10 Questions with Katie Scott
After years and years of writing picture book manuscripts and sending them off into the void, I opened my email one day in January of 2020 to find my first real glimmer of hope. It was an email from Katie Scott, a children’s book editor at Kids Can Press, saying that a manuscript I had submitted in 2017 had somehow recently found her, and that she would like to partner with me to develop it. I cried. I called my mom. I cried some more.
A few weeks later, I took the train to Toronto and met Katie for coffee. We sat down across from each other with our identical coffees and removed identical notebooks and pens from our bags. We spent a magical hour talking about her brilliant ideas for my story before going our separate ways into the snow.
A few months later the pandemic hit, so that first coffee date remains the only time Katie and I have actually met. Still, she has become such an important person in my life. I trust her vision and judgment deeply; a warm and insightful editor, she has undoubtedly made me a picture book writer. But we’ve also formed a habit of shooting each other Instagram messages whenever we come across things we thinking the other would like—books, podcasts, YouTube channels, cocktail ideas.
Writing involves so much rejection. I have mostly come to regard this philosophically, to believe that weathering the ocean of NO’s has the power to make you so much better and stronger. But Katie’s YES was something of a miracle for me. It gave me something grand to look forward to beyond this dark, strange time. It motivated me to keep working hard at my craft so that I will be ready to hit the ground running when regular life resumes. At the risk of sounding cheesy, she is basically my fairy godmother.
With one dose of vaccine down and one to go, I am hopeful the day is near when I can finally take the train back to Toronto to buy this woman a drink!
Kate: How are you? Other than, you know, everything, are you doing Ok?
Katie: I’m OK. So busy, but that’s nothing new. That’s just life. I’m hanging in there. What I have been saying to people lately is that I’m surviving, but not thriving.
Kate: That’s a fair assessment of life for a lot of people right now.
Katie: Totally.
Kate: Today is not so bad, because it is Friday, and it is not raining for once.
Katie: It’s so warm out! I went out for a coffee. I’ve had two coffees, which is very unusual for me, but today I am surviving on coffee and pastries.
Kate: Two coffees sounds very cute to me. I sort of refer to myself these days as a human shaped container of coffee. I have also already had four pieces of toast today because I don’t have the energy to cook myself anything else.
Katie: I’m totally right there with you on that. It’s Friday.
Kate: Ok, I know you are pressed for time, so let’s get down to business.
What was your path you becoming a children’s book editor like? Which came first, wanting to work on children’s books, or wanting to be an editor?
It was pretty traditional, which is actually rare. A lot of people start in publishing and make their way to editorial through various channels. But I was always in editorial, so I think in many ways I was really lucky, because it’s where I wanted to be.
My path to becoming a children’s book editor started with an internship at a children’s publisher in Montreal called Lobster Press. I interned for them between my third and forth years of university—I was there going to McGill. After that internship, I was lucky enough to get some freelance work for them because my editor was going on mat leave, and she was looking to freelance out a few projects. So I got my first editorial credits in that way. Then I went to Ryerson University and did my certificate in book publishing, and while I was there, I did a second editorial internship at Oxford University Press in their trade division, and that turned into my first fulltime job in book publishing. I worked there as an editorial coordinator for five years. But I always wanted to work in children’s publishing, that was always the idea. Then a job came up at Kids Can Press for an associate editor and it was absolutely my dream job, the job I had been waiting for. I felt so lucky to get it. That was seven and a half years ago, and I’ve been at KCP since then. In that time I have been promoted to editor.
Thinking about the second part of your question, wanting to work in children’s publishing specifically. I think that part came pretty early on, because all of my experience in high school and university had been working with kids, as a tutor or my best job was working as a wading pool attendant in university. I loved working with kids. So that part really fell into place really early on.
Kate: Did people think that you might be a teacher? Did people often say that to you?
Katie: Yes! I remember a woman I used to babysit for in high school worked for the Toronto District School Board, and she said, “Katie, do you want to be a teacher?” And I said, “I don’t think I do.” I used to say to people, “I don’t want to work with kids in the classroom everyday, but I want to work for kids.” I remember even back then knowing that I wanted to serve kids.
Kate: That’s amazing. It took me a lot longer to come to that understanding, to even realize that was a possibility. I came from a teaching family—my parents were teachers, many of aunts and uncles were teachers, and several of my older cousins. People assumed my whole life that I would want to be a teacher, but I always resisted that. Near the end of university, though, I admitted to myself that I really did like working with kids, and I didn’t really know that other opportunities existed within the world of education other than being a classroom teacher. So I did my B. Ed. at OISE and realized eventually that it wasn’t really for me. So it is amazing that that came to you so quickly.
2. Walk me through a typical workday for you. What do you hope your typical day might look like 5 years from now?
So, my typical day is obviously very different now that we have been working from home for over a year. There are some ways that it is different in really great ways. It is nice and quiet here where I live, so I am able to do really focused work in a way that can be really hard to do in an open concept office. That’s been really nice. But my days are also filled with more meetings than usual, and a little bit more email than usual, although it’s always a lot of email. Those meetings might be team meetings with the editorial team where we’re reviewing submissions, or there might be an editorial board meeting where I’m pitching a project and hoping to get it greenlit, or a meeting with a designer where we’re going through art notes and talking about revisions that we might ask the illustrator to make. I might also be meeting with authors to talk about contracted or uncontracted books and revisions. In between those meetings, I am trying find some time to work. So, the work is editing manuscripts, reviewing art—those are the big ones.
Kate: What time would you say that you generally end your day? Or do you ever end your day, now that you’re at home working?
Katie: I try to finish up at 5:00, but that’s not always the case. Work-life balance is really important to me, and it has been for a really long time. So, I do keep pretty strict guidelines for myself about what my workday looks like. That is certainly easier when we are in the office, but I’ve been trying to stick to that at home as well. But, it’s not always 5:00.
This week, I’ve been getting up early, like 6:30, making a coffee, and then doing editing in the morning. That’s a new thing for me, but the past few weeks have been so filled with meetings, and it has been really nice to have that quiet time in the morning to edit before the email starts. So, I think I might start making that a normal practice. We’ll see.
Kate: A lot of my friends have really embraced the idea of the 5 am writer’s club, inspired by that Karma Brown book that came out. In the winter I tried that, thinking maybe it was the answer to the question of how to get more work done with kids at home during Covid, but I couldn’t make it work. Either I was too tired, or I would get up and someone would hear me and then we would just all be up. But I have been finding that since it has been light out earlier, I am naturally waking up around 5 or 5:30, and some days I am able to sneak out of bed and get half an hour or an hour in before someone gets up. So I try to remember to set up the coffee maker the night before and cross my fingers that everyone stays asleep. When it works then I sit on the front porch or at my desk with my coffee and my computer and the birds.
Katie: Because I live in downtown Toronto, the nice thing about getting up early is that at that time the city still feels quiet. There’s just something about how quiet the whole environment around me is that just makes it feel like a good time to do a deep dive into a manuscript without, not just the distractions of email, but without environmental distractions.
Kate: When I edit, I very much need to read things out loud to myself, and I often wonder with editors working in an office how they do that.
Katie: It’s a good question!
Kate: I find that to be a challenging aspect of my current situation, where I am almost never alone in the house. I have to seek out little spots where I think my family won’t find me and can’t hear me. It’s usually the space between my bed and the wall.
Katie: I always do a read aloud at the final manuscript stage. When I’m in the office, I go to a meeting room, and I close the door, and I read it out loud a few times, just to make sure everything really sounds good. It’s especially important for children’s books, because they going to be read aloud. I do it at that stage and then usually once more at a later stage once the art is in place.
Kate: That’s such an important thing to remember—that picture books are intended to be read aloud. I was listening to a really interesting podcast interview with Taylor Norman, a kid’s book editor at Chronicle, and she was talking about how she thinks about picture book manuscripts as scripts that authors make for other people to enact. That has been such a helpful way insight for me. It made me realize that I read my own work in a certain way, with a certain cadence that emphasizes the ideas or the emotions that I have intended to communicate. In order for a text to really work, though, it’s got to be able to be read by anyone and still get those things across. So, I’ve been really pushing myself more and more to give my work to other people to read out loud, and it blows me away that it becomes a totally different thing, with a different rhythm or a different tone.
Katie: And that’s kind of the fun of it, too! Once the book is out there in the world, people are going to read it in their own way, bringing not only their own interpretations to it, but their own reading to it. I think that’s kind of cool.
Kate: It is! I have so many friends who have kids about the same age as mine, and when they were all babies we all had tons of Sandra Boynton books. A lot of them are very sing-song-y. We had this realization one day that we all had a different tune that we sung the same text to.
Katie: I love that!
Kate: We each had our version of Snuggle Puppy that we just assumed was more or less how everyone sang it. But we were wrong! My one friend’s was like a lullaby and mine was kind of jazzy. It made for a completely different reading experience. It meant that we reached for that book at different times of day; for her it was a bedtime book, but I read it at times we were being silly and dancing around. It makes you realize that even a text as simple as a board book isn’t static—it’s a blueprint for performance.
3. As an editor, how much are you trying to build a body of work that has a certain point of view or aesthetic? Is this something you think about? How do you balance your own aesthetic voice and preferences with a consideration of what is on brand for your publishing house, and the voices of authors and illustrators?
Katie: This was something that I didn’t think much about when I started at Kids Can as an associate editor. At that point, I was mostly working on books that had been acquired by our senior editors. As I started acquiring my own projects, though, and conceptualizing projects, it became clear to me that there were certain threads that were reflected in my editorial voice. So things like books about women throughout history, like Canadian Women Now and Then or Her Epic Adventure, or books that feature really strong female protagonists, like The Collectors. That was one theme that started to be apparent, but that wasn’t intentional. I think as an editor, you come to realize that the books you publish are in one way or another a reflection of who you are, because they reflect your own interests. I always think if there is something I think is interesting to me that other people are probably going to think it’s interesting, too.
The other theme that’s really apparent in my list is books about nature and the environment. Hawks Kettle Puffins Wheel, the Nature All Around series, The Boreal Forest— for me, those books are about showing kids that if we can foster a love and appreciation for nature and for our planet, then it gives us some hope we can take care of the planet, and that the planet is something worth taking care of.
4. One of the reasons I love books so much is that they are such beautiful objects. Picture book, especially, are basically portable art galleries (I think it was Julie Danielson of the blog Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast who said that). I love striking illustration, beautiful paper, and strong design. I love books that are so special that you want to keep them forever and display them in your home. I also fundamentally feel that people involved in making art should be compensated properly for their work, and that the process should be sustainable. So, great picture books are necessarily expensive to make.
At the same time, I worry about the accessibility of picture books. A single hardcover picture book is often over $20. That can be prohibitive for a lot of families. How do you strike a balance between creating gorgeous, high-quality literary objects with the need to get them into the hands of as many kids as possible? How do you create good value for your customers while also turning a profit?
I have always felt really lucky that at Kids Can there has been such an appreciation for making really beautiful books. We’re really lucky to work with really amazing in-house designers, and our art director Marie Bartholomew, who’s so talented. Everybody shares the belief that with our books—especially our non-fiction books— the research and the veracity needs to be there, but that it also needs to look good. I never feel like I have to compromise in that way, and I never have to fight for that, or convince people at the company that I work for that it’s important that the cover looks good. We’re all on the same page, and that’s nice.
I totally hear you in terms of accessibility, though. It’s interesting, when I first thought about this question, I thought that to me $20 seems like a pretty good deal for something that you might have for the rest of you life. It doesn’t seem like a lot. But then I started thinking about the fact that if you’re buying five books for your kid, that really starts to add up quickly. It’s not usually just one book. And so you’re totally right, that’s not accessible to all families. I really love that our books are available at the library and easily accessible in that way to many communities. A lot of our non-fiction is available to school libraries as well, so kids can find it for research they might be doing. So, there are ways that it’s not just about the price tag—there are other ways we can get those books into kids’ hands for sure.
Kate: If I’m remembering correctly, Kids Can also partnered with McDonald’s at one point to offer books as an alternative to the toy in a happy meal. I really loved that idea, partly because it gave books from your list a second life. Similarly, I have noticed as a parent that when my kids bring home the Scholastic fliers, that sometimes there are versions of bestselling hardcover books created for the school market at a really affordable price point. We have a paperback version of Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de le Pina and Christian Robinson like that. The paper isn’t great, and it is just bound with staples, but at the same time, the illustrations are just as beautiful as in the hardcopy, and it still lets kids experience this really important, well-told story. So having both versions out in the world is perhaps one way to find a compromise.
Another way to think about this question is maybe to think about the importance of creating books that people actually want to keep and pass on, that don’t feel disposable.
Katie: Yeah, exactly. When I think about picture books in that way, $20 doesn’t feel like a lot of money.
Kate: If they have a life beyond just one kid. And I think, too, that this becomes another reason to always aspire to write the kinds of stories that are well-told and have enough meat for kids to want to come back to again and again. It’s hard as a parent, when you go to the bookstore and you never know which are those books that your kids are going to read a hundred times, and then the price per read is going to be practically nothing, and which are going to be the ones that you think are amazing, but they are done with after one read.
Katie: I am so interested in that idea. What is it about a certain book or a certain story that kids just become obsessed with it? I still want to crack that code!
Kate: I think we all do! I think that there’s a version of that answer that is just about a book connecting with a theme or a subject that a kid is super into in that moment, and it matters less about the actually quality of the writing or the book. But sometimes it can’t be explained by this. Sometimes there are just certain creators that are able to capture something about the way kids’ brains work, the way they see things.
Katie: Or a certain joke, and the way the joke lands for them. Like, as an adult I understand how the joke works, why it is funny, but for them it is HILARIOUS! What you are saying is the struggle that you have as a parent in a bookstore, is the same struggle we have as publishers. If we knew how what was going to be a bestseller, not that we would only publish bestsellers, but, like, that would be great to know! But we don’t know, so all you can do is publish the things that you love, the things that you think have merit and think will resonate with people. But we never know what is going to take off.
5. In the last year, there has been a big move towards addressing the historic inequity and lack of representation within the world of children's publishing. This is not new, obviously, but the scale of the response has grown dramatically. This is amazing, but can also sometimes lead to moves that feel short-sighted or performative. Can you talk a little bit about what long-term, meaningful change needs to entail? What might a healthy, fully-inclusive Kid Lit world look like?
Maybe I’ll just start with a bit of context. The We Need Diverse Books movement started as a viral hashtag on twitter in 2014. I started at Kids Can in October of 2013, so this call for diverse books has really always been there for me as long as I have been working in children’s book publishing. It’s been really interesting to witness how it has not only sustained but grown.
A year later, #OwnVoices was popularized as a way to make sure that that representation in books was coming from people who had lived that experience, which was a really important piece. So, I think since then we certainly have seen a lot of growth in terms of books that feature BIPOC characters, but that are also written and illustrated by BIPOC creators.
I think the piece of the puzzle where we still have a lot of room to grow within the industry is having that representation in house—having BIPOC editors, editors with disabilities, as well as from the LGTBQ community, and from every community which has been underrepresented. We have a lot of room to grow there, not just at Kids Can, but within the industry in general. It’s not just about the characters on the page and the authors and illustrators making that content, but it’s also about the people behind the scenes within publishing house who are making the decisions about what we’re going to publish, and about what those books are going to look like.
Kate: And then I also wonder to what degree we still need reform at the educational level, for this movement to trickle down into programs that feed into these industries, both from the creative side and the publishing side, to make sure that diverse people trying to find their way into this world have an avenue to get there. When I look back at the educational opportunities I was given as a young writer, they were so powerful and meaningful for my development, but they certainly did not always take place within diverse spaces. I hope that’s not still the case, but I don’t know really know. I feel like it is so important to follow the chain down from the top of publishing to make sure that those educational and professional development opportunities are distributed equitably.
Katie: Absolutely.
Kate: What about in terms of the kids of stories that are being told. I remember listening to an lecture by Christian Robinson, where he talked about the need to move beyond the idea that the only stories we need to be publishing about BIPOC characters are historical biographies about people overcoming oppression. So, the idea that all kids need books of all kinds they can see themselves in. We need to move beyond “issues books,” to create better representation across all genres and subject matter.
Katie: I think that is an excellent point, and the thing I would add to it as well, is representation of people with disabilities. We need stories that are not about the disability, but about a person living an experience that is relatable to many different people, and they also happen to have a disability. And of course that should be on the page and factor into the story; it’s not to say that the disability shouldn’t be addressed, but it is not an issues book about the disability.
Kate: It is not the central conflict.
Katie: Right. And that it’s not the only thing that defines that character.
6. I am kind of obsessed with people’s workspaces. Can you tell me about yours? What can you not live without while you are working.
So my workspace at the office obviously looks much different. We’re an open concept office, so the really nice thing about that is that I can just kind of twirl around and ask other editors for their input. We’re always just kind of bouncing ideas off each other, and that’s something that I really, really miss. I miss having opportunities for collaboration that don’t feel as formal as sending someone an email.
My workspace now is a small little corner of my apartment. That’s nice because it does feel separate from the rest of my home. I have my books here, and I recently reorganized them so that my favourite books from childhood and my favourite contemporary picture books are right at eye level. I kind of glance over there everyday for a little bit of inspiration, always thinking, “Am I making something that’s going to be as good as that?”
Kate: Were those shelves there when you moved in, or did you add them?
Katie: No, I built them! My dad and I built them. Yeah, one fact about me is that I am pretty handy with a drill. Pretty much everything around this appartment that’s been done I did myself.
Kate: I LOVE that. I am very bold with my drill, perhaps more bold than skilled. I feel very proud that when I want something hung, I usually just jump in and hang it myself. But at the same time, things I put up do have a tendency to fall out of the wall eventually, even though I understand the principles of how to hang things properly.
Katie: Like, you know how to use an anchor.
Kate: I use really good anchors, the self-screwing ones that you don’t have to hammer!
Katie: I don’t know about those.
Kate: Oh, they’re the best. And yet, I still find ways to screw it up. And then I feel so badly, because I am letting down the cause. I want to be this amazing mom that my girls see picking up a power tool, but I think I still have some learning to do. Sigh.
But I love your shelves. I often zoom in on them in your social media posts in order to try and decipher the titles on them. And I always admire the beautiful Isabelle Arsenault print on the wall behind you.
Katie: Yeah, that’s a signed print from the website Sur Ton Mur. Do you know that website?
Kate: You have told me about it before, I think.
Katie: It’s really dangerous to know about! I have a second print by her in my living room over my reading chair.
Kate: I’m jealous. There are so many prints I want to buy. It’s sort of my kryptonite.
Katie: As far as the second part of the question goes, the thing I can not live without when I’m working are my pens. I have them all over the apartment. My favourite pens are the Micron .05.
Kate: Yeah, yeah! These? [pulls 5 of them out of a jar on desk].
Katie: Yes! Are those the .05?
Kate: There’s a .05, a .005, and a .01. I like to have variety for different purposes and occasions!
Katie: At Kids Can all of the editors are really obsessed with pens. I work much more in hardcopy when I’m at the office. Here at home, I don’t even have a printer and have been working completely digitally. But at the office, we’re all really obsessed with the Muji erasable pens, which you can’t get here in Canada. So when our colleagues travel to the to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, or to the Frankfurt Book Fair, they always bring back lots of them. They even sell refills for the erasable ink! So those are my very favourite.
7. When I tell people I write picture books, they often tell me that they have an idea for one they are absolutely going to write one day when they have time. While it is awesome that so many people want to tell stories to kids, I suspect many of them really have no idea how difficult the form is to master. It is such a tightly controlled structure, and yet you have to find ways to make it feel loose and easy. It is like how a great ballet dancer can make the dance feel organic, like something that just flows from them effortlessly. But it is not effortless. IT IS ACTUALLY SO HARD!
Katie: Right! Kind of like how a great storyteller can stand up and orally tell a story in a way that seems like unrehearsed, but really, when you think about it, those people are rehearsing those stories.
Kate: Exactly.
As I have stumbled around trying to figure out how to work competently in this form, one of the assumptions that I have always held is that I should be working towards removing as much as possible— driving the word count down, eliminating any narrative elements that do not actively push the story forwards. I am not great at this, but I try.
Then last week, I was reading a conversation between author-illustrator Philip Stead and Julie Danielson, who shared the following quote from Mac Barnett (buckle up—it’s a long one!):
Last month on the radio, I heard a winemaker talking about how his business had changed, starting in the 1980s. Before that, apparently, vintners took pride in the idiosyncrasies of their individual processes and the quirks of their regions. You could take a sip and know that the grapes were grown in this particular terroir, say, and there was such wide and pronounced variety that you could tell the differences between two wines grown 30 miles from each other.
But then that changed. Winemakers started aiming for received notions of the perfect Bordeaux or ideal Cabernet, and things started tasting the same. And this man on the radio was sad, because something had been lost.
Now, during the Reagan years, I was too young to even taste the holy swill in the Communion cup, but I see a similar trend in picture books—and on roughly the same timeline. The same plots get trotted out. Great ideas are shaved and sanded down until they look a lot like a lot of other things on the bookshelf. I like strange stories, shaggy stories, stories with knobby bits and gristle and surprises.
And that feels so true to me! So what am I supposed to do, Katie? Am I supposed to make my work as streamlined as possible? Or should I leave in some of the knobby bits?! I suspect that the answer involves constantly negotiating the space between the two extremes. Perhaps one must be super streamlined in most of the text order to carve enough space for the absolute best of the weird, wobbly stuff. Maybe you just have to accept that some people like to chew on gristle (so to speak) and some people only like fillet minion, and that's just the way it is? But I am curious about your take.
Katie: This makes me think about how, when we look at picture books from decades ago, they certainly were a lot longer. There were a lot more pages, and a lot more words on those pages— some might argue too many words. Stories weren’t as tight as maybe they could have been. That has evolved over the years. I see what Mac Barnett is getting at here, that it feels like the standard now is that every word on the page has to be essential. So I understand that it seems like what that means is that it is getting at an idea of minimalism, that your story has to be 20 words long, and every word has to really count. But I think what trips me up a little bit about the quote is that I don’t necessarily think that a story where ever word counts, every idea is essential to the story and to moving the story forward, can’t also be strange and shaggy. I don’t see how those things are exclusive from each other. But what do you think about this?
Kate: Well, as soon as I sent you this question, I came across a different interview with Mac Barnett with his friend Shawn Harris about their book Polar Bear in the Snow, which essentially works by capturing the interplay of light and shadow that is created when you layer white paper over more white paper. In that interview, he was talking about trying to really embrace minimalism, and to push it as far as they could. So maybe the answer is partly to remember that there can be different valid approaches, that no one book needs to do all the things; there can be the book that has 20 words, and there can be the book that feels longer and more layered.
But also the divide between about minimalism and maximalism in picture books is sort of an illusion. It comes down to being so controlled in your word count that you are able to carve out pockets to accommodate the very best bits of weirdness, and that even those parts have to work deceptively hard. Maybe they don’t push the plot forward, but instead reveal buckets about a character, or add texture. . .
Katie: Or help create a really concrete image in the readers mind, when it’s really important for the reader to envision what the writer is trying to communicate. I think as an editor I also have so many questions about things. If something appears random, I need to be able to ask the author, “what purpose does this serve,” and for the author to have an answer. And the answer can be anything as long as it is really justified in the author’s mind, and that there’s a reason and a rationale. So, I think as long as authors can stand behind things that might appear random, but actually there is a reason they included them, then I’m satisfied as an editor.
8. One thing I have noticed is that it seems to be common in Canada than in the US for authors to land their first book deal without an agent. We have a lot of stellar, really reputable houses that still accept unsolicited manuscripts. Do you find that many of the authors and illustrators that debut with you are unagented?
Katie: Absolutely! I think if I had to say off the top of my head, my instinct would be to say it about 50/50—not in terms of debut authors and illustrators necessarily, but overall. I would be curious to look at the numbers for a whole season and see how accurate that is, but it feels like a pretty equal mix between agented and unagented. And, yeah, we are one of the few publishers that still accepts unagented submissions. We have our slush pile, and when we’re in the office, we have slush meetings every month. A bunch of people—not just the editors—sit around a table for an hour and we read all the submissions. But that’s another things we haven’t been able to do during Covid, is access that mail.
Kate: Under normal, non-pandemic conditions, do a significant number of books on your list each year come from that unsolicited pile, or are the majority of the titles brought to you by agents or by creators you have previously worked with?
Katie: I wouldn’t say a significant number, but certainly I have published books out the slush pile. Sometimes the book that you find in the pile isn’t the one that ends up being contracted, but it will put you in touch with an author. Maybe the piece they have submitted isn’t a fit, but you can tell that there is something there, that they know how to write. And so, that can be the start of a relationship. That’s happened for me. But also some of our really wonderful picture books have come out of the slush pile, so it defiantly happens, but it’s not a big part of our list.
Kate: About how many manuscripts would you say are in that submissions pile every month?
Katie: Oh Gosh! I’m so bad at visually estimating quantities, but I want to say over 100.
Kate: And in a year, you would publish about how many of those? Like, 5?
Katie: It’s really hard to say, because I different people are acquiring different books from different places. I would say probably less than 5. So, it’s not many.
9. What books most spoke to you as a kid or teen? What contemporary kid lit authors or books should we all be reading?
Katie: As a kid— I feel like not a lot of editors talk about this— but I really loved Goosebumps. Like, obsessively.
Kate: I always think of it as a show, but now I am remembering that they were books first.
Katie: Oh, yeah! I loved them, and R.L. Stein, too. When I was a little bit older, I was into Fear Street and Christopher Pike. So, I loved, like, you know, things that made you feel a little bit scared, but in a cozy way.
Kate: That’s awesome. I was so not that kid.
Katie: I don’t have any of those books any more. I also really loved Nancy Drew, because one friends, who is still one my best friends to this day, was obsessed with Nancy Drew, and it sort of trickled out into our friend group.
One of my other favourite books is Missing May by Cynthia Rylant.
Kate: I don’t know that one.
Katie: Oh, my God Kate, you have to read this book! The opening paragraph is so beautiful! And it’s really short, only 88 pages. It’s middle grade, it won the Newberry in ‘93. This is the copy I had as a kid. I’m pretty sure I bought it at a Scholastic book fair. I loved it so much as a kid, and I still love it today.
Kate: It’s going on my list right now!
Katie: I was in French Immersion, and this was the book we were all obsessed with—Les Vampires Ne Portent Pas de Robe a Pois, which translates to Vampires Don’t Wear Polka dot Dresses, and it’s about a class of kids who are all very suspicious about their new teacher, and they are convinced she must be a vampire. I loved this book as a kid!
This is Blue Boy, which is a book my grandmother had. It’s not the actual copy, but I got my hands on it. It’s a middle grade novel about a little grey cat who gets trapped in the walls. I have always had grey cats, and I feel like this book explains why! And then, of course, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. I was so obsessed with this book that when I used to go to stay with my grandmother we would watch the movie and she would buy Turkish Delight. She had this closet that had two doors that opened into different rooms. There were these coats in plastic dry cleaning bags hanging at the back. I was convinced that that closet could take me to Narnia. So her home was this really magical place for me, and a lot of that was because of that book.
And then, Charlotte’s Web. I had the same teacher for grade 2 and grade 3, and they read it to us in French. I was so obsessed that my parents then bought me this copy in English, plus the animated movie. I still think it is the best opening line, certainly in all of children’s literature, and maybe in all of literature. “Where’s Papa going with that axe?” Like, I need to know more.
So those are my favourite books from childhood. They sit right here next to me at my desk.
Kate: It’s funny that you say that about Nancy Drew. I loved Nancy Drew, but I mostly read the pocket paper back ones from the 80’s and 90’s, not the originals with the yellow covers. I was also really into The Babysitters’ Club, and I remember that Claudia was obsessed with Nancy Drew and her parents wouldn’t let her read them because they thought they were trash. She was only allowed to read classics. I had such an extreme sense of outrage as a child that her snobby parents were not allowing her to express her own literary tastes. I also could not for the life of me understand why anyone wouldn’t think Nancy Drew counted as classic literature.
Katie: I think those later ones did get a bit more racy! I liked those ones, but I also had the old yellow original ones that are still at my mom and dad’s house.
Kate: We have all of Michael’s old Hardy Boys books with the blue covers. He and Zoe have been working through those together, and she has started to use a lot of period vocabulary from them very casually like ‘jalopy’ and ‘chum.’ It is quite hilarious.
Also, when I was in grade 5 I wrote a series of stories based on Nancy Drew, called The Julia Dagon’s Mysteries. We had to write a short story every month for school that year, and I decided mine needed to be part of a series, obviously. I used to spend hours making lists of possible titles.
Katie: So, did you always know you wanted to be a writer?
Kate: Yeah. From the time I was in grade 4 or 5. I used to go with my mom, who was a teacher, to help her set up her classroom every summer. I would sneak into the office and make dozens of copies of all my stories. This was before people were concerned with saving paper. I thought I needed them because when I became famous, people would be interested in my juvenilia. Obviously.
Katie: When it comes to contemporary authors, there are people who, when they put something new out, I have to read it! For me that’s Kyo Maclear, Kate DiCamillo-- I think she is writing the best middle grade fiction out there, along with Rebecca Stead. I’m obsessed with both of them.
Kate: So there is this awesome website called “Number Five Bus Presents,” created by Philip and Erin Stead, where they publish email conversations between children’s book authors and illustrators that take place over the course of months. It is brilliant! One of the conversations is between Kate DiCamillo and Rebecca Stead.
Katie: What?! That’s my dream interview. I absolutely need to read that!
I am also obsessed with Julie Flett. I think her work is really amazing.
And Sydney Smith! Small in the City is one of my favourite picture books, possibly of all time. That sounds like a grand statement for something that is so recent, but I saw Sydney talk at Toronto Public Library, I think about a year before the book came out. He read the book, and had it up on the screen, so we got a sneak peak of it. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but once I heard it, I started crying. I couldn’t deal with it. It was so embarrassing, because I was sitting with my colleagues, in a room full of people I work with, and I was like, “Katie! Keep it together!” And then, at the end of the presentation, he read it again. And I lost it again! Once was published, my colleague Olga brought it in and asked if I had read it. I told her that I couldn’t read it in the office, but then decided to do it anyways, and I started crying again! I don’t know why it moves me so much, but it just does.
Also, Susan Nielson. And Christian Robinson.
Kate: I also love Sydney Smith. And I may or may not watch Christian Robinson’s art videos, which are intended for kids, all by myself.
Katie: Oh, I watch all of his videos! Anytime I see one I am, like, “can we be best friends?”
Kate: I know!! He’s so calm and warm and grounded. I just want to go to his house and eat brunch and talk about art.
Katie: And then the last person who’s stuff I must see as soon as it comes out is Shaun Tan. Oh, and also Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen are up there, too!
I also made a list a few specific books to point out, those one’s that have really moved me. I think the best picture book I read last year was The Oldest Student by Rita Lorraine Hubbard and Oge Mora. It’s a picture book biography about Mary Walker, who learned how to read when she was 116 years old. It is incredible. I love it, and I think it is a stroke of genius to make a book about a woman learning to read, because it parallels the child’s own experience of learning to read. She also just lived such a fascinating life, and Oge Mora is such an incredible artist. It’s really the full package of a wonderful subject, wonderfully written, beautifully illustrated. It’s one of those books where I read it and have professional jealousy. It’s like, “Dang, I wish I had published that book!”
Then I have some middle grade and YA titles. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz. Incredible, incredible, incredible! Lark, by Anthony McGowen—it won the Carnegie Medal last year. I try to read the Carnegie winners every year, and often they are really dark. But this book—Kate! My palms were sweating. And that has never happened to me, ever. That book is a wild ride. And Ebb and Flow by Heather Smith, which was published by KCP. I love that book.
Kate: Me, too! Did you read her most recent one, Barry Squires: Full Tilt?
Katie: I haven’t yet!
Kate: It’s hilarious, like all of her books are, but even more than some of her other work it suddenly twists and punches you in the gut so hard. And I did not see it coming!
Katie: And then the last one I’ll shout out is a Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, which is another one that I made me sob uncontrollably. Everyone needs to go read that book! It is so beautifully written.
10. Ok, this is the last question, but it is a 3 part-er.
If you could throw a fantasy dinner party with any 10 people, who would you invite? (Note: They have to say ‘yes!’)
What would be on the menu?
How about the playlist?
So, my 10 best friends. I miss everyone so much! I have not seen a lot of my best friends during Covid. So, no celebrities! I am so not into celebrity culture. We would be eating pasta from Famiglia Baldassarre, which is a really incredible pasta shop here in Toronto. And the playlist would be Barcords by Bahamas.
