Episode #166: How would you describe yourself or your books in 3 words? -with Natasha Tarpley

TRANSCRIPT:

Grace:
Hello, I'm Grace Lin, children's book author and illustrator of many books, including the middle grade novel When the Sea turned to Silver and the picture book a Big Moon Cake for Little Star. Today I am here with Natasha Tarpley, the author of picture books such as I Love My Hair and I love My Haircut, both illustrated by E.B. Lewis, as well as the book, The Me I Choose to Be with art by Regis and Kahran Bethencourt. Hi, Natasha.

Natasha:
Hi, Grace.

Grace:
Thanks so much for being here today.

Natasha:
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be here and I love your work.

Grace:
Thanks. Are you ready for today's kid question?

Natasha:
Yes, I am.

Grace:
All right. Today's kid question is from a kid named Roseanne. And Roseanne asks, "How would you describe yourself or your books in three words?"

Natasha:
Oh, wow. Well, I'll choose to answer this for my books, but hopefully it also applies to me. But for me, I would pick the word hopeful for my books because I write stories that I hope kids will be able to see themselves in and also be able to envision really exciting possibilities for themselves. I hope they will be inspirational for the very same reasons that not only will they be able to see themselves in the story, but perhaps it will inspire them to tell their own story or to create... Sometimes when I'm reading, I create a secondary story as going along with the book, and so I always find that to be fun. But I hope in any case that it will inspire creativity in my readers and curiosity in my readers. And the last word I think I'm going to make up, or I did make up, it's unputdownable. So I hope that my stories are fun and engaging enough for you not to want to put them down and that you will keep reading and want to read more. So those would be my three picks.

Grace:
Oh, those are such beautiful words. Do you use those words in your writing often? I'm trying to think.

Natasha:
I mean, I use them to kind of inspire my writing in terms of, I won't say mission, but the thing that kind of drives me forward as a writer is to hopefully do all of those things in my work. I was a big reader when I was a kid, and I would love to have my books do for another kid what books did for me when I was a kid, which was to enable me to travel into all kinds of different worlds, to spark my own imagination. And books also helped me to find my voice because I was a really shy kid. I'm still kind of a shy person. And so having writing as a way to express myself and reading also kind of helped me to discover my own voice.

Grace:
That's beautiful. And I feel like the words that you chose were so beautiful too. It's so interesting because when I asked you the question I was thinking like, "What would I choose?" And I kind of was a little, not embarrassed, but I was like, "Oh, yours are so much better."

Natasha:
I had to think about those words though for a while.

Grace:
I was thinking colorful, interesting. So I'm glad you were asked the question and not me. But I think your books do do all those three things. So the one thing I was going to ask was, which word of the three do you think best describes your book The Me I Choose to Be?

Natasha:
I would say inspirational because The Me I Choose to Be is a really simple text. It's kind of a poem about celebrating all of the facets of who you are and this journey of discovering things that you may not know about yourself and celebrating the things that you really love about yourself. And it's paired with these just beautiful photographs that have all of these really creative and imaginative images as part of that. And so they're like portraits of kids that are just beautiful. I think I'll speak for the photographers as well, that part of their mission is to have kids really envision themselves in new ways. And so it was perfect for us to pair together because both the words and the pictures of photographs have that same goal, to really inspire kids to see themselves, literally see themselves on the page, but also just imagine all of these really wonderful possibilities of who they are and who they might want to become.

Grace:
That sounds beautiful. This is a little bit of a tangent, but I'm just curious because I think not many of the listeners have seen books that are illustrated with photographs. Did you find that different for you to have... Because I know your other books were illustrated by E.B. Lewis who works I think traditionally versus having somebody who works with photographs. Was that any different?

Natasha:
It was a little different because it really made me think a lot more carefully about how to kind of tell that story and what format the text would be in, because when you're dealing with photographs, you're basically dealing with static images. Even though they're exciting and beautiful, it's hard to convey things like motion or people going from one point to the next. And so based on that, I decided to write a manuscript that was much more poetic, much more sparse, that allowed a lot of space for just that creative visioning of the photographs and also the imagination of the reader. So it's not like a traditional, "This happened and then this happened and then this happened." It's much more poetic and little small snatches of images and texts within the manuscript, within the words.

Grace:
Yeah, and it's 100% inspirational.

Natasha:
Yeah. Well, thank you.

Grace:
All right. Well, thank you so much, Natasha, for answering Roseanne's question. And Roseanne, thank you for sending your question in.

Natasha:
Thank you, Roseanne. I really appreciate that question.

Grace:
Thanks. Bye

Natasha:
Bye.

Grace:
Wasn't that great? Please make sure you check out the author's book and learn more about today's author by going to our website kidsaskauthors.com for more information. See you next time.

More about today’s authors:

Natasha Tarpley is the author of the best-selling picture book, I Love My Hair!, as well as other acclaimed titles for children and adults. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship among other awards. When she is not writing books, Ms. Tarpley can usually be found reading them. She has also taken up the cruel and unusual hobby of running marathons. Ms. Tarpley is the co-founder of Voonderbar! Media, a multicultural children’s book media company. She lives with her husband and the ghosts of two cats on the south side of Chicago.

Grace Lin, a NY Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and her picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, was awarded the Caldecott Honor. Grace is an occasional commentator for New England Public Radio , a video essayist for PBS NewsHour (here & here), and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf. She is the co-host of the podcast Book Friends Forever, a kidlit podcast about friendship and publishing (geared for adults). Find her facebook, instagram , twitter ( @pacylin) or sign up for her author newsletter HERE.

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