Deborah Freedman is the author and illustrator of the children's picture book Partly Cloudy. Her many other books include Tiny Dino. She lives in Connecticut.
Q: What inspired you to create Partly Cloudy, and how did you choose bunnies as your characters?
A: I had the idea for the story during the pandemic, while I was taking long walks up to the views from a large rock ridge near my house. I was thinking a lot about the natural world around us, about things we see all the time but don’t necessarily think about that much.
Scientists, poets, and painters have always known that they need only look up at the sky for an endless source of wonder and inspiration…and clouds are so much fun to paint!
I’d always wanted to make a book full of them, but I had lots of questions: What are they made of? How do they become so many different shapes and textures? What makes fog and rain, thunder and lightning?
I thought it would be fun if the characters were themselves soft and fluffy, like clouds. I was trying to decide between sheep and bunnies, and ended up with the bunnies. :)
Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: My favorite resources for kids and my own sources are listed in the backmatter, including books about clouds and weather, and websites I trusted, like the International Cloud Atlas and (at the time I was working on this book) NOAA and NASA.
It’s so important to be extra-careful about presenting something as fact to kids—whether it’s science or history or whatever—so once the book was about finished, I found my way to a meteorologist at NASA who fact-checked the book for me.
I learned that there are some incredibly generous scientists about who are happy to share their knowledge!
Another surprising thing I learned from my research is that contrails (aircraft condensation trails) are considered human-made clouds, and they can spread and trap warmth in the atmosphere and contribute to climate change.
Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the book says, “Creative imagination and scientific intelligence need not be exclusive, suggests this gently educational book that resists simple caricature.” What do you think of that description?
A: I love this quote! We can be so quick to silo kids (or people in general) as either artists or scientists, as though one person can’t be both. I believe that creativity, imagination, and intelligence actually apply to both art and science—and yes, I’d like to suggest that kids can handle complexity.
Q: What do you hope kids take away from the book?
A: While researching informational picture books like This House, Once or Tiny Dino, and now, Partly Cloudy, I've learned tons about the everyday world right around us—and that’s given me great joy which I hope to pass on to kids. And listening to and sharing with each other can also enrich our experiences of our world.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I just finished a picture book called Flowers For Mama, about a family of kittens who get creative about how they express their love. It will be published next spring.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Inspiration is everywhere…down at your feet, up in the sky, sitting next to you…and I think the world might be a better place if we all paid a little more attention to it and to each other. ♡
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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