Stories to Tell to Children is a project I've been working on for the past few years. It's not a terribly unique idea: a collection of short tales that kids of all ages and interests will like to read, with pictures they'll like to look at. However, it is different from lots of other things in that it's going to be really, really super awesome.
It started with a story called “The Evening Day and Grey,” which I wrote after seeing what seemed to be thousands upon thousands of crows hanging out in trees on my walk home from work one evening in the winter of 2010. At the time I was working on a much earlier iteration of this website and trying to write at least two pieces every week; when this particular one was finished it had an almost magical, fantastical quality to it that reminded me of stories I'd read as a child, or stories that my mother would tell me, or stories that we'd write together. But I didn't really think anything more of it at the time.
Maybe a year later, my friend Adelle, an English teacher in Vietnam, posted a few pictures of some bilingual kids' books she'd come across over there. They were probably retellings of traditional Vietnamese folk tales, but the translation-fouled stories told of simple, cute, animals duly enacting horrible violence to each other. It was life-changing for me.
I wanted to write stories like that. And I wanted my children to read them and realize what a hilariously terrible and weird and awesome world we live in.
I dug up “The Evening Day and Grey” again and took it to my friend Kristin, an artist I'd met when I saw her work and immediately wanted to write the stories behind the pictures. We came up with some ideas, she sketched them out, and I realized that another story idea I'd had, that for “Hunting My Dress,” was something she'd literally already been drawing for years. That was exciting, to say the least.
I wanted more. I remembered the big story collections I'd grown up with – beautiful pictures, fascinating stories, giant pages, good thick paper – and when I went to bookstores to look for them, I couldn't find any. So I decided I would make one.
It kept growing after that. Stories came from everywhere – my friend Natalie's photography (“Wooden Horse”) or stories I wrote to help my students (“Mr Banana's Strange Day”; “The Tiger and the Rabbit”) or Lovecraft (“Uncial's Nightmare”). I'd be inspired by an offhand verse in the Biblical book of Joshua (“The People of Naphoth Tsur”) or some music (Of Monsters and Men's first album gave birth to “The Mamo Fragments”) or a night of walking on the beach (“The Sea at Night”). Others came from the need to explain (i.e., lie about) the simple things of the world (“Neon Dragons,” “Tapioca Hunt”). “Erin and the Three Towers” was something where I just sat down with a few pictures in my mind and started writing until it was finished, and I was as surprised by the journey as Erin herself was.
Some of them were good. A lot of them weren't. They would be a few lines or a few dozen pages. I went – and still go – back and forth about which ones to include; how much I should edit; how simple or complex to make them; what kind of pictures they should have. They don't follow a plot, or characters, or even a general idea, but they all have the common theme of wonder, a bit of awe in the commonplace. They convey – I hope – Truth, of some sort, more than any particular lesson to be learned.
After several years of work, the project is now more than idea; it's an embryo: rough drafts of all the stories are here, laid out with room for pictures across nearly a hundred fifty pages. I'm very excited about it. Art is beginning to come together. It's a real thing that's going to happen.
Unfortunately, this isn't the kind of book that publishers pick up. I'm not a known or widely-published author; I've chosen my own artists; it would be a physically large book and a tremendous investment risk, given the current nature of the book market. But that's not going to stop me.
Unless something miraculous happens (i.e., a publisher calls me and says they want to fund, print and distribute this book), I'll be crowdfunding the book using Kickstarter or a similar platform when more of the artwork is ready and the estimates from printers are solidified. I'll distribute to my backers and to independent bookstores around the country. I'd also like to make it into an interactive ebook for use on iPads and tablets.
(At this juncture, I feel compelled to admit that, for some reason, autocorrect keeps trying to replace “book” with “bookrobots.” I'll also admit that this does not seem unreasonable to me.)
Stories to Tell to Children is a bit cumbersome for a title, and also probably a little boring for the target audience (which, in case you missed it, is children). So I've decided to name it (and will hereafter refer to it as) The Crown of Secrets, after the first story in the book.
This is a very exciting project for me, one that I've devoted a huge amount of time, effort, and caffeine toward. It's so much fun for me to work on, and it's thrilling to watch other people get interested in it, too. I'll be posting news, pictures, stories, and opportunities to help with the book right here.
I'm grateful you've taken the time to read about my adventure, and I hope you're excited about it. Feel free to talk to me if you have any comments or questions.
