HK: Before we talk about the book, tell us a bit about the collaborations that resulted in both the Julia books, How to Catch a Bear Who Loves to Read and A Starlit Trip to the Library. How did you all come to work together to create the text and art?
Andrew Katz: Our collaboration came together through a series of fortunate events. Juliana and I met about six years ago, and our very first conversations revealed a mutual love of writing. At that point she was a published novelist, writing in French, and I had self-published a few picture books for my nieces and nephews for birthdays and holidays.
Within a few weeks, Juliana and I had started writing a children’s play together. Then, a few months later, inspiration for a picture book hit. I spotted a book lying around that I didn’t recognize, and I made an excited lunge toward it, as if it were a chocolate chip cookie. Juliana joked that to make a trap for me, the thing to put in it would not be food but a book. Immediately we sensed a potential plot twist for a story, and soon the tale of Julia, a young girl who yearns for an ursine pal, and Bertrand, a bear who loves to read, began to take shape. We wrote a draft that we had illustrated by a student at the college where I teach, and we self-published the book as a present for our nieces and nephews.
Skip forward to a book fair in Cuba; Juliana was there to present her novel and I was tagging along. One afternoon we crossed paths with a representative from Chouette publishing (the publishers of Caillou), who explained to us that Chouette had just created a new imprint, called CrackBoom! We told the rep about our Julia and Bertrand story, and she suggested that we send it in. We heard nothing for six months, assumed they were not interested, but then out of the blue got an email saying they wanted to publish our book! (It turns out they just hadn’t read the manuscript yet.)
They asked if we had anyone in mind for the illustrations, and Robin Budd, a multiple award-winning children’s animator, happened to be a family friend of mine. I contacted Robin to see if he knew anyone who might be interested in the job, and he put us in touch with an illustrator named Joseph Sherman, a Gemini Award-winning animator himself who had always wanted to illustrate a picture book. Luckily, Joe was excited to hop on board the project, and the rest, as they say, is history!
That, in a nutshell, is how the collaboration between the three of us got started.
HK: As a story-telling and book-reading child, Julia is open to the magic that comes with words. After all, she has animal friends, spends nights in a tent in the forest, takes a ride on a house boat, and more. How did you choose which elements to keep real–like Julia being afraid to go through the forest at night–and which would be fantasy, like the talking animals?
Andrew Katz: There is a rich tradition in English kid lit of children playing in a forest where their imaginations come alive. The forest by Julia’s house is that kind of place. It is a real forest, but it is also somewhere that the dreams of her big heart–such as getting a bear hug from a bear or boldly going to the library at night–can play themselves out.
Stories themselves work in a similar way: they explore both the real world and our inner world at the same time. You pointed out that Julia understands the magic that comes with words and stories, and we wanted to illustrate that idea by having a book within each book. In How to Catch a Bear Who Loves to Read, Julia is reading a book about a bear, and in A Starlit Trip to the Library, she gets a book about a girl and her animal friends who go on a river journey at night. In both cases, her reading and her adventures reflect each other, suggesting that Julia’s own story involves some overlap between reality and imagination.
In terms of how to decide what is real and what is fantasy, we try to make sure that the elements related to the flora and fauna of Julia’s forest are more or less realistic. We want these stories to elicit an interest in and love for nature and the natural sciences, so we aim to portray the plants and animals of Julia’s forest in a way that reflects their natural habits and characteristics. We portray Julia realistically as well, to show that she is an ordinary relatable kid; it takes her real effort to climb a tall tree, and she hesitates before venturing through the forest at night. At the same time, we also wanted to include elements that spring from Julia’s imagination: she is able to talk with the animals, and her friend Bertrand turns out to be a remarkable carpenter. (He has a treehouse in the first book and a house boat in the second.)
Ultimately, Julia is a child playing in the forest by her house, and as her authors we simply tried try to capture her play, as she experiences it.
HK: I think most readers and all writers know the importance of the books and libraries in our lives. But A Starlit Trip to the Library (as well as How to Catch a Bear Who Loves to Read) takes a slightly different take on both by having the characters, Julia and her animal friends, visit the boxes of donated books that the librarians put out behind the library. Why do this rather than have them visit the actual library inside?
Andrew Katz: In the first book in the series, there is a question as to where a bear who loves to read can get his paws on books. In the spirit of your question above, we wanted to keep some sense of realism, which meant he couldn’t get them from inside the library. (As Bertrand explains in the second book, “Some of us cannot acquire a library card.”) Fortunately, however, his local librarians, as you say, are kind enough to put out boxes of donated books by the back door. And so when all the people in the village are asleep, Bertrand makes his way behind the library and scavenges for fresh reading material. Even though he can’t enter the actual library, he gets to have the same experience as the rest of us of going to the library and browsing through all the books.
When Juliana and I were kids, we loved it when our librarians would introduce us to new books on the shelves. Julia and her friends are able to have this experience, too, thanks to a new character who appears in the sequel: Olga, the night librarian. Olga is an owl who spends all night organizing the boxes of donated books and alphabetizing the titles. As Bertrand says, “She is a librarian of vast experience,” and after Julia and her friends tell Olga the kind of bedtime story they would like to read, Olga finds just the right book for them.
In this way, the back of the library at night becomes an animal-friendly version of the library that kids experience inside during the day.
We also thought that kids might enjoy the idea of going to a place they normally visit during the day at an unusual time––i.e. at night. When Juliana and I were young readers, we would have been very excited by this prospect! In fact, there is a town not far from where we live whose library is perched on a riverbank, and we have some friends who live in that town who own a canoe, so we are contemplating a little paddle at sundown to visit the back of the library ourselves.
HK: The characters in A Starlit Trip to the Library were first introduced in How to Catch a Bear Who Loves to Read. When you could have chosen from countless species, you’ve selected a diverse group of creatures that differ in size, in temperaments, and more. Why did you choose a groundhog, a skunk, a squirrel and a bear?
Andrew Katz: For Julia’s three smaller animal friends, we were looking for animals that she would be likely to find in a Canadian forest. We also tried to think of animals that she could play games with, such as climbing trees with the squirrel and playing hide-and-seek with the groundhog. (Juliana’s taboo-breaking sensibility, common in French children’s literature, inspired the skunk character, with whom Julia has tooting contests.)
As for the bear, Julia is a character with a big heart who dreams big, and a bear matched the size of both her heart and her dreams. At first, she wants to meet a bear because she thinks a bear would give the best bear hug ever. But after she encounters Bertrand, she also discovers that they share a mutual love of reading. (Juliana also has an unconditional love of bears, so she was eager for us to include a bear in the story.)
It was a challenge to give so many different animals their own unique personalities and voices. But who they were and how they spoke gradually revealed itself as we wrote the story. The squirrel is very excitable, like a small child. The groundhog has a grandmotherly disposition. And the skunk is full of curiosity. Bertrand is gentlemanly and gracious, and his manner of speaking is that of a self-educated bear; he loves words, including some big words, but he uses them in his own idiosyncratic way.
HK: A Starlit Trip to the Library may be about stories and the places they can take us but the book also gives us more than a story. For example, you share information about animal constellations, providing teachable STEM content in the book. Are you a fan of astronomy and the stars of the night skies?
Andrew Katz: The night skies in the book help establish the mood of awe, exploration and discovery that accompanies Julia and her friends on their quest for a bedtime story. Their entire journey to the library at night is also meant to be a metaphor for the experience of reading itself; at its best, a book take us on a journey, carrying us into the unknown. As Emily Dickinson once wrote, “There is no Frigate like a Book / to take us Lands away”–a quote we often kept in mind while writing this story.
One of the ways we navigate the unknown is by locating the familiar in it–for example, finding familiar shapes, including the shapes of animals, among the stars. Since Julia is a little obsessed with animals in general and with bears in particular, we thought it would be fun for her to identify the animal constellations on her way to the library. We wanted to use real constellations that Julia, along with young readers, would see in Canada during the summer, such as the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, conveniently also known as Ursa Major and Ursa Minor–aka the big bear and the little bear. She also learns about the swan-shaped constellation (Cygnus) and about the North Star (Polaris), which always shines brightly in the same place, right at the tip of the little bear’s tail–a fact that comes in handy for Julia when she has to bravely take the helm of the raft and keep it on course.
HK: Your story is appended with the lyrics to "Julia's Song", a song you wrote, based on a line from Emily Dickinson’s poem "There is No Frigate Like a Book." There is also a QR code to link to a video on Bibliovideo of Taes Leavitt’s performance of it. What came first: the song or the story?
Andrew Katz: The story came first, but the idea of a song to accompany the story goes back to How to Catch a Bear who Loves to Read. I had thought about writing a song for that first book, but the whole publication process moved along fairly quickly, and it was also our first book, so in the end I let the idea go. But once we began to write the sequel, I didn’t want to miss the chance to write a song for it. Julia sailing to the library under the stars seemed like a situation that would move her to sing. And I knew it would take me many, many months of playing around at the piano to find a melody, so I started to work on the song right away. Our publisher was very supportive of the idea, and Juliana also agreed to translate the lyrics into French so we could have the song in both languages.
HK: The song is incredibly catchy and I found myself humming it
after listening to it just once. I will be posting the link to the audio
performance of the song to encourage young readers and their teachers
and parents to get to know Bibliovideo and to learn the song. (https://youtu.be/0c7rrwsMgJw) Still I
think it could be something big. Taes Leavitt has a beautiful voice and
especially for children’s songs as it’s melodic and she enunciates
well. How did a collaboration with Taes Leavitt arise?
Andrew Katz: Kids may know Taes Leavitt as Boots from the Canadian children’s music duo SPLASH’N BOOTS. (They won their second JUNO Award just this past year.) I am fortunate to know Taes as my sister-in-law. My brother, Peter Katz, is a musician, and Taes is his partner. Taes kindly agreed to perform the vocals for the song, and Peter arranged and played the piano to accompany the melody. He also did all the editing and a good deal of the mixing of the song. There were other collaborators around the song as well: a friend of Juliana’s, Marion Boudreault, sang the French version of the song, and Cassandra Huynh at our publisher created the song videos in both English and French that appear on the Bibliovideo site. Trish Osuch and everyone else at Bibliovideo were also super kind and helpful.
On August 26 the song will be released on steaming platforms, so that people can listen to it on Spotify, iTunes, etc. as well. I am also currently working on a video compilation for the song–i.e. singers each performing short sections, with all the sections then spliced together–which will appear sometime after the book’s release. Some of the musical guests for the compilation will include Taes Leavitt, Jack Grunsky and an all-girl choir in Tofino.
I like the idea that the song gives Julia another way to express herself; the books are in the 3rd person, but through the song she can speak in the 1st person too. It’s also nice to imagine kids turning the last page of the story and then having the song to help them drift off to sleep.
HK: Have you ever considered amalgamating your Julia stories into a children’s musical or an animated film with music? In fact, do you see there being more Julia stories?
Andrew Katz: Actually, we have imagined a musical! We are currently working on a third Julia story that takes place in winter, and the changing settings and seasons between the stories, each with an adventure that revolves around a book, seem like they could be woven together to make a play. Of course, at this point that feels like a far off dream–I don’t even know how we would begin to make a children’s musical or an animated film happen–but writing a book once seemed like a far off dream, too, so who knows! Maybe How to Catch A Bear Who Loves to Read: The Musical will find its way to a stage someday. We’ll just have to work on a few more songs, first!
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It was my pleasure to speak with all the collaborators of A Starlit Trip to the Library via co-author Andrew Katz and to learn more about their storytelling process and integration of multimedia.
Thank you to all of them for sharing with readers of
CanLit for LittleCanadians.
