Nora Ericson is the author of the new children's picture book The Bunny Ballet. Her other books include Too Early. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
Q: You’ve said that your daughter and niece, who had taken a ballet class, were dancing around the house wearing leotards and bunny ears, and one of them suggested you write a story about a bunny ballet. Can you say more about how you created your bunny characters?
A: It was mostly coincidental, as it was just the timing of my daughter’s ballet class coinciding with Easter bunny ears. But bunnies also have a wonderful tradition in children’s literature. The Runaway Bunny, of course, and the bunnies in Goodnight Moon.
I must admit that ever since I read the wonderful exchange between Ursula Nordstrom and Clement Hurd in Dear Genius (the collected letters of Ursula Nordstrom) regarding whether or not the characters in Goodnight Moon should be humans or bunnies, I’ve wanted to write a bunny story!
Q: What do you think Elly MacKay’s illustrations add to the book?
A: Elly’s artwork adds SO much!! It really adds the magic! She is such a master of layering and light and one of my favorite spreads is at the beginning when you see the bunnies leading the kids through the leafy tunnel into this other world. It just gives the book that “through the wardrobe” quality that I so loved as a kid –and still love as an adult!
I have an art background (I studied painting in college), so I tend to clearly visualize the art when I’m writing a picture book. But then since I don’t actually do the art for my own books, it never ends up looking the way I imagined. Which is usually a good thing!!
When I was writing The Bunny Ballet, I pictured the children sneaking out into a city at night and stumbling upon this underground theater of bunny dancers. And I actually envisioned the bunny dancers as these elongated, willowy hares!
So when I first saw Elly’s sketches, I was quite surprised and asked about making the bunnies taller/longer to better match my vision, but was told that she’d already tried that and found it made them look “creepy!” I had to laugh! My whole vision was a tad creepy!
So yeah, I think it is a very good thing that Elly brought her absolutely beautiful and charming interpretation to this story, because I’m pretty sure kids prefer it to my dark and creepy version. :)
Q: Did you need to do any research to write the book, and if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: I did a little research about ballet moves. I never intended my book to dive very deeply into the intricacies of ballet, but I wanted to include at least a few ballet-specific terms.
One thing not necessarily very surprising, but a bit tricky, was that many ballet terms are French and difficult for Americans to pronounce. This becomes especially problematic in a rhyming book because it’s important to choose words that people will pronounce the same way so that the meter/rhyme scheme works.
This is my first rhyming book and I guess something that really did surprise me was discovering how MANY words there are just in English that have a range of pronunciations. Words that different people stress differently or even pronounce with different numbers of syllables.
A few examples off the top of my head: elementary, pecan, syrup. Any word like this becomes very difficult to use in a tightly metered story and led to a few hair-pulling moments!
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m a bit all over the map! I always have a bunch of picture books simmering away on various burners, but I’ve also been working on some longer pieces for the last few years that have been hogging a lot of my head space. We’ll see what happens!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: My daughter now wants a bunny for her birthday. We already have two dogs and two cats, so wish me luck!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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