved over the years.  I am always seeking more ways to work efficiently while also fulfilling my desire to have my work maintain a certain level of detail without looking overworked. When I was creating the interiors for Fungi Grow, a lot of that happened during Covid. With my young daughter remote learning from home, I had to get a bit more creative about how I worked. When I look at the work I did for Fungi Grow now it feels a little more loose than previous work. I allowed myself some spontaneity in my process, and maybe that has carried over to the work I made for Just One Oak. The real struggle, though, aside from maintaining scientific accuracy, was painting all of those leaves!

Me: What is something that surprised each of you in the creation of this story?

Maria: During the research process and while reading Tallamy’s book, I was awestruck by so many things. For one, I had no idea that oaks support more than 950 species of caterpillars! For some of them, oaks are host species, meaning if they disappear, so do the caterpillars. And oak trees sustain more moth and caterpillars than any other native species in North America (maybe even possibly the world—that I am not quite sure of…). Caterpillars are a crucial part of food webs and are especially important for birds during nesting and migration season.

Long before we worked together, I was a fan of Diana’s art. I know that whatever she creates it will be beautiful, but of course, I am always surprised and enchanted when I see those brilliant first sketches, and wowed when the final art comes in. That is the fun part about being a picture book author—to see our words literally brought to life in the art!

Diana: A couple years ago my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I’d take her to her chemo appointments, and then hike the local preserves and work on sketches for Just One Oak until it was time to pick her up.  In those preserves, there were many 150-250 year old oaks.  I was in awe of them and it  led me to read The Nature of Oaks by Doug Tallamy, and Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard. 

Both books  are full of  insights about trees (oaks in Tallamy’s), the biodiversity they support and the complex ecosystems they are a part of. I found comfort in making parallels between those intricate ecosystems and the support systems that function within our human lives. These days it is increasingly easy to erase our connection to nature, but we evolved with these ecosystems for thousands of years. Losing a keystone species may not be all that different from losing a cherished family member. An ancient oak is like a matriarch sharing all of her bounty, wisdom and resources with her family.

On a less serious note, though, one surprise from working on Just One Oak  is how besotted I am with acorn weevils now. I encourage everyone to find a video of one drilling a hole into an acorn; adorable, ingenious little critters.

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today Maria and Diana!

Dear readers, this book published tomorrow. It’s another amazing nonfiction addition from these talented creators. It provides a wealth of information that is accessible to young readers and art to remember. Trust me when I say, you won’t want to miss it!