Q&A with Katie Yamasaki

  

Photo by Michael Chung

 

 

Katie Yamasaki is the author and illustrator of the new children's picture book Ripples. Her other books include Dad Bakes. She is also an educator, and she lives in Brooklyn.

 

Q: What inspired you to create Ripples?

 

A: Ripples came about from many moments of witnessing great care—children taking care of one another and their home environments. Grown-ups of all walks of life taking care of the children around them. Incarcerated women in the arts program I co-facilitate building meaningful systems of care in the most challenging of environments.

 

What I started to notice was how the acts of care we share between humans are very much the same as the acts of care we do for the environment. The tending, cleaning, feeding, giving space, celebrating, observing, etc. These are acts that children grow up understanding and knowing how to do by the care they have received from their grown-ups.

 

I wanted to create a story that gave kids the agency to care collectively for the earth by seeing that much of what needs to be done are things that they already know how to do. I also wanted these young readers to think about how their small acts become big when working in community.

 

Q: How would you describe the relationship between your characters?

 

A: Each child, centering Ayla and Aunty Koko, has a grown-up with them who is showing them some kind of basic care. The children are being fed, celebrated, tended to, listened to, given space, etc.

 

In receiving this care, the children are learning to become caretakers themselves. When the need arises, the children come together to address the matter at hand: the polluted water.

 

We see that the care has a ripple effect both on the environment, and also from grown-up to child. The small moments of loving presence and action between the characters grow into a big act of collective care.

 

Q: Did you work on the text first or the illustrations first--or both simultaneously?

 

A: I usually write the story first and do a really rough set of sketches. Eventually I finalize the sketches and text in a back-and-forth way with my editor and art director. The finished art—in this case done in collage and acrylic paint—usually takes me about eight months. The whole process is about a year.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: I hope that readers will consider their small acts of care as important. The small acts of loving attention can cause a ripple effect both in the lives of the people in their community but also in the environment around them.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m currently promoting Ripples 😅 and putting finishing touches on my next book, Invisible Crown, which is coming from Norton Young Readers in Spring 2027. I also teach art at a couple of women’s prisons in upstate New York and am always working on that.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: When I was young and eager to do things kids like to do—pick a wildflower, leave something out rather than put it away, leave a light switch on—my mom would say, “Just imagine if everyone did this.”

 

She also applied this to acts of kindness. Holding a door for someone. Giving up your seat on the train. Picking up a discarded bottle at a park. “Imagine if everyone did this.” I have found that thinking to be a North Star in my consciousness that helps to guide my small acts.

 

I’ve been asking young readers how they might respond to a friend at school who is sitting alone at lunch or having a tough day. They all know what to do—their capacity to care is instinctive. And then when we start to think about the ripple effect that care can have, it becomes exciting. Small things we can already do truly add up.

 

I was lucky that my mom laid that foundation in my consciousness at a young age and I hope that Ripples might do the same for these young readers.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. This Q&A was conducted in partnership with Katie Yamasaki. Readers who join us on this virtual book tour will have the chance to win one of 10 hardcover copies of Ripples by Katie Yamasaki. One grand prize winner will receive a hardcover copy of Ripples, a double-sided Ripples poster, and hardcover copies of five of Yamasaki's other beloved picture books—Dad Bakes, Place Hand Here, Everything Naomi Loved, Mural Island, and Shapes, Lines, and Light.