Enjoying nature and taking care of it can create ripples in more ways than one.

Katie Yamasaki works primarily as a muralist and picture book creator. She has painted more than eighty murals around the world, exploring local stories of identity and social justice. Her picture books include Mural Island, Place Hand Here, Shapes, Lines, and Light, Dad Bakes, and Everything Naomi Loved. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family. You can learn more about her at her website or follow her on Instagram.

RIPPLES is a picture book all about a day rafting down the river. It’s also about enjoying nature, taking care of it, and community. There are layers upon layers of meaning within this lyrical picture book. It is also illustrated with the most vibrant of colors and glorious brush strokes. It’s plain to see the muralist influence at work here in the best possible ways.

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

Katie is visiting my blog as part of a blog tour. You can catch more of the tour at these other locations.

Welcome Katie!

Me: Can you share about your creative journey? When did you start creating art professionally? How did that bring you to being the author-illustrator of this book?

Katie: I went to graduate school for my MFA in illustration, but when I graduated in 2003, I couldn’t get any of my book projects published. I had a good agent and was constantly making book dummies, but I don’t think my work was quite ready. I started working instead at that time as a professional muralist and a teaching artist to subsidize all the time I was spending on book dummies and trying to get a story published. My first picture book was as an illustrator for Lee & Low in 2007, Honda: The Boy Who Dreamed of Cars. In 2013, I published my first author/illustrator book, Fish for Jimmy. For all those years, I was working in collaboration with diverse communities on mural projects and in public art activations around the world. While I wasn’t getting published much, and certainly not as much as I had set out to do (since 2003), I was consumed and fulfilled by the work of the murals. It was fully participatory with the communities where I got to go and I learned more than I could have ever imagined. Every project was like its own masterclass of partnership and storytelling and I got to be a student alongside all the participants from the community. That way of working—the participatory nature of storytelling through a mural—has informed my entire approach and world view. It connects to Ripples in so many ways, but especially in that when we work together, the big work becomes both possible and wonderful. Also, that the first step of positive change is to be a participant in your world and to pay attention to the earth and the people all around you.

Me: There are many layers to your story: a rafting day, helping nature, and causing ripples of care. What gave you the idea for this story?

Katie: I first started thinking about this as a book about mothers and how we learn to care for the earth based on the care we receive from our mothers. Quickly, that evolved as I am moved on a daily basis by the care young people receive, how they are mothered, by grown-ups from all walks of life. My own daughter is cared for by so many grown-ups in our community who may not have biological children of their own, but do the work of mothering every day. I also started thinking about how the acts of care children receive are tangible, small things that are often the same types of things we need to do to care for the earth. Not only that, but they, for the most part, are things children already know how to do. How to pay attention. How to feed, to clean, to give space, to celebrate, to observe, to tend. It’s empowering for children to realize that, not only do they know how to do the work that is needed to care for the earth and one another, but that their acts can cause a ripple effect and grow their efforts tenfold.

Me: I love the way you illustrated this book. The textures are fantastic. Can you tell us a little bit about your illustrations for the book? I understand you’re a muralist. Did you use some of the same techniques there for your work here? Did you work with traditional media or digital or both?

Katie: This book, and all my books, are made entirely by hand. I paint big pieces of paper with different types of brushes to have diverse textures and colors available to me and then I paint all of the people and animals. I cut everything out and collage it together. The collages are relatively large (for illustrations, not for murals!). I love the tactile nature and the surprises that the process of assembling collages provides. Like my murals, I’m using acrylic paint, and like the murals, there is a physicality to these illustrations that I really enjoyed. When I was researching the book, I spent as much time as I could by water to pay attention to the light and the diverse surfaces of water as it moves. I also spent a lot of time at Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn, looking at how light passes through trees at different times of the day. I wanted to have the illustrations evoke the sensory experiences of being in nature, on the water, in the sun, so I did as much as I could to bring that physicality onto each page.

Me: What is one thing that surprised you in writing or illustrating this story?

Katie: I was amazed at how hard it was to paint water. I also loved how I felt when I got to render care in so many different ways between people—and also among animals. There is a lot of tenderness in this story and I felt that through the process.

Me: Your story is deceptively simple. It really captures a day in the life (rafting on the water), as well as cleaning up the river and caring for our community. Was the manuscript always this tight? Or did it come about through revision? How many revisions did it take to get your manuscript to this final state?

Katie: It took a lot to get this story to feel this simple! Thanks for noticing that. Initially it was set in a school classroom. The kids were exploring the word “mothering,” but it felt a little too didactic. I have to fight this tendency regularly as I was a public school teacher for many years. Once I moved the book to the river, I feel like it gave the reader much more space to decide for themselves what the story was about. Taking it outside, along the river, gave me more space for an open story. I can’t tell you how many drafts it took, but it evolved drastically over time without losing its center of collective care and the environment. I am really fortunate to have a very organic work process with my editor. We look together at drawings and my dummies and nudge it towards new directions without me having to fully complete one dummy after another, submit, and then wait.

Me: You have quite a few books published already. Are there any other projects we can look forward to reading from you?

Katie: I’m extremely excited, perhaps the most excited I’ve been, about my next book. It’s called Invisible Crown and it comes out in February 2027, also with Norton Young Readers. This books feels like the umbrella under which all my other books live and I can’t wait to share it with young readers everywhere.

Me: Any advice for other new picture book writers and/or illustrators?

Katie: This is not an easy career in any way, so I think the way I have found to sustain my spirit for all these years is to be sure that I know intimately and care deeply about the stories I am telling. In a way, facing so many rejections for so many years early in my career forced me into the world in ways I may not have been had I started publishing right out of grad school.

The small, beautiful details of specific worlds and human beings I have partnered with have come into sharp focus in a way that has allowed me to write stories from a place of community and lived experience, instead of observation and extraction. So, on the one hand I would say to absolutely go deep within yourself when making stories you care about. But also, be in the world. Be with your readers in community. Get to know their inner lives and landscapes so the characters you create, the conflicts you envision, the resolutions you commit to, are rooted in their true, uniquely magnificent lives.

I love that. Great advice! Thank you so much for stopping by my blog today Katie.

But wait, dear readers! There’s more! Katie is also hosting a giveaway! You can find all the information here. Good luck!