Thus, before the normalization of PDFs, we had to get creative with this (in fact, we’re thinking of doing so again, since scrolling a PDF is nothing like turning the pages of a book), so in order to send out galleys of our children’s books, we decided to make small, floppy zine-like copies of our picture books. These mini books were an underdog move, but proved to be a huge small press advantage — everyone loved them!

Here is a gallery of some of our mini books below:

Write about a time you had to adapt, creatively. What did you make? What was lost, and what was gained?

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When I was 8 years old, my family went to the Berkshires for a trip and we visited a place called the Red Lion Inn for a few hours. It was summer, and while our parents hung out on the veranda drinking vermouth, my sisters and I got to run up and down the stairs of the inn and along the wallpapered corridors, where we found nooks and crannies. On that trip, we also got to see a waterfall, chipmunks, woodchucks, and corn… stuff that was alive and growing, stuff you don’t see in New York City. It was 1971, and we were used to getting tomatoes and iceberg lettuce wrapped in cellophane, which was this loud, crinkly plastic. And suddenly my sisters and I were in a cornfield eating corn raw. It was magical and amazing — enchanting, even — to be outside of the city. That’s where the name “Enchanted Lion” comes from––the memory of this enchanted moment and our visit to The Red Lion Inn.

Summer at ELB is busy. We’re still trying to get out all of the spring books. This year, three books have been pushed to August, which is a lot to deal with. The summer is also when the fall books start coming in. Fall is a short season, interrupted by the holidays, so you have to start promoting as early as possible, to build readership, momentum, and so on.

Summer at ELB also involves new interns, which is exciting. I like having interns because I like that ELB is a place where young people can come in and learn through exposure. It’s valuable to open the door and provide engagement, and the interns share their talents and skills with us, which is amazing.

In terms of books, summer is a nice time for kids to check out longer books, whether with text or without, or books that lead to observation and perhaps even games…. so without further ado…

Here are a few of our favorite “beach reads” for kids:

Bunny in a Tree by Balint Zsako

Thunderstorm and/or How the Big Bad Wolf Got His Comeuppence by Arthur Geisert, for all of the cutaways and details. So much to notice!

Telephone Tales by Gianni Rodari

There was a Shadow by Bruce Handy and Lisk Feng.

The Boy Who Became a Parrot by Wolverton Hill and Laura Carlin.

Vacation by Bexbolex.

Transcribed & illustrated by Phoebe Ward

Meet the Summer Interns (And Also Phoebe)!

Beach read recommendations from Maggie, Nisha, and Phoebe:

Maggie: When You Look Up by Decur

Nisha: The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr

Phoebe: Amos and Boris by William Steig

What books do you recommend for kids’ beach reads? Let us know! Send us your responses via Chat.

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Bruno lives and works in Bologna, where he loves taking long walks, especially when he can’t fall asleep.

I Forgot How to Sleep is about a girl who just can’t fall asleep. She knows she forgot to do something, but she’s not sure what it is. She takes a walk through the house looking for help from her dad and Milkshake, her dog, but no dice — they’ve both dozed off. She walks outside and, as luck will have it, runs into a bear, who can’t sleep either. This relatable, delightfully illustrated book is perfect for young restless minds and their sleepy parents.

A handful of spreads from I Forgot How to Sleep:

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A collection of artifacts from “the genesis of I Forgot How to Sleep” - Bruno Zocca.

What do you do when you can’t sleep?

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Arthur’s Iowa studio is packed with stuff — things he’s collected, photographs, magazines, farm equipment, small pieces of things that belong to farm or industrial life. He has a lot of books and a lot of tools with which he makes his etchings, and many beautiful copies of his books in different languages. He uses a clothline and clothes pins to air dry his laundry in his studio. He also hangs up receipts, bills, letters, postcards. Arthur likes mechanisms and building stuff, so the clothes line has been a lifelong affair.

When Arthur writes books, he begins with a story idea, images, and a narrative rhythm, but no text. He doesn’t worry about the words. His process is almost musical, with him following his narrative idea and a tempo. Arthur is a great conversationalist, but the way he writes text for a picture book is much more descriptive and close to the image than establishing a story. So he’s not his own best author. So he has worked with several people over the years to write texts, or has done books likes Thunderstorm, with a time line, or Oink, which only has one word––oink.

I chose Ahana to write the text and Arthur trusts me, so he said, “If you think they can do it, good.” Ahana came to us from an MFA in poetry and is light on their feet. There’s movement in their work, a lightness of touch, and they have a very thoughtful process. Ahana brings a sense of the interconnection of everything to all that they do. One of my favorite moments in the Turkey River book is when the Turkey River is rising, and the trolls and the humans, who are usually at odds with each other, have to come together to keep their town from flooding. They manage to save the town by building sandbag walls. So after that’s successful, the text thanks the sand in the sandbags, along with the trolls and humans. I like that Ahana gave person-status to the sand. Ahana had an unusual task as the writer of the book because they had to connect the illustrations with a narrative. Arthur loves Ahana’s story. Basically, he says that Ahana “got it.” Over the weekend, he shared about this several times, with the words: “It’s warm and gentle and right on the money.”

Arthur is a consumate craftsman and artist. He has a great memory, and a good, if at times a bit broad, sense of humor. He’s really a wonderful combination of things. He’s become a small-town person — he’s kind, generous, and humble. He hasn’t been recognized for his real worth, in my opinion, and for the strength of his craft. He’s done so much for the picture book medium. But he wouldn’t think like that. When you talk to him, he doesn’t seem like someone with disappointment, just gratitude for the life he’s lived.

There were a couple of especially memorable moments on the trip last weekend. Arthur is now in around 84. At one point, he was telling Emma and me about Minn of the Mississippi, his favorite book from childhood. I bought the book for the ELB office years ago, because of how much he talks about it, Anyway, it has a lot of little vignettes and illustrations around the margins. This time, Arthur sat in the studio telling us how much he loved this book — he would wake up early on Wednesday mornings as a kid to read it before going to school. He said he sometimes didn’t read the words at all, just poured over the pictures. As he described this picture book from his childhood, his face took on a glow, and he said, “This book still isn’t done with me. It’s amazing, I’m an old man and I still go through this book in my mind.” And it just was so beautiful, him saying: “This book still isn’t done with me.”

He told us another story where he was walking through the Art Institute of Chicago to see some prints. He went to see one by Durer, and he said, “The light was such that I saw the lines of this Durer print and the thickness of one of them, and I saw what a line could do.” You could see that he was relating something that was absolutely transcendent to him, having seen the line in that way. He described it as “a life changing moment.”

Arthur goes around in overalls, or, as he did this weekend, in patchwork troll wear. He seems like just a regular person, but he’s a person with a great, deep passion for art and these incredible insights about his work and image-making and lines. It’s a beautiful thing to experience. We were in his studio last Friday and Saturday. We went to Fennelley’s Irish bar on Friday, and Johnson’s restaurant on Saturday, which is not any place I would have known as a New Yorker, as it’s like a large shed with carpeting where big parties go for buffet. You can get mashed potatoes with white gravy and ribs and stuff like that. We go every time we visit Arthur, and he goes for special occasions, if not so much anymore.

On Saturday, we had a book signing, which went really well, despite being unadvertised. It was unadvertised because he had been sick and it was unclear if he would have to stay at the nursing home where he’s healing until a couple days before. We had sent 90 books ahead of ourselves just in case, but thankfully, he was able to leave the nursing home. And people came to the signing all day. We sold almost all 90 books, plus people were buying Pumpkin Island and How the Big Bad Wolf Got His Comeuppence. He and Ahana signed a lot of books, and we all had a lot of fun.

Going back this time with Ahana as author felt really special. I think it all came together in a really special and way. Arthur is working on another book, a stand alone (not part of the trilogy.) We’re not sure if he can finish it, but we’re hoping he can. And then, we’ll all go back to Iowa again.

Transcribed & illustrated by Phoebe Ward

What books from your childhood do you remember? Why do you think they stuck with you?

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Geisert’s work has been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, featured in The New Yorker, and in exhibits at The Art Institute of Chicago, and once upon a time in the Society of Illustrators' annual Original Art shows. Three of his books have been honored as New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books, including Ice, published by Enchanted Lion in 2011.

Geisert was a copper etcher for most of his career. His other two books in the trilogy, Pumpkin Island and How the Big Bad Wolf Got His Comeuppance, were made from copper plate etchings, which were then hand painted with watercolor, and then scanned to make book files.

However, several years ago, a chemical accident related to copper etching materials almost killed him — in fact, he medically died for a few minutes. In order to keep working — and living — he had to change mediums. Geisert used a large array of pen nibs for The Trolls of the Turkey River to reproduce the etching style of the first two books. The grey tone plate marks characteristic of copper-plate etching are absent in Trolls, but the line detail is sharper. The color is still hand painted with watercolor.

Ex. copper etching (pre-accident):

Ex. Pen nib + watercolor (post-accident):

The epynonimous Trolls of The Trolls of the Turkey River live underground in hollows they call homes. They are fun loving and communal, but also “mischief-makers who sometimes go too far!” From sowing corn that sprouts up through the cracks in the pavement to making Main Street as slippery as an ice-skating rink, there’s nothing more fun for a troll than pranking the townspeople.

But when the waters of the Turkey River start to rise and threaten to flood, the trolls rush to warn the townspeople. If there’s any hope of averting disaster and saving the place they both call home, the trolls and townspeople must put aside their differences and work together.

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Pick a spot in your hometown. Draw a made up creature that would thrive there.

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In February, we posted the prompt:

Is there as story you would categorize as “better not to speak” or “taboo”? Write or illustrate the story. What makes it “indecent”? Is it really?

We received a comic submission from Elsa Ery. Read it below:

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ELB: How would you describe Odds and Ends?

MH: Odds and Ends is a collection of “lasts” — “last chocolate,” “last book,” etc. It started out with just the one question about what happens after someone retires. We were going to a retirement party for my mother, and my child asked, “What happens after the last day, when you stop working?” I started collecting lasts after that. This book is that collection. It surprised me a lot to see how many different lasts you can find. And so many were left out of the book, too. This is the children’s version of it.

ELB: There are so many books out there for kids about “firsts.” For example: baby’s first steps, the first day of school. What does focusing on “lasts” allow you to do instead?

MH: Transitions. “Lasts” can be the beginning of something. They’re a bit melancholic, of course, but “lasts” allow for feelings of letting go, so that something else can emerge. Firsts are always celebrated, like the first baby teeth or the first steps, but to get to a first, you have to go through a lot. Take a child’s first steps — that “first” has a “last” crawl inside of it. Even with really simple things, like the last pair of clean socks, there’s a dread to it, like, “Oh no, tomorrow I’ll have to figure out what to do about having no clean socks.” Anyway, the whole idea of “lasts” really gives me joy, and I hope it also gives the kids who read it and their parents a game to play about finding lasts and seeing what a “first” and a “last” might be.

ELB: How old are your children?

MH: I have an 18-year-old, a 16-year-old, and my youngest is nine. The nine-year-old is my first reader; she helps out and comments. I ask her, “What do you see in this picture? Is it understandable to a child?” She’s aging out of a child’s reading group now, but she helped me with my other book, Where Do All the Days Come From? which is also full of questions. On the first endpaper, I used a quotation from her: “Did you notice that when you cut a hole in a paper, usually there’s a hole also on the other side?” She comes up with gems like that all the time. She’s a big inspiration.

Many of the episodes in Odds and Ends are from her. “The last in the group to lose a milk tooth” — that actually happened to her. She had been waiting so long while all the other kids already had lost a tooth, and she was worried there was something wrong with her. Then she was on the beach and she finally lost it—but it was nowhere to be found! We still managed to have the Tooth Fairy visit, though. I pick things like that from family happenings and, of course, from my own childhood.

ELB: How did you figure out how to organize the “Lasts” in the book?

MH: Yeah, those labels — “Exciting Lasts, Lonely Lasts” — are a bit… how do you say it in English? Vague. They’re not really precise; they can be just some kind of guidance to where you can look in some cases. I noticed when I made this really long list of small scribbles, mostly just images in a small notebook, that distinct feelings would arise; for example, the last moment before you jump into the pool. That feeling would remind me of another action, and so on. That’s how I figured out the categories.

One of the first images was also of a child who was too big for their treehouse, so it’s about growing up. From there, I collected further examples. Of course, every time I found something that made me feel something, I thought: What does this remind me of? It was an process. Also, with my editor Reka at Etana Editions, she’s fantastic at looking at opposites and what would match. Some of these labels only have one entry, but that’s intentional — I thought it would be fun for the child to think of similar experiences. Some of these categories have many “Lasts,” but then some have just a few. I didn’t think the labels were the most important thing, but they help to give the book structure.

ELB: As regards structuring the book, how did you decide what order things should go in without a “story” or “narrative?

MH: It was a lot about collaboration and reading it out loud. I was working with Reka in Finnish, so I read it a lot for the feeling of it. The book is about a whole life—it starts with the child in the womb about to be born, and her last moments there. Then at the end, a grandmother dies — the end of life. I didn’t want to collect all the really sad things in just one place, just to make it like this is how life is: sometimes some things are sad, some things are interesting and intriguing, and some things are really happy. I made a lot of design choices where you can breathe and look a little bit longer.

The book is about ups and downs. Whenever I write a book, I think about the structure. It can go from light to dark to light. It can have very little narrative arc, but a strong visual one. There are so many ways to tell a story, and I happened to tell it this way. Because I am both the writer and the illustrator, I had the freedom to change places, lift something to another spot, see how it mixes, put something new inside, or take something out. Some illustrators work with a separate writer, and those illustrators might have to discuss their edits before they decide to change something. Working alone as a children’s book author and illustrator means the text and the images changed quickly, and many times over.

ELB: How long did it take you to make the book, from inception to the book being sent off to the printer?

MH: It was a long timeline. There were 5 years between my child’s question that inspired the book to the printers. I was doing other books and working day jobs in the meantime. Odds and Ends had time to develop. I also applied for a grant and got the funding, which helped me take the year required to make this. In that same application, I also had a grown-up novel that I was trying to write. It was two projects in one. For seven months I was trying to write this novel, but I decided I didn’t have enough time.

It was wonderful to pivot to Odds and Ends. I realized, “I can do this.” The book took about three months to put together with my editor because I’d been working on it for so long, and also because while working on the novel, I was sitting with similar themes. So, Odds and Ends came from my attempt at writing a novel. Writing adult fiction is so different and interesting, but it’s hard if you’re used to writing more poetic, short texts and using illustrations, too. A children’s book can be like a novel, but the illustrations convey a lot of the story. I learned a lot about who I was as a writer and artist in the process of writing both of these books.

ELB: Also, through fiction we an author is getting at something that’s true, even if it’s not exactly real, or even real at all.

MH: Yeah. In Odds and Ends, I use non-fiction elements. For example, the Northern White Rhinos: there is only a single mother and a daughter left of that species. I studied pictures of them to capture them correctly. Also, near the end of the book, there is a part about how light travels and how long it takes—that is scientifically true. This book is about life, and most of the episodes are relatable.

ELB: When you came up with those, was it a mix of experiences you had yourself, things you saw others have, or were they made up?

MH: It’s a balance. Some are my own experiences, like the one about choosing teams at recess. I remember the looks on the team captains’ faces: “Can you take her? No, I don’t want her.” That is an episode from my childhood. I checked with my kids and teachers don’t do this anymore, but the kids still do it themselves during recess if they want to play football. It has long roots, this way of humiliating the non-athletic kids.

ELB: As for your characters, did you model them on people you know?

MH: No… when I draw, kids just kind of appear; it’s magic. Sometimes they look a lot like me when I was a kid. I have a family album that I always keep at my workspace for inspiration. The illustrated kids in my books look like them. Sometimes I use the real pictures to look at poses or to find inspiration. There’s a photo of me as a kid in the album holding a seashell, which I realized later appeared in Odds and Ends. Everything you experience comes out, but you don’t always realize it immediately. It’s amazing how much of your patterns are informed by your childhood. You may not remember, but then it pops up.

ELB: Who would you say are your biggest inspirations or influences?

MH: I read a lot of adult fiction. In terms of children’s books, I like to go to the library to check out the kid’s section. Recently I have been enjoying Sydney Smith—everything he does is so fantastic. I like his open endings — “Why did the father disappear? Is this about war or a relationship that ends? Why are they afraid?” It’s beautiful.

And then Anna Fiske —she’s a Norwegian illustrator and writer. Her style is totally crazy, and she doesn’t shy away from darkness. She writes babies dying before they’re born, and their parents’ grief. She writes about suicide and how it feels to be the one left behind. She writes about people who work in morgues. She makes scary topics less scary for children by writing about them. I love her book that covers different traditions and the history of death.

I also saw that Enchanted Lion has been translating Beatrice Alemagna, who is wonderful. She was in Helsinki maybe two years ago, and I could listen to her talk forever. Finnish illustrator Marika Maijala is also a wonderful illustrator (and my friend).

ELB: How would you describe your illustration process?

MH: It can be so different, but with this one, I started in a notebook. I was writing and drawing—mostly drawing, but also scribbling down words like “last piece of chocolate” and making a little square representing the chocolate. I was just collecting a lot of material. Then I tried out different materials. Sometimes I work digitally first to make really quick sketches so I can get them into a layout and see how things work out.

With my new book, I had enough time to make sketches and try different things. Recently, I started testing gouache in a different way, and decided to redo most of the illustrations because I liked the new look better. My style is always changing, and rarely consistent. The essence remains the same, though.

ELB: For this book, it’s pencil and watercolor?

MH: Yes, the color images are mostly watercolor and pencil. Towards the end, I thought the book too colorful, and changed some of the images to be more precise. So I figured out a way to use pencil and graphite powder to make something really precise and small, yet imperfect. My editor and I found a way to incorporate the precise/imperfect contrast, which I think makes the book feel more like a “collection.”

ELB: Your use of graphite stood out to us, and how it moves between joy and melancholy.

MH: Yeah, that contrast of joy and melancholy is central to the book. And editing the art to preserve that contrast and specificity was important to me.

ELB: Do you feel that there is a theme that unites your books?

MH: I find that my books are not the same, but “sisters.” They are all philosophical, slow, and melancholic. I think you write for the child you were. I was shy, observant, always wondering why the world is the way it is, and spent a lot of time thinking. So my books are written with that kind of child in mind. My books are meant to be discussed with an adult reader, which is why I leave things open. It’s hard to say if there’s a theme to my work, but if I had to chose, I would say that I write books for “wanderers and wonderers.”

ELB: As a child, did you collect things? Do you collect things now?

MH: I loved to collecting things as a child. I had stamp collections and these glossy little images that you could buy in a pack—I don’t know the name for them in English, but they could be angels or something similar. I had folders for stamps and a folder for those glossy pictures, and I would trade them with my sisters, cousins, or friends. This was before Pokémon cards or baseball cards in Finland. And before computers. Everyone collected things when I was growing up.

My kids don’t collect cards and stamps, they collect things like Pet Shop figurines to play with. This instinct to collect seems like an ancient thing.

ELB: Do you think people collect digital things now instead of material things?

MH: Yeah, but I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. Collecting things digitally is still collecting. If you collect packs of Pokémon cards, or images of fruits on your phone, there isn’t much of a difference. It’s fun to collect things and work towards “completion.” But we don’t really want completion — when you finish a collection, it’s like, “What do I do now?” That’s why in Odds and Ends, there’s the grandmother’s mug collection with one missing. I think when one is missing, that’s when a collection is perfect, because you still have a purpose to try to find it. Once you find it, there’s nothing else to do.

Collections can get out of hand. I’ve read about people collecting advertisement pencils—they have 2,000 or 4,000 pencils—or dolls and teddy bears. Personally I like collecting art from my fellow illustrators, and it’s never complete, and never permanent. I sometimes give their work to friends for their birthday. It’s not about owning a piece of art forever. Owning things to keep forever and not letting go can be stressful. This book is also like an open collection; you can talk to a child and find more “lasts.” It has an open ending, so it can never be “perfect.”

ELB: Since the gathering phase of this project took such a long time, was there anything that changed or surprised you, or things you ultimately had to leave out?

MH: There were a lot of good “lasts” that I had to cut out. One was especially nice, but I think it was more understandable to adults — It was an image of a woman who had just finished painting all the boards for a house. I drew a small person against a spread of painted boards, meant to show the feeling of accomplishment that comes with finishing a task. But that accomplishment feeling is in the other “lasts” too. There were a lot of these more adult themes that the editor and I decided might belong in an adult version of Odds and Ends. And some stayed, like the grandmother’s last letter from a friend.

That’s the nice thing about picture books: you can play around with the images and the text. I had an Instagram profile at first where I collected more “lasts” from the world and from my followers, and picked a few to illustrate. So many nice submissions came in, including some from people who work with children and had taken the book to art workshops. One funny one I chose was the last piece of toilet paper, which was so good, it made it into the Odds and Ends French edition. In France, they couldn’t have the sauna image from the original — I don’t know if it was the concept of the sauna or the nudity — but they wanted something else, so I switched it out for the “last bit of toilet paper.”

ELB: We love publishing books in translation, in part because it’s about sharing a different way of looking at the world. You mentioned the sauna illustration already. Would you say there are other particularly Finnish experiences or ways of thinking in the book?

MH: I think most of them are quite universal. Picking mushrooms might be a very Finnish thing. These are called suppilovahvero (funnel chanterelles), and they come very late in the autumn after the first frost. If you find one, you find a hundred in the same place. They are difficult to spot because they look like dry leaves, but once you see one, you see them everywhere. That’s maybe a Finnish thing.

The church in the book is a Nordic design, but it looks similar to churches in the States. Summer houses are also very Finnish. We have them here, but it’s not a posh thing; it’s common. Many families have a cottage where cousins spend time together. The interior image of one in the book—with the rose wallpaper—is what most of them look like. Finnish kids also have ten weeks of summer holiday. Parents don’t have that much, so kids spend a lot of time with relatives or at summer camps in places like that.

Also, the mugs are a design thing called “Arabia.” I started making my own patterns because the real ones were difficult to draw and I didn’t want it to feel like a brand advertisement, but the general feeling is based on those Arabia cups. You can Google “Arabia vintage mugs”—they are lovely. I have a neighbor who collects them; she has all of them.

The visual world I grew up in is Finnish, but it’s open to all influences. I have one foot in the Swedish-speaking group, so there are many influences from Sweden and Swedish children’s books.

ELB: I have one last question for you, and then we have a rapid-fire round. You do journalistic work, write novels and children’s books, and you’re also a mom. How are you able to balance all of these different things?

MH: One year I took on too many books—I illustrated six books in 2016. I was so happy that people were asking me to write all these books, but I was also pregnant and then had a newborn to take care of. I was going to book meetings with my new baby and working too much. It was exhausting, very draining. The books did well, but I’m not doing that again. Now, I write one book per year.

If I illustrate someone else’s text, I say no to other projects, no matter how tempting. I prioritize my own books because I have to secure my own financing through grants. It’s easier for me to do my own work, because I control everything. My kids are older now and independent, so that’s getting easier. I work a day job part time, though right now I’m working only on my own books, thanks to a grant. Next year I’ll be back to working my day job, but never more than part time, so I can keep writing my one book per year.

ELB: What is your one piece of advice to aspiring illustrators?

MH: In the American market, I see a lot of indie authors who say, “I’ve just written this children’s book, I need an illustrator.” It’s a better idea to find a local partner you can actually meet with to talk about books. I don’t want to be the one to jump into a thread and say, “Don’t do this,” but many people find out the hard way. There are too many poorly developed books out there that might have had a nice kernel of an idea or a good piece of text, but didn’t reach their full potential. My advice is to read a lot, draw a lot, and work for yourself to create your own story. Making a children’s book is so much work; it takes at least three or four months of focus. It’s not something you do in two weeks for “coffee money.” Write something for yourself instead.

It takes years to grow into your style. Now that I’ve written a few books, I find I have so many ideas I’m curious about, and I have to pace them out. Once you start looking, ideas are everywhere, all around us; we just have to make space for them.

RAPID-FIRE QUESTIONS

ELB: What is your favorite word?

MH: Love.

ELB: What’s your least favorite word?

MH: This is a language thing, but there is a word for “lump” in Finnish (paakku). It’s a very “lumpy” word.

ELB: Do you have any real-life heroes? If not, what do you most admire in others?

MH: Absolute kindness, especially in these times.

ELB: If you weren’t an artist, what would you most like to do?

MH: I could be a sailor, or maybe making pancakes in a ship’s galley.

ELB: Do you have a life motto?

MH: Not really. Maybe “Work hard.”

ELB: What is your idea of success?

MH: Kids reading my book in a country I’ve never been to. Or a librarian in Brooklyn recommending my book to someone. That’s the craziest thing—that’s success.

ELB: Which rituals are part of your creative process?

MH: Cleaning my workspace between books. I just did it; it was horrible, but it’s done.

ELB: What does procrastination look like for you?

MH: Watching endless Instagram videos—people finding things in thrift stores, boats crashing, or someone seeing a manatee while paddleboarding. They are lovely things, but just not what I’m supposed to be working on.

ELB: How would you describe your monsters?

MH: Everyday people who have lost their inner child and became mean. Those are the real monsters.

ELB: What is earthly happiness for you?

MH: A really nice meal. For example, a sandwich with blue cheese, apple, honey, and walnuts. A really, really good sandwich can be super nice.

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List and illustrate a few “lasts” of your own.

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I wake up around 7:00AM. I go to bed late. I’ve always been a night owl. Before I got the Oura ring, I was averaging 4 hours of sleep, which wasn’t good, which is why I got the ring. I’m planning on giving it up as soon as I have consistently better sleep habits. Anyway, I take a shower, make coffee, get dressed, and go to the office.

I listen to podcasts on the way to work — my favorite is called Weird Studies, which is hosted by two guys who discuss ideas that are generally relegated to the margins of the mainstream. Stuff that is thought to be weird. They’ve shared this quote from Philip K. Dick’s Exegesis several times — “The symbols of the divine first show up in the trash stratum.” I love that idea and often think when it comes to books that the true treasures are usually to be found in the weeds at the side of the road. But that’s a big messy idea that needs its own conversation.

In the office, I pull up the blinds and open the windows. I don’t have any full-time staff at the moment––our one f/t employee left yesterday for a new job––so I’m the only one in here until interns start in mid-May. Once I’ve settle in, I go to my email to see what’s going on. Then I decide what the next steps are: today, for example, I went early to the post office because Phoebe Ward was coming to discuss this very Substack. Before she got here, I took a cart piled high with stuff to the PO, where there was already a long line because it’s tax time. We go to the PO on Third Street off Avenue B.

After that, I had some texts with people attending the Bologna Book Fair , printed out book orders, went back to email, and so on. Two books I’ve been working on this week that are coming out in 2026 are Bookstores Around the World by Maria Ivashkina, and a novel called The Shadow Stream by Kirk Lombard who lives in San Francisco and is a fishmonger.

In the afternoon, I usually have a handful of phone calls or Zoom meetings. I like these meetings. In an indie company, every scheduled conversation has a point. I know people complain about tedious meetings, but ours are never tedious and are always wide-ranging and stimulating.

I like having conversations with people about their work and about promoting it. These kinds of calls are useful, fun, and interesting. Some conversations can be hard, but I don’t mind. I really like to talk with people, even if there are differences of opinion.

In the late afternoon, I often work on spreadsheets, contracts, etc. Kimberly Guise, who works on the business side of Enchanted Lion, is helping us with all of these sorts of things. Generally, I leave the office between 5-8PM. My mom lives at a facility in Brooklyn, so if I’m visiting her, I’ll leave at 5PM. Sometimes my mom and I look through picture books together. It’s a new framework. This past weekend, when I asked her if she liked being outside, she said “being in nature is a spiritual thing for me.” We’re just so amazingly deep and complex as people, and this is my mother expressing herself post a debilitating set of strokes.

I typically get home a bit after 7PM. My husband is a cellist who often works in the evening, but if he’s not working, we’ll figure out what we’re making for dinner together. Then I go back to work!

At night, I work at the kitchen table — it’s a New York apartment, so there’s no study or whatnot. I don’t actually want “A Room of [My] Own,” sorry Virginia Woolf. I like the energy of the kitchen and I like working in the midst of things. I work best with life going on around me. It’s incredible to think how many stories and poems have been written by women in kitchens.

At night, I’m usually working on future books so they don’t run late. Lawrence Kim, a graphic designer with whom we’ve worked for 20 years, also likes to work a late shift, so I tend to hear from him in that 11pm-1am window. I also work with our print team in China at night. We’ve worked with them for 25 years, so we know their process, and they know ours.

These days, I go to sleep around 1-2AM. And that’s my day in the life!

Transcribed & illustrated by Phoebe Ward

What is your Day in the Life like? Be as specific as possible.

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Here is Anke Kuhl on the expressivity of her characters, how she captures humor in her art, illustrating a comic vs. a picture book, and more about how she found the visual language for this funny and heartwarming story!

ELB: What was your favorite book as a child?
AK: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. I think that’s truly the book I looked at more than any other—again and again, over many years of my life. Those round, shaggy monsters are just the perfect mix of cuddly-cute and slightly eerie. Just wonderful!

ELB: When did you begin to take an interest in art?
AK: Honestly, I can’t remember ever not being interested in it. My parents were both teachers, not artists, but they were very engaged with art, music, and culture. So I was always surrounded by inspiring images and books, and we would often go to see children’s theater, exhibitions, and concerts.

ELB: How would you describe your illustration style? How did you find it, and has it changed over time?
AK: It has definitely changed—quite a lot, actually. But there’s also something that has run through my drawings since childhood. If I had to describe my style, I’d say that liveliness is the key thing. I mostly focus on figures—whether it’s people, animals, or imaginary creatures—and for me, it’s always been about expression—facial expressions and body language. I never consciously set out to do that; I’ve just always drawn, and it naturally developed in that direction.

ELB: From where do you draw inspiration?
AK: I’m constantly observing characters everywhere—in everyday life, in films, in books, in sacred buildings, in museums. And it really doesn’t matter whether it’s a fantasy creature in a medieval painting, a person on the subway, or a dog in the park. To me, they’re all equally important. I look at everything with the same eye. Landscapes, on the other hand, don’t inspire me at all. I always need figures with emotions—the gaze, the gestures, and the sometimes unintended humor within them.

ELB: Do you have a favorite place to work? What does a typical day in your life as an illustrator look like?
AK: My favorite place is definitely my shared studio space called Labor, which I founded 27 years ago. I can’t work as well anywhere else. But I do need my own room—with the door closed. As much as I need the community, I also need quiet. A typical day starts around 9:30 a.m. in the studio. I work until midday, then have lunch together with colleagues, and then continue working into the late afternoon or early evening.

ELB: How do you balance routine and improvisation in your creative practice?
AK: Ideally, I manage to carve out time where I can just draw freely, experiment, improvise. That then feeds back into my commissioned work. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen as often as I’d like. So I try to build variation into each project: Which style fits? Which materials? I don’t want to keep reproducing myself. For Truman Toad, for example, I consciously chose a very sketchy approach because it feels more lively. The looser the line, the more alive the expression.

ELB: What role does collaboration play in your illustration work?
AK: A very big role—and at the same time, it’s something I have to balance. I think collaboration is incredibly important, with authors and publishers. It pushes me forward; I need that exchange. At the same time, I also need projects where I can completely do my own thing—like comics, where I also write the text myself. In those cases, I want to stay in my own universe and have as little outside interference as possible.

ELB: What piece of advice do you have for aspiring illustrators?
AK: There isn’t just one path. But what I can really recommend is: find your people and team up. It’s simply more fun—and more promising—than sitting at home alone as a lone fighter. At least for me, I can say: without my network, I definitely wouldn’t have made it.

ELB: What appealed to you about Truman Toad and the Quest for the Perfect Hug? Why did you decide to illustrate it?
AK: I read the manuscript and immediately had to laugh. The tone is incredibly charming and funny. And the character Truman is beautifully ambivalent—not just nice, but also a bit annoying, egocentric, and quirky. Fantastic! I could visualize him right away. And then there was another aspect: I received the text during the pandemic. The whole theme of “hugging”—or rather, “not hugging”—was huge at the time. I immediately felt it was very much in tune with the moment.

ELB: How is this picture book similar to and different from your other books?
AK: The big common thread across all my books is humor. For me, text and image always need a certain wit, a kind of irony. What was special about Truman Toad, though, is that it’s a picture book. In recent years, I’ve mainly worked on children’s comics, novels, or nonfiction—so this felt a bit like going back to my roots.

ELB: What medium did you use for Truman Toad? Can you take us through your illustration process?
AK: I start with graphite pencil sketches. Once everything is right—expression and composition—I redraw it more loosely on a light table, again with soft pencil. Then I scan it and increase the contrast so the lines become nicely black. After that, I color the drawing with watercolor and scan it again. While painting, the lines fade a bit, so I digitally overlay the original line drawing onto the colored image, which is quite a fiddly process, to be honest.

ELB: What was the most satisfying or challenging moment in Truman Toad to convey through your art?
AK: The biggest challenge was building a world in which all the animals are anthropomorphized to the same degree—and finding suitable habitats for them that are both animal-appropriate and human-like. So, on the one hand, you have a toad living in a house, but you also need to design homes for a giraffe, a spider, and—most difficult of all—a goldfish, in a way that makes the whole world feel internally consistent.

ELB: The facial expressions, body language, and personalities of the different animal characters in this picture book are perfect. Tell us more about how you illustrated this!
AK: That’s basically the result of about 50 years of research. Really! As I said, that’s my main focus: facial expressions, body language, and emotions. The text helped me enormously—it was a huge playground, with so many nuances of mood in the characters! You can really let the whole orchestra play, and use the full range of emotions.

ELB: Can you share how you approached depicting both the humor and the heart of this book in your art?
AK: Oren Lavie’s text helped me a lot with that. What he does so well in writing fits perfectly with what I aim to do visually.

ELB: Your illustrations have several moments in panels, like in a comic. Tell us about this choice!
AK: I love comics. And I didn’t want to give up that kind of sequential storytelling, even in a picture book. Panels also allow me to show changes—like emotional shifts—step by step. And they bring rhythm into the book: large images, small vignettes, then a panel again. I think that keeps both the narrative and the visual design lively.

ELB: Do you remember any of your big dreams from childhood?
AK: As a child, I desperately wanted a pig. Honestly, I still kind of do.

ELB: What animal do you feel like best captures your personality?
AK: It depends. Sometimes I’m a squirrel, sometimes a sloth. If I had to choose just one—maybe a little monkey?

And now… Enchanted Lion’s rapid-fire questions!

What word do you love?
AK: Gemütlich. A beautiful German word that can’t really be translated. It describes a warm, cozy, welcoming atmosphere.

What word do you hate?
AK: The German word Einkommensteuererklärung. In English, it’s just “tax return.” But even worse—it’s just as complicated in Germany as the word itself, and you spend ages on it every year.

What is your life motto?
AK: Always try to keep your sense of humor.

What qualities do you most admire?
AK: Empathy. Peacefulness. And the ability to listen well.

How would you describe your monsters?
AK: Very nocturnal!

If you weren’t an illustrator, what would you most like to do?
AK: Make music professionally. Or cook.

What rituals are part of your creative process?
AK: The first step is always making a mess. A tidy desk just doesn’t work for me at all. And snacking—I always have little treats on my desk.

What does procrastination look like you?
AK: Communicating a lot, answering private emails and messages, cooking elaborate meals—and, I have to admit, sometimes pointless online shopping, which I then feel guilty about.

What is earthly happiness?
AK: World peace. Family. Love. Health.

Where do you think we go after we die?
AK: I think our sense of self dissolves and we become part of something larger again—a cycle of nature. We return to where we were before we were born.

Here is Oren Lavie, who wrote to us about how humor is like a sneeze, the soul of childhood, imagination and truth in storytelling, and making children laugh—and ask questions!

ELB: Do you have a favorite picture book as an adult?
OL: My top three, always, are Winnie-the-Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. And now I realize that all three are about the immense difficulty of growing up.

I love the hierarchy in Pooh, where the ultimate authority on anything is a six-year-old boy. He can read! And we meet Pooh and the gang exactly at the period when Christopher Robin is going to outgrow the forest and probably never return. He’s just going to become too sensible for that world. It’s heartbreaking. That forest is the childhood he’ll leave behind, with all its idiosyncrasies. I always get very sad and anxious toward the end of The House at Pooh Corner, for I know I’ll be asked to take sides.

With Peter Pan, it’s different. I start to cry in the first paragraph of page one. I’m a sucker for Wendy. She is us, the reader. We can never be Peter, and as the book goes on, we realize we don’t really want to be. And that’s a very important and unimaginably sad understanding. Because we understand that being normal and emotionally balanced is really the way to go. And that, unfortunately, means no flying.

Alice is just nuts. Nuttier than everyone around her, if you ask me. Or maybe more “stubborn” is the better word. But they are pretty close words in my point of view. Truman is also very stubborn. But he is not entirely nuts, for he can be broken. In the best way. He can be brought down from his tree.

ELB: Talk with us about humor. What is humor about for you?
OL: Unpredictability. Silly logic.

I love when a character, after carefully reviewing the available information, arrives at the worst possible conclusion and bases their actions on it.

I think laughter is an uncontrollable expression of the body, like a sneeze. You are never properly prepared for a sneeze; it’s always an unexpected and ill-timed intrusion. And I think laughter is a bit like that. It’s the mind spitting out stress that has accumulated in the system. And humor is the source of the stimulus that has unexpectedly caused that reaction. It’s associated for me with irrationality, either on the character’s side, or the situation.

ELB: When writing for children, do you think about childhood? In our own work, we think a lot about “the soul of childhood.” Does that mean anything to you? Is there something deep and true about childhood that we do well to try to preserve and carry with us?
OL: When I try to think what the “soul of childhood” might mean to me, it’s probably that to a child everything happens for the first time, all the time. So much new information is thrown at you. Literally everything is new information, and when you’re a child, you have very few tested methods to process all that information. And a lot of the explaining has to come from guessing, which is, in other words, imagining. So imagination is crucial for processing some parts of the world, as a child. Therefore, the sensitive kids, I think, those who have some difficulty with the world outside, turn to the world inside, to the imagination.

And I think that is a powerful tool, and maybe we can argue that this is what the soul of childhood is: the imaginative processing of a world unknown.

ELB: Truman, in his radicality and self-involvement, seems possessed by the spirit of childhood, if not manifesting its soul. Does that translate for you?
OL: I actually think of Truman as the typical adult. Worried, neurotic, trying to control his life and manipulate it to fit his needs. So that’s not a child’s mind, in my point of view. But that’s why I think, for a child, reading about a helpless adult like Truman can be so much fun, and a relief.

ELB: You are an accomplished songwriter, author, and director. How did you come to write stories for children? And is there something unique about children’s books that called to you?
OL: In children’s books, I love the ratio between imagination and truth. You have to be truthful when you address children, and very simple. But you can do that using as many strange, new, wonderful worlds as you can invent. You can have people fly. So the metaphor is not just a metaphor, it is the actual story.

ELB: Several reviewers have compared Truman to other expressive animal characters from children’s literature classics, like Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad or William Steig’s Sylvester, Shrek, or Pearl. Who are the people (or the characters) in your life who inspired Truman?
OL: I think Truman is, unfortunately, me.

I often make silly, stubborn declarations and commit to them and force myself to live up to them.

And I, too, do eventually love people, even though I always have to try to do it alone first. Like Truman carrying that hug alone and auditioning animals to fit into it. He wants then to live on his terms, he invites them into his hug, instead of being open to whatever new dynamic they might bring.

I also love toad picnics and talking out loud to my plants.

ELB: Truman Toad picks up on the same “playfully existential” tangent (O, The Oprah Magazine) of your previous picture book, The Bear Who Wasn’t There. What is it about this humorous yet profound tone that appeals to you, especially when it comes to children’s stories?
OL: I just like silliness. I like inappropriate characters who think they have figured things out, and are very stuck on it.

In The Bear Who Wasn’t There, almost every character the bear meets along the way presents a branch of philosophy. You have the Stoics and the existentialists, the Buddhists, all hidden inside the Lazy Lizard and the Convenience Cow and the Taxi Turtle. And the bear is taking it all in and then immediately forgetting.

ELB: Who are your biggest inspirations as a children’s author?
OL: I wish I could say nature. That would be great. Trees speak to me. But no, it’s usually art. In the presence of good art, I become excited, I feel infected, and I want to add to it.

So when I want to write a funny, emotional, quirky story, I go and read some. Those would be Salinger and Milne and Dahl and Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams. Sometimes I’ll strike up a conversation in my head with one of these writers about a topic, and the way we would talk about it—and the way I’d be so smart with those deceased giants—would sometimes become a story idea, or a tone, or a new character. Without art around me, I forget why I should make it. So I always need to surround myself with it.

ELB: What do you hope to spark in readers with Truman Toad?
OL: I love making children laugh. If I do that, that’s enough.

And I love making them ask questions, too. If I make them ask, “Why this? So why this? And why this?” then I’m happy.

And now… Enchanted Lion’s rapid-fire questions!

What word do you love?
OL: “Penultimate.” When I learned there was a word in English for “one before last,” I couldn’t get over my excitement. We don’t have one in Hebrew.

What word do you hate?
OL: I don’t particularly enjoy the word “no.” That applies to all languages.

Do you have a life motto?
OL: I always try to make as much money as I can in my sleep. I insist on waking up richer than I went to bed. No doubt royalties from Truman Toad will take care of that.

What qualities do you most admire?
OL: Kindness. But also wit. If you’re very witty, I would forgive the occasional lack of kindness.

Do rituals make up a part of your creative process?
OL: If writing in coffee shops falls under the term ritual, then yes.

What does procrastination look like for you?
OL: Writing in coffee shops.

What is earthly happiness to you?
OL: An especially juicy burrata.

Where do you think we go after we die?
OL: Honestly, I never thought about death as a place, but wouldn’t it be nice if it were your favorite table in your favorite restaurant with your favorite person?

Order Truman Toad here!

Lavie says:

How would you illustrate your own “soul of childhood”? Would it be an animal? A tree? An object? What does it feel like to inhabit?

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OH: How did you get involved with this book?
CB: Brian and I have known each other for 14 years, and I always admired the work as a neurobiologist. When I met him, he was doing his PhD at Berkeley, and then later he started doing poetry and created this beautiful book of grid poems with another friend of ours—that book idea actually came out of mine and my partner’s wedding.

Brian and I went out for a drink one evening, we said, “Let’s make something together!” We wanted to combine my artwork and his scientific background to create something. And we wanted this thing to make people to think about the big questions that neurobiologists and artists grapple with, like the nature of existence and what it means to be human.

OH: What excites you most about this project?
CB: One of my favorite parts of the project is getting to have a creative collaborator that I respect and adore so much. We worked on this project for probably six years. In the first year or so, we lived in the same city, which made it easy to meet every week. And then eventually Brian moved to Pittsburgh, I moved to the UK, and we’d meet online.

If you’ve had a true creative partner, you know how wonderful it is to feel like you share a growing brain. Brian would come with these with these theories in biology or evolutionary history and they would blow my mind. His theories gave me visual inspiration for the book. As I was walking or commuting, I spent hours and hours and hours thinking about what to draw based on some theory of mind he’d explained.

OH: What was the most challenging part?
CB: The most challenging part of creating this book was that the goalpost kept moving. It started as one thing at the beginning, and we had decided wouldn’t it be great to have one very detailed illustration for each chapter that would be very text heavy? As time went on, we decided to add more illustrations, which became illustrations. Later, we had an idea to reference medieval scripts that had illuminated letters and titles.

The most challenging aspect was knowing when to stop. And honestly, the only reason I think we stopped when we did is because I gave birth to twins. Towards my due date, I started getting restless, thinking, “This project has to finish.” I knew it was time to get this work out into the world.

OH: Can you walk us through your illustration process for this book?
CB: My process tends to shock people: I don’t make sketches. I never do any mockups or anything. The first take of my drawings are about 80% of the final. But it’s probably because I stay up until 3:00am working. Once I start, it’s hard to stop.

When I sit down to create, I draw everything out with a pencil. When that feels final, I go over everything with a waterproof pen. Then I’ll erase the pencil. Once I have a clean lined-pen drawing, I’ll create all of the additional layers of the watercolor to really bring it to life.

And that’s it! Again, most of these images were done on the first go.

OH: Are there any particular artists or styles that influenced the work?
CB: I like artists that draw myths — for example, William Blake, Hilma af Klint, Leonora Carrington, and Rithika Merchant.

My work as a visual artist and storyteller has always been about those core existential questions: What does it mean to be alive? Where did we come from? What should we do while we’re here? And how can we reconnect to the spiritual world in this day and age?

OH: What do you hope to offer the readers of this book?
CB: When I was a teenager, I found this Einstein quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. The first is as though nothing is a miracle. The second is as though everything is a miracle.”

As an artist and a person, this quote summarizes my principles. I want the reader of Forgotten Teachers to see everything as a miracle: biology, creativity, love, existence. Through Forgotten Teachers, Brian and I sought to illuminate the miraculous nature of life, grounded in science and imparted through spirituality.

Order Mulysses here!

You can pre-order Torseter’s incredible book THE HOLE, coming back into print after many years here.

And this is exciting: you can also pre-order Torseter’s THE HOLE^2, coming this autumn, a new work created ten years after the first book.

On school readings: “The children will know how to read, but they will read only out of a sense of obligation. And outside of obligation, they will take refuge in bad books — even when they are capable of reading more complex and richer material — perhaps only because bad books have never been contaminated by school.”

Write about a book you weren’t allowed to read as a child. What was forbidden about it? When did you read it?

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Enchanted Lion’s roving artist-interviewer Olivia Hertrick interviews Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award winner Isol about her picture book Loose Threads. Isol is an illustrator, cartoonist, graphic artist, writer, singer and composer. She lives and works in Argentina. Read more about her book here.

Q (Olivia): I love that Leilah is introduced to the idea of the Other Side and the magic of the summer solstice by her own grandmother. Where did you get the inspiration for the grandmother figure?
A (Isol): I believe that there is something special that children and the elderly have in common, and that is that they both have time to listen to and tell stories. In one way or another, they both exist outside the social system’s demand to produce (children haven’t entered into it yet, and older people have already left it), and this liberates them from the daily preoccupation with the practical, the tangible, and “the necessary.” They can then pay attention to other things; they can observe, wonder, and listen.

I’ve known many older women to tell stories about ghosts and other supernatural things of which they seemed to have firsthand knowledge, or about which they had heard from someone in the family. My grandmother would say a few prayers and use a ribbon to cure “empacho” (a kind of indigestion), and this was a method that she taught to my aunt, who also believed in these mystical remedies. These are the sorts of things that tend to stay in the family and aren’t shared with just anyone. Just like a special recipe or a certain way of sewing. In my personal experience, I’ve had grandmothers and great aunts who took care of me a lot as a child, and they all had stories from their youth that they liked to tell me, as well as different beliefs they shared with me. My maternal grandmother also sewed very well and my mother inherited a bit of her talent.

The grandmother-grandchild relationship is very special to me. They are the extreme points of a family, one near the end of her life and one just at the beginning. I believe that this proximity to “the other place” gives the old person and the child a strong perception of certain things, if they pay attention to them.

Q: I love how Leilah’s adventure operates just underneath the awareness of her mother: her mother knows she is “up to something,” but is not really conscious of everything that Leilah does. Similarly, the Other Side is a world hidden just beyond Leilah. How did the concept of layered worlds evolve as you created the story?

A: In several of my books, I’ve explored the idea that we do not see many things, even though they are close to us, and how certain “misunderstandings” are maintained as beliefs that prevent us from seeing things we might otherwise see. When we think we need to show maturity and responsibility (the way Leilah’s mom feels, perhaps), we feel more secure if we have more certainties than doubts. In my stories, children often doubt a lot of what their elders tell them; they want to get to know the world based on their own judgment, and they hold themselves in high enough esteem to believe in their own vision, as happens here with Leilah. She tries to tell her mom what she thinks is really happening, and she sets out to find a solution so that her mom won’t be sad or annoyed anymore because her daughter keeps losing things.

I feel so much tenderness toward this girl’s intention to want to resolve things so that her mother won’t worry; this is a position that children at times are in, without their parents even realizing it: worrying about whether their parents see them as bad and taking the impossible task of making everything right again onto their own shoulders. But sometimes children don’t end up understanding what is really happening, and they invent magical or mysterious stories to explain what they can’t control. Actually, this is exactly the same thing that adults do, if you really think about it. I believe that this is the basis of many fairy tales or ghost stories, or of worlds that we don’t actually see, yet might perceive as something separate, along with everything we do not know or understand, like the reason why we are in this world to begin with, where we come from, and where we go when we die… I’d say that the Other Side is an unexplored place, which might be the place of Art, of the Subconscious, of Chaos…

When I found the topic of losing your things (something which was a problem for me in my childhood and which exasperated me), I was able to anchor the story in a detail of everyday life that’s close to home for most people––a conflict with which we can identity and through whose door we can enter the most fantastical part of the story. The themes that appeal to me range from the most everyday to the most mysterious, and I like to have them live together in my works.

Q: Leilah’s intrepid independence is one of my favorite parts of her character. On her own, she determines the cause of the problem, undertakes solving it, and when she realizes her mistake, she fixes it by herself. What ideas of children and childhood do you hold that lead you to give Leilah her own autonomy?

A: I like intrepid girls like Alice, Matilda, and Mafalda; they’re characters with personality traits that help us follow them through a story. I like characters that have questions and that want to change the world for the better. I like that they feel they have the power to change the world, and I also like that if they make a mistake, they’re not afraid to fix it. It seems to me to be a mark of intelligence to be able to reflect on your own actions and learn from them. Same goes for a sense of humor and happiness, which are necessary for taking risks, learning, and growing. Even though my characters worry, they never lose their energy to take action; they truly feel they’re important.

I believe that this has to do with the idea that my parents instilled in my brother and me: that we are capable of doing whatever we set our minds to. This view of us gave us the confidence to be brave as people and as artists (my brother is a musician). At the same time, the idea of rebelling against injustice and reactionary powers is something I’ve had in me since I was a child, understood as part of what it is to be a conscientious and caring human being. It’s also part of being an artist, to make art that shakes us from what is predictable and already tamed.

My child characters ask themselves about what is true and what is not (see Petit, the Monster; A Dog’s Life; It’s Useful to Have a Duck; and others) and challenge the certitudes of their parents. Children have the freedom of not knowing and being able to ask, of marveling at and desiring everything, which makes them very bright and means they’re constantly discovering new things. I find this very powerful and I use it as a personality trait of my characters, because it’s something that I admire and treasure deeply.

Q: I love the epilogue, where we meet Lexis and Rolf. Not only is it a fun, humorous ending but it also validates Leilah’s point of view and gives credence to the idea that the world is a more intuitive, magical place. Do you as an artist embrace magic in the world? Or did this idea develop as you studied the two sides of the scarf?

I have a lot of fun thinking about how things might be different from the way we believe them to be, and how if we just change places slightly, we might be able to see things differently. There are many mysteries in this world, and this amazes me while also sometimes scaring me, like Leilah. How is it that we are in infinite space? How is it that nature can do such incredible things, with its millions of fungi, insects, minerals, and cycles? Even looking at an insect through a magnifying glass makes me dizzy: it looks like an alien or a prehistoric creature. The creatures in the depths of the sea, the human body itself… There is so much wonder and simultaneously so much ignorance around who we are, and we try to search for meaning because we as humans have this way of thinking.

Maybe if I were a scientist I would better understand how everything works, but even science doesn’t have answers for much of what has happened, nor what exists, and the truth is that the more I learn, the more I am amazed: fungi, communication between plants, how birds know when to migrate, how each species has its own way of organizing its environnment, its procreation… For me, this is magic enough, and strong magic, too.

I have a lot of respect for nature and everything that makes this world work the way it does. And at the same time, I’m also aware that I don’t know about many things that do exist, and there could perhaps be many more things that might exist, and I like to imagine these things. I find it exciting to think about a parallel reality, about transformations (like in Impossible or The Balloon), about wishes that might come true, and so on. I believe that this comes from my love for magical tales and the possibilities given by the words and images of picture books to invent a world.

But in my daily life, I’m pretty rational, not a mystic. It’s fun to think of things beyond reality, but only as a game or as a form of inspiration. It scares me when we give too much power to superstitious beliefs or mystical entities, because that can sometimes become an irrational excuse to avoid taking responsibility for your own life or actions. That being said, art and poetry have something to do with peeping out into “another world,” a world that’s at times intimate but yet very vast; this can give you vertigo at the same time as a feeling of being connected to something larger than yourself. In that regard, this book was important for me because I made it while we were still in the pandemic, and it was also during the time my dad was dying. So I think that ideas about all that can be lost and about the need for control and for air, too, might have occurred to me based on the situation I was in. Creating Loose Theads really helped me make it through that time.

Q: You have found a perfect visual balance between the photographs of the scarf and the hand drawn characters. Can you tell us a little bit about your process for creating the images?

A: It was a little difficult to find this balance at first, because the shawl has a very bold design, with details and colors that competed with whatever I put on top. That’s why after a few attempts, I decided to use a single color for the characters, one that is fairly neutral, with black lines over a light brown color. I wanted the beauty of the embroidery to be appreciated and for the girl to stand out against the background. As I was scanning the shawl, I found different “landscapes” by looking at it from all angles. The fringe became a forest; I found a river with fish, a town, and, in the end, I started to see the shapes of the strange creatures that Leilah imagines on the reverse side. In the case of these animals, I added a few lines over the scan to further define them, so that readers would see them, too. It was like the game of finding shapes in the clouds or in water stains: a game I’m always playing. It was also very interesting to make illustrations starting from an object that already had so much graphic information; it was very fertile for generating new ideas that were different from the ones I always have. I wasn’t starting from a blank sheet of paper.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about the experience of traveling to the West Bank and receiving this beautiful scarf in your author photo?

A: I went in 2017 as a guest of the Tamer Institute, which is dedicated to the development and promotion of children’s literature. I held workshops for Palestinian authors and illustrators, librarians, and children.

The people that I met there welcomed me with great kindness and were so grateful that I traveled there, as not many people can come. I was in Ramallah and Bethlehem, not in Gaza, because no one can enter there nowadays. Several of my books have been translated into Arabic, and I was surprised to see that the people there laughed a lot at my humor, and that even though we’re from different cultures, in the day-to-day we understood each other perfectly, or at least it was that way with the people I was with, men and women largely connected to the world of literature and education. The first few days, I felt overwhelmed, seeing the situation in which they’ve been living for so long and thinking about the history that this people carries with them. But it made me happy to see how much they enjoyed the workshops, and I felt like this was a place where I could provide something, a little window out beyond their difficulties… There was a lot of enthusiasm for learning and creating, and a lot of respect. I worked with the ABC book (Daytime Visions, published in English by Enchanted Lion), and it was beautiful to see how the Arabic alphabet (which to me consists of mysterious drawings) played with the images they invented. Most of the women wore veils or shawls over their heads, but some did not, and just one woman in my workshop was completely covered, which piqued my curiosity, and she turned out to be very funny and talented! She laughed a lot. And so certain things surprised me that my prejudices hadn’t anticipated in that dimension.

One day, they took me to visit the Palestinian Museum, where there was an exhibit on embroidered garments; it was like a feast of clothing—marvelous! Some garments had a history that was clearly visible: those that the women used to wear at harvest; the ones with holes for breastfeeding; and those with a red thread that was used as a coded message about whether the woman was eager to find a husband. There were also examples of traditional embroidery that had been transformed into a symbol of Palestinian cultural identity and resistance. As an artist who makes pictures, this kind of narration through clothing was awe-inspiring to me. And that’s without even mentioning the meticulous and delicate craftsmanship of the embroidery. I also saw photos there of women embroidering as a group, across different generations, and how the oldest ones taught the youngest.

And since my hosts at the Tamer Institute saw how delighted I was during my visit, when I came back to Buenos Aires they sent me this shawl as a present, which now, some years later, has ended up as the fundamental backdrop to Loose Threads. I love that I was able to participate in some way in the virtuous cycle of this relationship between gifts and wonders made possible by each of our art.

Q: We read in your note at the back of the book that Palestinian women hand-embroidered this traditional scarf. In the same way that Palestinian women have passed the knowledge to make this embroidery down through the generations, the grandmother imparts her knowledge of the magical world to Leilah. It is notable that the story features three generations of women: how did you come to craft the story in this way?

A: This arose from the very history of Palestinian embroidery and from what I saw at the museum, which is that it has always been women’s work. For a while I thought of a boy character, because I was also working on another book with a girl character and I wanted to do something different, but it seemed forced and odd to me. The truth is that while there are indeed some men who embroider, in my experience the women of the family are the ones who are associated with mending and sewing. And grandmothers and aunts are also the ones who tell supernatural stories. Maybe what we call “feminine intuition” has something to do with observing the world with a certain sensitivity and openness to what we feel and perceive beyond what is purely rational, with recipes and insights that aim to console, comfort, alleviate pain, even cure illnesses, passed down from one woman to the next across history.

"What reader could be more demanding than a child? Children have a lot of things to discover and I'd better be on their high level in order to satisfy their huge capacity for curiosity. I get my inspiration from what's wild, from what's ridiculous, from that independence of culture that children enjoy." — Isol

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Is there as story you would categorize as “better not to speak” or “taboo”? Write or illustrate the story. What makes it “indecent”? Is it really?

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Natalia Shaloshvili is a children’s book author who currently lives in London, UK. Her book characters (including this Cat!) are cute, calm, humble and amusing. They live their ordinary lives in “a strange and curious world.” Her semi-viral paintings can be found on her Instagram and in private galleries. Enchanted Lion is proud to have her as an author.

Q (Enchanted Lion): How did you come up with ‘Small Cat’?
A (Shaloshvili): This character was born when I drew a little cat in a cup, surrounded by blue waters. There was something about her that told me she needed something—she needed a story! And word by word, the story came to life.

Q: What was the illustration process like?
A: I scribbled a lot in my sketchbook, searching for the right visual language. I was inspired by the beauty of nature around me: the mountains, the sea, the birds. That’s why the color palette of the book has many blue and white tones. I worked with acrylics and watercolor pencils, and later brought everything together in Procreate.

What I love most about being an author-illustrator is the process of working on a story. In my process, words and pictures always go side by side, so I can see the whole book as one piece.

Q: What is the book about?
A: The story is about a small cat and the things she needs, big and small: a tail and whiskers; milk and a flower patch; a place to run away and come back; to feel sad, to soak in the rain, and to warm herself in the beams of sunlight. But mostly, she needs a friend. I wanted to show how small the cat is in a big, wide world, and that sometimes a wolf might be hiding behind a tree (although he’s not after the cat).

Check out What a Small Cat Needs here.

“In the ‘fantastic binomial,’ words are launched out to collide together in a never-before-seen sky. Let’s take the words ‘dog’ and ‘wardrobe.’ Now, put them together to create outlines of fantastic situations. For example:
The dog with the wardrobe
The wardrobe of the dog
The dog on the wardrobe
The dog in the wardrobe
Etc. Each of these situations offers a different basis for a story.”

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