Q&A with Nikki McClure

  

Photo credit: Nikki McClure, Norton Young Readers

 

 

Nikki McClure is the author and illustrator of the new children's picture book A Forest, A Family, A Harbor, A Home. Her other books include Mama, Is It Summer Yet?. She lives in Olympia, Washington. 

 

Q: What inspired you to create A Forest, A Family, A Harbor, A Home?

 

A: I was inspired by watching my child grow up. Each stage of life has joys and challenges: exploring, learning, getting wet, and coming home to open arms to a place where you are liked and loved.

 

I wanted to make a book about home as a place and as a feeling more than a built house structure. Home is a forest. Home is a harbor. Home is a warm hug and the place where you know how a smile feels,  the place where you are totally accepted and at ease.

 

It is all my books smushed into one. It is for the kids who grew up reading All in a Day and Mama, is it Summer Yet? A book to show them how far they have grown and how they will always have a place to return to as they head out into the world.

 

A Forest, A Family, A Harbor, A Home is also for the parents watching, as I am, with amazement at the transformation of their child— a reassurance and reminder that home is love.

 

Q: How do you create your illustrations?

 

A: For this book, I painted paper handmade in Japan with black sumi ink. There are subtle tone differences in the depth of black ink that I could respond to in my compositions.

 

I then cut out an image from the black paper with a knife. This cut layer was then laid on top of paper that I had painted with yellow and blue inks, their mixing creating green. The ink was in dry stick form and I would grind it on a stone with water to make enough liquid to paint a sheet of paper.

 

Sometimes there would be a plan, but mostly it was freeform and I felt like I was 3 years old and painting for the first time. My studio got very messy on painting days! The art was then photographed for the book. All analog!

 

Q: The Kirkus Review of the book called it a “quiet meditation on home, memory, and the places that shape us.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I think they understand the book. It’s nice to have a review where the reviewer helps me, the author, understand what I made at a deeper level.

 

It is a quiet book with a few moments of light peril. It is meditative. I have been reciting it to myself at night in my mind and it helps me go to sleep.

 

And the idea that places shape us is what I made the book about. Home is more than your house, and even more than your family. It is air and water, and the sounds and smells of place.

 

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

 

A: I probably just answered this above! Home is where you are liked and loved. Home is more than walls and roof; it is trees and birds, tide and wind. Home is place where you are always welcomed with love.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am finalizing the layout for How to Triumph Like a Girl, a poem written by Ada Limón! I add an exclamation because it is amazing!!

 

Her text is powerful and the artwork I made for it astounds me. I made the art too quick! It was if I was in a trance. And it doesn’t have anything to do with family, forests, boats, baskets, wool sweaters, or kittens. It is a girl and a horse and blood red ink. Pure power.

 

And there are inklings of more books after that.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I had just finished cutting out the art for the spread where the child rows home. I went down to the beach ( I live along the shore of the Salish Sea) and went for a swim. I dried off, got dressed, and then my neighbor phoned “Orcas! At the beach!”

 

So I ran down and there was a pod of six orcas RIGHT WHERE I HAD BEEN SWIMMING! They dived and leapt and slapped their tails for an hour. It was not the usual glide on by but a full-on whale party.

 

The next morning, I cut out a paper orca whale and slipped it under the layers of paper. The paper I use is slightly translucent. The whale is there, not there—there to be perceived, or not, by a child rowing home in the rain. I like to leave room for things like that to happen in my images.

 

--Q&A with Deborah Kalb. This Q&A was conducted in partnership with Nikki McClure. Readers who follow along on this virtual book tour will have the chance to win a hardcover copy of A Forest, A Family, A Harbor, A Home by Nikki McClure.