Elisha Cooper is the author and illustrator of the new children's picture book Here Is a Book. His many other books include Emma Full of Wonders. He lives in New York City.
Q: You’ve said that a Zadie Smith essay was an inspiration for Here Is a Book--can you say more about that?
A: There’s a lovely line in Zadie Smith’s essay “Something to Do” where she writes, “Here is this banana bread, made with love.” When I read that, well, I laughed. And I thought, what a perfect way to describe creativity! How making something is both simple, and also wonderfully unknown.
It instantly made me think about books. Because making children’s books is a physical process — watercolor paints, pencil edits, pages held in our hands — and also has these indescribable moments of creation, where a story takes flight.
The story of Here is a Book is pretty simple. Beginning with an artist, out in her garden, where she gets the idea for her book. Then she creates in her studio, brings the art to her publisher, the book is printed, bound, delivered to a school’s library and into the hands of a child. But each physical step requires a little something extra, whether it’s love or structure or curiosity.
Q: Did you work on the text first or the illustrations first--or both simultaneously?
A: Together! I love when images and words play against each other. That’s why I think people love children’s books, their combination of visual and verbal storytelling.
In the same way, when I’m researching a subject and sketching out in the field (well, it’s usually a city street), I’m thinking of the words at the same time. The sound and the line. How it all will fit together and interact.
And even once I’m painting at my desk, I may edit the text in the afternoon in response to what I created in the morning. The relationship between words and art becomes enmeshed, in conversation. It’s a duet.
Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the book called it “a winningly granular work that shows how components make up a whole...” What do you think of that description?
A: Oh, that was very kind. But I had to look up the word “granular.” Also, “winningly.” And why is it that when I read the word “granular” I started to think about “granola?” Did the words have the same Latin root? (doubtful). Or was that because I was hungry?
Anyway, I was touched by the reviewer’s line that the “components make up the whole” because that’s exactly what I was going for. That additive quality to making books, that bird-by-bird idea. To make something, start small, add more small things, stick with it.
Q: What do you hope kids (and adults) take away from the book?
A: Hmm, as soon as I read “take away” I thought about food again. Because, in England, that’s the phrase used to describe, for instance, the coffee and muffin we “take away” from a café. I was in London this winter, watching English Premier Soccer games, reading in cafés, and one of the joys of travel is noticing differences in language, which brings us back to children’s books.
Did you notice that I’m not answering your question? Maybe that’s because, I think, how readers receive our books is not quite up to us. So while my hope may be that children will be inspired to creativity here, I’m also wondering if something happens when readers make a book their own.
I remember being in a bookstore a few years ago — Three Lives & Co. Booksellers, my wonderful local independent — and saw two girls reading Big Cat, Little Cat. They were smiling, pointing at one of the cats, and in that moment it felt like what I had created was passing onward, and no longer belonged to me. Which was humbling, and sort of cool. I’m looking forward to that moment for Here is a Book.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m working on my second cortado! (and yes, I’m going to keep stirring the food subtext). I just finished painting a children’s book about a cat who thinks he’s a bird. It’s out next year, called The Rare Bird. I’m also playing with some board book ideas.
Mostly I’ve been writing essays about the creative process. How we write, how we create. How we all can be kind to ourselves in this messy process.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: We should know how to sew. We should know how to bake bread. We should know how to walk the sidewalks of New York with dispatch, we should know that respecting our American universities is important and patriotic and…. Oh, wait, you’re asking about me!
I know, I know. I seem to be answering these questions in a rush, as if I’m highly caffeinated, but that’s because I am. I’m on my third cortado this morning. I haven’t eaten or slept in two days (which is almost true),
I took the red-eye in from Seattle last night, I was out West talking with booksellers from the Pacific Northwest, it was exciting to share Here is a Book with them, everything is run-on sentences now, I can’t wait to share my book with the wider world.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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