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NPR's Book of the Day
New children’s books center intergenerational relationships in life and the afterlife
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A
Hi there. You're listening to NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Tim Ben Ermias. Today, two picture books about how we connect with loved ones. In a minute, a story about honoring and remembering people we've lost. But first, we hear from Melanie, Florence and Matt James about their new book, the one about the Blackbird. It's about a little boy learning to play the guitar from his grandfather and they bond over an iconic Beatles song. The author and illustrator spoke about it on NPR's Weekend Edition. This week on Up first, with the president threatening to target Iran's civilian infrastructure such as power plants and bridges, even as gas prices in the US Continue to climb, what are the chances of an end to the war in Iran? Listen for updates every morning on the latest overnight news on Up First. Find us on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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B
In the children's book the one about the Blackbird, a young boy learns to play guitar from his grandfather. And there's one song in particular that they love.
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C
Are we allowed to say what song? We kind of associated. I mean, it's kind of obvious what song I'm referring to, although I couldn't really say it.
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D
Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night.
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B
The one about the Blackbird is written by Melanie Florence and illustrated by Matt James. For our series Picture this, they talk about their shared love of the Beatles.
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C
My parents had that on vinyl and were big Beatles fans. And I mean, Matt, what did you think?
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D
Totally. Blackbird by the Beatles by Paul McCartney. I am a huge Beatles fan, which, you know, get in line. Once I wrote a letter to George Harrison when I was a kid and I was like, you have like 500 guitars. I don't have any. You could just send me one like your worst one.
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E
You are only waiting for this moment to be free.
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C
Blackbird Fly, the one about the Blackbird. Like a lot of stuff I've written, it's an intergenerational love story. It's about the connection between a little boy and his grandfather and their shared love of music. Unlike a lot of children's books, it kind of goes very quickly, full circle from the little boy and his grandfather to a grown up and his grandfather. And so it's a very full circle relationship that shows how music connects us and how when somebody is dealing with, in this case, although we don't say it, dealing with dementia or Alzheimer's and maybe forgetting a lot of things, that music is still something that they remember. And it's something that I saw reflected in my Own life. And that's sort of what drew me to write it.
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D
I really, really. As soon as I saw it, I thought, I have to do this. I play in a band with the same guys that have been playing music with since I was 15. But also my parents are musicians. They go and play old folks homes, as we call them, retirement homes, and they play dances there. And a lot of the people there had memory issues and they could recall music. And it was just this thing that gave people some normalcy, gave them joy, I suppose.
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C
How much of this do you want me to read here?
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D
I'm gonna get a guitar and just see if I.
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C
This is what we did at the book launch.
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D
Yeah, at the book launch. Melanie read the book. I just like did like foley sound effects with the guitar.
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C
Okay. For as long as he could remember, Jack had lived in a house that was alive with. Listen to this one, his grandfather would say, putting a record on his turntable. The record would spin and fill up the room with songs so alive that Jack could almost see the notes dancing in the air. I love this. His grandfather was as full of music as his records. He could play drums and keyboards and the trumpet and saxophone. But Jack liked it best when he played songs on his guitar. Especially when he played the one about the blackbird. I want to do that, jack whispered to his grandfather that night as he tucked him in. I want to make those sounds. He was afraid his grandfather would say he was too young to make music. But his grandfather smiled. I always knew you had music in you, he said. Should I leave it at that?
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D
The way I made these pictures, it's sort of like I'm in art school in grade eight, I just start. I got all these art supplies. I got paint and I got brushes of every different size. I don't really know which ones are for what you're supposed to do with them. I just can't help myself. When I go to art supply stores, I'm an artist in order to sort of keep my art supply addiction going kind of thing. Mostly it's painted in acrylic paint, but it's a acrylic gouache. There's kind of a cartoony looking grandpa. There's a leather couch which looks like if you're in your 40s or 50s, your grandparents might have had one like this in their basement. There's a lot of stuff that's painted on cardboard and then cut out and then stuck on and then sort of scanned. I found I like a local craft store. These disc shaped pieces of Masonite, which is like a press board stuff that I often paint on. So I thought, I'm going to make records. And I thought, oh, I love Paul McCartney. I'm going to like choose record labels of things that maybe would have been in his record collection. So there's a Chess Records and a Stacks Volt one from London Town, a Paul McCartney solo album. They look like real records.
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C
I had no idea how you did any of this. So this is wild.
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D
Here, I'll show you. These are the records.
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C
That is so cool.
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D
Yeah, it was really fun to do. And there's a lot of trial and error. Like this is the first. I made a couple of couches. I was going to maybe just have it be all kind of 3D. This is just made out of cardboard and tape, like masking tape. There's some regular old paintings in there. And then sometimes it's a bit of a combo where I'll take a photo of this sort of diorama, say, that I made, and then I'll get it printed out and then I'll mount that to a board and then I'll paint on top of that.
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C
I'm fascinated by this. I did not know that that's how you worked so. And I've looked at this book how many times now and I did not know that's how it was made. That's amazing.
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D
For me, I'm not technically most skilled artist, but somehow my A hand has a brain and what it says seems to be kind of charming. Sometimes I just work until I like it and I hope that other people like it too. And that seems to be the only. If I have a formula, it's make something that I like.
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C
The number of books that I have ended up writing about the relationship between a kid and their grandparents. It's such a special relationship. Especially my grandfather I was really close to and he was somebody that, you know, I was such a weird kid. I just was so dramatic. And unlike a lot of adults, he never told me to be quiet. He would sit back and listen like I was the most fascinating person in the world. And I think that more than anything made me want to be a storyteller. Because he taught me that the stories that I wanted to share were important. He was indigenous. So in that culture, storytelling is so important. So to share that with him is just something that I still hang on to and inspires my writing.
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D
People often ask, what do I want people to get on reading a book? Go hang out with somebody who was born in a different decade that you were born in. Enjoy those moments when you have them. You're sitting next to your grandpa singing a song and the sun's shining. Doesn't get much better than that.
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C
Blackbirds singing in the dead of night. Take these broken wings and learn to fly all your life.
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B
That was author Melanie Florence and illustrator Matt James talking about their children's book, the one about the blackbird. Our series, Picture this, is produced by Samantha Balaban. And for more conversations like this one, head to npr.org picture this.
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A
Up next, and they walk on. It's a children's book that deals with a heavy topic, the death of a loved one. But the book's author, Kevin Millard, and its illustrator, Rafael Lopez, didn't want to lean into sadness. Here they are also on WEEKEND edition, discussing their approach to the topic.
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After his mom died a couple years ago, fry bread. Author Kevin Millard found himself wondering, but where did she go?
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I was really thinking about this a lot when I was cleaning her house out. You know, she has all of her objects there and there's like hair that's still in the brush or there is an impression of her lipstick on a
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B
glass, almost like she was both there and gone at the same time. Kevin Millard found it confusing, so he wrote about it in his new children's book, and they Walk on, about a little boy whose grandma has died. When someone walks on, where do they go? The little boy wonders, did they go to the market to thump green melons? Perhaps they're in the garden watering a jungle of herbs or turning saplings into great sequoias.
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E
I started thinking about ways that different people deal with death. And one of these ways, I grew up in Oklahoma, and my mother is an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. And many people in Oklahoma, in native communities say walked on. When someone dies and it is just a different kind of transition of their presence from physical to spiritual. It's still sad. But then you can also see their continuing influence on everything you do, even when they're not around.
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G
There was so much similarities between my Mexican roots and Kevin's roots. And I thought Walking on reminds me so much of the Day of the Dead where we celebrate it every year. But not only every year, but we celebrate it every day.
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B
Rafael Lopez illustrated and they walk on for our series Picture this. He and Kevin Millard talk about grief and loss and love.
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G
It really touched me. It was very personal. I lost my dad 35 years ago when I was still young. So I thought there's so much connection with Kevin's story. And my own story of my mom continues to celebrate my dad. You know, every day we talk about something funny that he said. We play his favorite music. So he walks with us every day, wherever we go. He's with us all the time. And I thought we need to have Kevin because, you know, he's pretty darn cute. And, you know, baby Kevin or a little Kevin would be perfect for this story. The one decision we wanted to make because we thought it would be too personal would be to maybe change the story and the characters. So instead of just being the little boy's mother, it was gonna be Grandmother.
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E
So Raphael was nice and lovely and he actually put a little 8 year old boy, oh, listen, my voice breaking. He put me as the little boy who is looking for his grandma in the story. And I will tell you, Rafael, that when I got the physical copy of the book, I didn't open it for two months.
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G
Wow.
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E
I couldn't look at it. There's a picture in the beginning of the book. The little boy walks in his grandma's house and there's this picture on the wall in the living room of the little boy and his. Oh, man. And his grandma. And they're in the loving embrace and
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G
you're going to make me cry too, Kevin.
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E
All right, part of the plot of this, right, this kid is wondering where grandma went. It's like, did she step out to go to the grocery store? Did she go fishing?
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G
We start with just very mundane things that you were wondering where she is, but then all of a sudden you turn the page and then you, oh, what's going on? We have this gorgeous big old whale and there's Grandma on top of the whale's head, you know, fishing. And then you think, wait a minute, is this real or is this in his imagination? So we're Trying to go back and forth, back on the next page, just back to reality again, you know, there he is sitting by a rock, saying, I will wait.
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E
And Raphael has all of these amazing illustrations that are just fantastical and colorful. And you can see the colors move from somber and they get brighter and brighter and brighter.
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G
I use color as a guide. As Kevin was saying, everything starts with very muted and neutral colors. And as you start to remembering the grandmother, things become more vivid. Because in Mexico, we celebrate things very much with color. Whether you're eating a very colorful food or you're buying a very colorful dress, or you go to the market and the color explodes in your face. So I think we use color a lot to express our emotions. That happens here a lot. A perfect example is when this is. The house feels so full, yet it feels so empty. And there's Kevin standing in front of all these boxes that the parents are packing away. Who knows, with maybe some of Grandma's belongings. Pretty much the whole spread is green. Very few colors in there. And the only color that you see, it's on Grandma's apron in the kitchen. That's the only vivid color up there. So I want people to start noticing those things, to really think about what color means and where he is finding this connection with Grandma.
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E
It's very purple or lavender, right? Like these very spiritual colors.
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G
The reason I use that purple is because during the Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico, November 2, purple is very prominent. You see these beautiful flags and banners that they hang from all these colonial buildings, and they're all purple. That's why I chose purple. You know, you start with pencil sketches, but everything that you see, every texture that you see in every color was created by hand. I spent a good deal of time, maybe a month or two, creating textures with different things. I use acrylics and I use watercolors and I use ink. And then I use. I distress the textures with rags and rollers and, you know, dried up brushes. I look for the. The harshest brush that I neglected to clean. And I decided this is going to be the perfect tool to create this rock.
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E
It's funny that you mentioned the rock because one of the textures on the rock in one of the early drafts, just like you can look at clouds and see an elephant, I could not help but see an impression of a goblin.
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G
I can always use that and say, this is what I do. I just put all these little extra secret things for kids to find out later on.
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E
Yeah, an Easter egg.
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G
Yeah.
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One of the things I always like to have in the illustrations. In my books, I always like to incorporate elements of seminal culture in people's clothing or even in the objects. So we can see a lot of seminal patchwork in the people's coats or their skirts. And in the end, it's Grandma's scarf that goes across the whole page, and it's just beautiful.
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G
I think that that's what's refreshing about this book, that we wanted to actually make the combination of so many similar things that Kevin and I, our cultures have. Because of doing that, we're allowing other people to see themselves and their own traditions into this book, into the story.
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I mean, I had no conception of what it was gonna look like at all. Then, you know, I'm looking at Raphael's oeuvre. He's very magical realist in his illustrations. And I thought, we can make this fanciful, we can make this playful. So then people can see that there can be. I don't know if you could call it joy in someone dying, but then there can be a warmth. And then there's this promise that these people, they don't go away. They're still with us. And then they still influence our decisions, our patterns of speech. And we can see that their lives had meaning because they touched another person.
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G
Well said, my friend. You should be a writer. Oh, my God.
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B
Maybe that was author Kevin Millard and illustrator Rafael Lopez talking about their new children's book. And they walk on.
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A
That's it for this week on NPR's Book of the Day. If you want more, you can sign up for for our newsletter@npr.org Newsletter Books, I'm Tin Bidermias. This podcast is produced by Colby Weiner and edited by Megan Sullivan. Our founding editor is Petra Meyer. The show elements for this week were produced and edited by Patrick Jaron, Watananan, Elena Burnett, John Ketchum, Alejandro Marquez, Hanse, Diana Douglas, Samantha Balaban, Michael Radcliffe, Courtney Dorning, and Melissa Gray. Yolanda Sanguini is our executive producer. Thanks so much for listening.