Follow-Up Interview with Toni Buzzeo (2005)
by Debbie Michiko Florence
You must be so proud of your newest picture book, Ready or Not, Dawdle Duckling! How was it, writing a picture book using characters you've already written about? How did Dawdle Duckling's new story come about?
You're right! It was fabulous fun to return to beloved characters and write a sequel! In fact, I've got kids clamoring for yet another Dawdle Duckling book at each of my school visits. Margaret Spengler, my illustrator, has also said she'd love another Dawdle book to illustrate. It feels like a mandate to me. I'm toying with two more ideas right now, in fact.
The challenge, of course, is that once a character is created, he exists in his own world with his own personality (or duckonality, as it were) which is relatively immutable. So Dawdle, for instance, must remain a dawdler and a dreamer, a duck of big imagination and little attendance to detail in any story about him.
When Margaret Spengler first said she'd like to illustrate a sequel to Dawdle Duckling after the initial book was complete, I settled down to contemplate that challenge. I wanted to create a story in which Dawdle's nature would be both his weakness and, ultimately, his strength. As I studied the first volume, I thought about the characters that Margaret had introduced, Frog, Turtle, and Fish. Even though my text had made no mention of them, these characters of Margaret's had played an important part in the first story, revealing even more about character. Dawdle wasn't JUST dawdling as he took his time. He was spending his time in building friendships!
A-HA! I thought. If I give Dawdle a challenge, like successfully playing hide-and-seek (an impossibility for an inveterate slowpoke!), he will proceed in his own fashion and never be able to win-UNLESS there's something about his dawdling nature that will make that possible. And of course, if you've read Ready or Not, Dawdle Duckling, you see that it is his very dawdling, relational nature that proves to be his strength, for his friends join forces and help him to do what he can't do alone—effectively hide from Mama Duck, the seeker!
This story about hide-and-seek and making new friends is sure to delight readers young and old. The rhythmic and lyrical story make for a fun read-aloud. Some people think it must be easy to write a story with so few words. We know this is not the case. Would you share a little about your process of writing a picture book?
Writing a lyrical picture book sequel is both harder and easier because the language patterns are already established in the earlier volume. In the case of Ready or Not, Dawdle Duckling, I knew I wanted to pattern the text of the sequel closely after the patterns I'd established in the first book, with an opening prepositional phrase marking geographic location, a recurrent pattern of action, and a series of repeating lines that invited young readers/listeners to join in. The challenge was to make this text fresh, as well, and not too reliant on the patterns of the first book.
For me, working through the plot of a picture book is mental pre-writing work. Sometimes it takes me months to come up with an initial plot that will “hold enough water” for me to decide to commit it to paper. Once I get to the paper stage, my propensity for lyrical language and fetching word choice kick in (legacies from starting my writing life as a poet) and I've found that it works best if I have a pre-devised plot to hang it all on.
As was the case for Dawdle Duckling, it can take months and months to play with that language in order to make it sing in perfect key! And sometimes, the details of language are interpretive too. For instance, in Little Loon and Papa, the spelling of the moose call was under consideration for many, many drafts as I listened repeatedly to a recording of a moose in the wild. Once I'd settled on the proper spelling, my editor, Lauri Hornik, felt that it read more like a bird call than that of a big antlered mammal and so we changed it. In the end, though, it was my publisher Nancy Paulsen, who suggested the final spelling of that humphing snort that a moose emits. Picture books are all about WORDS!
Of course, as you see, working with my editor on final revisions plays a role too. In Ready or Not, Dawdle Duckling, for instance, my editor wanted one more beat in each section of the manuscript where Mama finds the unsuccessfully hidden Dawdle. She suggested the hide-and-seek call line from her childhood—Ollie Ollie Oxen Free. But I was hesitant to add a new animal name (Oxen) to a book all about animals, so we did some research on the call in various parts of the country and agreed to Ollie Ollie In Free, which works so nicely. Now I can't imagine reading the book without that refrain. Kids always join in!
What are you working on now? What can fans expect next?
The next Toni Buzzeo picture book under contract is called A Lighthouse Christmas to be illustrated by the fabulous Nancy Carpenter and published by Dial in fall 2008. It's a historical Maine lighthouse fiction book in the tradition of my first book, The Sea Chest, with lots of deep emotion, based on details of The Flying Santa Service begun in 1929 along the Maine coast.
I'm also hard at work on a picture book about a tyrannosaurus rex! Sections of the story are in rhymed verse-a first for me-and it takes place in my favorite spot-a library!
You recently went to being a full-time writer. Congratulations! How are you doing with this transition?
As with all life transitions, it's been a challenging journey. I've missed the kids at Longfellow School so very much! And I've missed being a building level library media specialist too. But I've had the good fortune to work in my local elementary school with my colleague Laurie Dunlap and her teachers as a volunteer collaborating library media specialist and, at times, as a writing teacher. That's been fun.
More than additional time to write, this year anyway, I've had additional time for speaking. I've traveled across the country visiting schools and speaking at conferences all fall and spring. Speaking, for me, is a big part of the writing life and it's been great to meet so many readers of my books. There's lots more information about my speaking at www.tonibuzzeo.com/speaking.html. Now that my spring speaking season is winding to a close, though, I'm delighted by the prospect of returning to my writing.
Any other news you'd like to share?
Yes! I have a fabulous new professional book coming out this fall from Libraries Unlimited in their brand new Author and YOU series. It will be titled Toni Buzzeo and YOU and will be a comprehensive guide to me and my picture books, including a biography, discussion of structure, theme, and process for each of my titles, and plenty of curriculum activities for sharing my books with kids. I'm very excited about it!
Follow-up Interview © June, 2005 by Debbi Michiko Florence.
See also my earlier interviews with Toni, in 2003 and 2004.
what's new?
You read more about Toni Buzzeo at her web site.
See also my earlier interviews with Toni, in 2003 and 2004.
Contents © 2001-2009 by Debbi Michiko Florence. All rights reserved.
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