Empowerment Interviews

As this month filled with gifts continues, I am delighted to present an interview with the very gifted Renée LaTulippe. Renée M. LaTulippe has co-authored nine early readers and a volume of poetry titled Lizard Lou: a collection of rhymes old and new (Moonbeam Children’s Book Award) for All About Learning Press, where she is also the editor, and has poems in several editions of The Poetry Friday Anthology series as well as upcoming anthologies. She developed and teaches the online course The Lyrical Language Lab: Punching Up Prose with Poetry and blogs on children’s poetry at NoWaterRiver.com. Renée holds theater and English education degrees from Marymount Manhattan College and New York University, and taught English and theater in NYC before moving to Italy, where she lives with her husband and twin boys. I know you’re going to enjoy this interview. I suspect you’ll be as impressed as I was when I read Renée’s answers, even though I’ve heard her interviewed before, and I’ve read her blog and seen her work. (And some day when I can find time, I will take her Lyrical Language Lab course!)   Renée, I want to thank you for being willing to do this interview. Thank you for inviting me!   Beth: Most of my readers know you from your involvement with the 12×12 picture book writing community. Could you give all of us a brief overview of your writing journey and what sort of writing you do? Renée: In a nutshell, I started writing poetry when I was seven and continued to do so through high school and college, where I was an English major with a concentration in creative writing (poetry). It was at this college that my passion was summarily crushed by a professor who sucked all the joy out of poetry for me, and – except for the occasional humorous verse – I didn’t write poetry again for more than twenty years. At the end of those couple of decades, I found myself as the editor for All About Learning Press, a company that develops spelling and reading curricula. In 2009, I was asked to work on a collection of poetry for children, and I loved it. In all my years of writing and teaching, I had never considered the world of children’s literature, so writing nearly fifty poems for that collection was a revelation and an epiphany. Why had I not been doing this twenty years ago? Since then, I have co-authored nine leveled readers that contain dozens of my prose and rhyming stories. I also have several poems published in current and forthcoming anthologies. Though I consider myself a poet first, I did join Julie Hedlund’s 12×12 in 2012 to explore the world of picture books, which I find even more challenging than the leveled readers. And despite being a poet, I prefer to write (and read) picture books in prose.   Beth: You also have a very popular (and wonderful) blog/website called No Water River, where you place a great emphasis on poetry. This delights me, as poetry has meant a great deal to me throughout my life. I wonder if you could tell us more about this focus, and why you see poetry as so important for readers in general and children in particular? Renée: When I first started reading poetry to my boys, one of them said, “Oh, they are like little stories.” And that pretty much sums it up. Whether the reader is a child or adult, good poetry sparks the imagination. It doesn’t lay everything out for you and tell you what to think or what to know; rather, it gives you enough language to create a concrete image in your head, and enough space for you to create your own world and meaning around it. A poem that speaks to you then becomes a part of you. There are educators out there who can give you a whole list of reasons that poetry is important for kids, and I agree with all of them. But for me, the fundamental things are imagination and personal connection. As an editor, I also firmly believe that poetry is essential for writers – and I mean all writers, not just poets. There is no other form that teaches craft like poetry does, including how to use word choice, imagery, storytelling, emotional weight, rhythm, rhyme, sound, and tight writing to make your prose musical and captivating. As for my blog, I decided to focus on children’s poetry because I believe it needs a much bigger presence on the children’s literature scene and in kids’ lives, and I want to be an advocate for that. And I made it a video blog because poetry is meant to be read aloud. I am thrilled that No Water River has found its way into classrooms and hope it keeps growing and blossoming.   Beth: Further to that, could you tell us about at least some of the wonderful features on your website? Renée: Since it’s a video blog, the most important feature is the NWR video library, which currently contains about one hundred videos of both major and emerging poets reading their own work, including Joyce Sidman, Jane Yolen, Janet Wong, Linda Sue Park, J. Patrick Lewis – and on and on. For the past year I have also been immersed in a huge project called “Spotlight on NCTE Poets.” The project is a series of interviews with renowned anthologist Lee Bennett Hopkins in which Lee shares his vast knowledge of and personal stories about each recipient of the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children from its inception in 1977. These posts consist of the video interview and lots of poetry by the featured award winner. And then I have resources like my Poetry Performance Tips, fun posts in the Classic Poems Series, and even Featured Illustrator posts in which I share one of my own poems based on art by an emerging illustrator.   Beth: My …

Interview with the Gifted Renee LaTulippe! Read More »

I have several examples of James McMullan’s art in my home, although none of it hangs on my walls. In my CD collection, you’ll find the New Broadway Cast Recording of the 1987 revival of Anything Goes — with Jim’s wonderful Lincoln Center poster as the cover art. On my bookshelves, you’ll find I’m Mighty, with illustrations by Jim and text by his wife (and my friend) Kate. You’ll also find Julie Andrews’ Collection of Poems, Songs and Lullabies, with beautiful watercolors by Jim. And of course, there’s his latest book, Leaving China, which I reviewed last week. Such a rich variety of artistic styles! Such a rich talent this man has! It is both an honor and a delight to feature Jim himself in an interview here on By Word of Beth today. Thank you so much, Jim — for agreeing to the interview so readily, and for providing such erudite and inspiring answers to my questions. Now — on to the interview! Beth: Jim, many of my readers will be familiar with your illustrations from the collaborative picture books you have done with Kate – I Stink, I’m Mighty, I’m Brave, etc. They are likely less familiar with the wide-ranging work you have done in other areas of art and illustration. By way of introduction, could you briefly tell us some of the many facets of your work as an artist? Jim: Since the 1960’s and into the late ‘90s I was illustrating for all the major magazines. Some readers of New York Magazine may remember a series of paintings I did of a disco club in Brooklyn that became the visual inspiration for the movie Saturday Night Fever. In 1986 I became the Principal Poster Artist for Lincoln Center Theater and have done 80 posters so far for that institution, including Anything Goes, Six Degrees of Separation, South Pacific and, currently, The King and I.   Beth: As you know, I have read (and re-read) your wonderful illustrated autobiographical account of your childhood, Leaving China. The entire book moved and inspired me. I could talk with you about it for hours (but will try to restrain myself)! One part that particularly stood out for me was when you wrote of yourself as a young boy “gradually finding his strength in art and a way to be in the world that was not his father’s or his mother’s idea of a man’s life.” Could you talk about how art did this – how it allowed you to find your own place in the world? Jim: Childhood for a boy is often a series of events that test physical prowess and aggression. As I failed many of these tests I began to realize that my motor skills were not in my large muscles but in my hands: I could make accurate, delicate marks with a pencil. I also began to realize that my power lay not in confrontation but in observing from the sidelines. Much later, when I began to draw from the figure, I realized how much I had stored in my memory of how the human body moves and what emotional information is carried in that movement. As a kid this ability to “copy the world” gave me an artist role to play among my cohorts. Later in life this drawing skill, (which somehow contained emotional perceptiveness) made it possible for me to succeed as an illustrator, particularly of literary or theatrical material.   Beth: This speaks to me so vividly of the way the arts empower us as individuals, as well as in society. The theme of my blog this year is “Empowerment through the arts and through words.” I believe this has proven itself true in your life. Could you enlarge on this thought focusing on how you have continued to be empowered by art throughout your life? Jim: I’ve made a living doing something I love so that’s a kind of empowerment, But there is something more subtly empowering about art in the way I experience it – when I am drawing from a model or when I break through my struggles with a painting to a confident flow I am more truly in the moment than at any other time in my life. Also, in a complicated way, struggling with art is a struggle for some kind of truth or authenticity and I think that is what the arts gives to the culture at large- questions about humanhood that wouldn’t be raised in any other way.   Beth: Beyond the story told in Leaving China, how did you get your start as a professional artist? Jim: An editor at E.P. Dutton, Cyril Nelson, gave me a book jacket to design, and then another and another. It was a lucky and fortuitous meeting with someone who was willing to take a chance on a kid just out of art school and give me a real vote of confidence in my talent.   Beth: The variety of styles and forums for your work is astonishing. What led you to delve into so many different areas? Jim: I approach my work looking for the emotional nugget or situation that I relate to in the story or the play and then respond with whatever style within my repertoire seems right. This means that my work isn’t strongly identified by one highly developed style. This is partly due to the element of risk that I need in my work to keep myself involved – often mistakes happen that I’m willing to live with if the overall effect has spontaneity. Different assignments strike me differently. I have no answer as to why I’ve done work in so many areas, perhaps too many.   Beth: How do you see the arts as potential for empowering others, both children and adults? I’m thinking both of the visual arts, which you are so deeply involved in, but also the performing arts, knowing you have a deep connection with theatres, particularly with …

In the Spotlight: James McMullan, Artist/Illustrator/Writer Extraordinaire (Interview) Read More »