Curtis Manley is the author of the new children's picture book The Crane Girl, based on a Japanese folk tale. He also has written The Summer Nick Taught His Cats to Read and the forthcoming Shawn Loves Sharks. His work has appeared in Odyssey, Faces, and AppleSeeds. He lives in the Seattle area.
Q: Why did you decide to adapt this Japanese folk tale, and how did you
change it from the original?
A: Over the years I’ve enjoyed reading many different
folktales and legends from around the world, but have been especially drawn to
those from the Pacific Northwest and from Japan.
When I heard The Decemberists’ album The Crane Wife in 2006,
I was reminded of how much I liked that specific Japanese folktale. It involves
a man who rescues and sets free an injured crane; soon after that, a beautiful
woman knocks on the door asking to stay. Eventually they marry.
When his new wife mysteriously weaves fabric that he sells
for a good price in the market, the man’s greed for more causes the woman to
leave forever.
My change was to have not an adult but a young boy rescue
the crane, and it is a young girl who appears at the door seeking shelter. The
boy’s father is the one who becomes greedy, not the boy, and so in the end the
boy and girl are able to remain together.
My adaptation retains all the traditional elements of the
plot, but involves main characters close to the reader’s age—and it ends on a
more positive note.
Q: You incorporate haiku along with your story. Why did you
choose to do that?
A: I tend to include specific things that I particularly
like in each of my books, whether the story I’m telling is nonfiction, fiction,
or even a folktale.
I enjoy poetry, and write and publish free verse as well as
haiku (and its cousin, senryu). I’ve been part of a small, Seattle-area haiku
group since 2005.
For me, when I’ve been reading or writing haiku, my brain
will begin trying to fit what I’m seeing, hearing, or feeling into a haiku form
even as I’m experiencing it. Calling that “thinking in haiku” is not truly
accurate, since only some thoughts are involved—but when it’s happening, it can
seem that way.
When I was just beginning work on The Crane Girl, I knew I
wanted to include haiku along with references to certain foods, crops, and
customs. Using the haiku to reveal the thoughts of the characters then came
naturally—at least, that’s how I remember it now.
Q: What do you think the illustrations, by Lin Wang, add to
the book?
A: Folktales, like epic poems and Shakespeare’s plays,
retain their relevance and power even if retold in new settings. Nonetheless,
setting The Crane Girl in pre-industrial Japan kept it closer to the roots of
the original folktales—and the itinerant storytellers who performed them.
Lin’s images bring that setting to life in the specificity
of detail in the house, village, and clothing—and the in the crane’s plumage
and features.
But at the same time the beauty and luminosity of the
illustrations also give the reader hints at the magic that underlies the
story—magic that the boy and his father are mostly unaware of until the end.
The cover and interior illustrations are so gorgeous that I
hope no one is let down by the words and poems of my text!
Q: You also have another new book coming out this spring,
Shawn Loves Sharks. What can you tell us about that?
A: Shawn Loves Sharks is actually the first book I sold.
It’s taken three years to appear because sometimes the road to publication has
a long, winding detour! But I’m very happy with how the book turned out, with
wonderful, dynamic illustrations by Tracy Subisak.
The book came to me very differently than the others. The
title just popped into my head. But that’s all I had: a title. I didn’t know
who Shawn was or what he was like. I didn’t know what other characters there
might be. I didn’t have any idea about a plot. So I had to sit down and
actively figure out all those things.
I learned that Shawn thought about sharks all the time. He
loved their dark, blank eyes. He loved their big mouths full of sharp teeth. He
loved pretending to be a shark at recess and chasing the other kids—especially
Stacy, who screamed the loudest.
To turn those elements into a story, a conflict was needed.
So I threw a challenge at Shawn: for Predator Day at school, Great White Shark
is assigned to… Stacy.
And then I just let Shawn and Stacy work things out from
there…
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Late last year I sold a nonfiction picture book
manuscript about potentially habitable planets around other stars. Just
Right—Searching for the Goldilocks Planet should be out in a few years from
Roaring Brook Press.
I’m now playing with ideas for other nonfiction topics in
the same lyric style. It’s possible that none of those projects will amount to
anything, but an idea that feels right is always worth writing down and
exploring—at least for a while.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Just that I enjoyed your questions and am grateful for
the invitation to be interviewed! Oh, and you can find more about me at my
website, curtismanley.com.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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