Siena & Mark Siegel, TO DANCE
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:12]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Please sign up for my newsletter at ziviowens.com
[0:17]for updates on podcast guests and lots of live events.
[0:21]This week's episode has been sponsored by a singer too,
[0:23]which is a podcast hosted by Claire Maiser and Aragast Rulow.
[0:26]He might know as the co-founders of the website of a kind.
[0:29]RIP or the co-authors of the book Workwife, which I've had on my podcast.
[0:34]They're all about discovery and enthusiasm.
[0:37]This podcast has been described as a unique mix of urgent discussions of non-urgent things
[0:42]and thoughtful discussions of important and otherwise ignored things.
[0:46]I'm very much on board with that take.
[0:48]Claire and Aragast send out a weekly companion newsletter with a die-hard following.
[0:52]You can sign up to receive it at Claire and Aragast.com.
[0:55]So thanks so much to Claire and Aragast.
[0:56]And they're a fantastic podcast, a thing or two,
[0:59]which you should definitely check out.
[1:01]I'm here today with Mark and Sienna Siegel.
[1:03]Mark Siegel is an author and illustrator of many award-winning books.
[1:06]He's the founder and creative slash editorial director of First Second Books,
[1:10]a McMillan imprint that publishes graphic novels.
[1:13]He illustrated to dance written by Sienna Chershan Siegel.
[1:16]His wife.
[1:17]He illustrated Oscar and the eight blessings, which won the 2015 Jewish Book Award
[1:22]and How to Read a Story.
[1:23]In 2017, he launched the Five Worlds graphic novel series,
[1:26]a five-volume fiction series he co-writes with his brother Alexis Siegel.
[1:30]The first in the series was a near public library top 10 book for kids in 2017.
[1:34]Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Mark was raised in France.
[1:37]He graduated Brown University.
[1:38]He currently lives in New York.
[1:40]Sienna Chershan Siegel is an author and former dancer from Puerto Rico,
[1:44]who trained at the School of American Ballet and later worked in the education department
[1:48]at the American Ballet Theater, directing their training programs for young dancers.
[1:52]To dance is her story, which won a cyber honor and many other awards.
[1:56]Also, a graduate of Brown University, she currently lives in New York and is married to Mark.
[2:00]So welcome, Mark and Sienna.
[2:01]Thanks so much for coming on mom's and have time to read books.
[2:04]Thank you for having us.
[2:05]Yeah.
[2:05]Especially on this rainy, disgusting day.
[2:08]It sure is.
[2:09]It's like London, London, Winter, over here in New York today.
[2:12]Yeah.
[2:12]But even more cozy, right?
[2:14]Now we have like, you know, nice to be inside of this.
[2:16]It's pretty hot too.
[2:19]There's so much to talk about with graphic novels and both of your incredible life experiences.
[2:24]But let's start with to dance, your illustrated graphic novel that you worked on together,
[2:28]a ballerina's graphic novel.
[2:29]How did you decide to collaborate on this?
[2:32]Why did you make it a graphic novel?
[2:34]What is it about?
[2:35]Go ahead.
[2:35]I'll just sit back in.
[2:37]Well, to dance is a memoir.
[2:38]And it's about a 10 year period of my life growing up as a young ballet lover
[2:44]who started taking ballet and then fell in love with ballet and wanted to just continue doing it
[2:50]as much as possible and coming to New York to train at the School of American Ballet
[2:57]and doing that at a very interesting and unusual time in the history of ballet where George
[3:04]Balanchine was still alive.
[3:05]He was still running the company that the school is associated with the New York City Ballet.
[3:11]And people were, you know, coming to New York from Soviet Union and defecting.
[3:16]And there was all these amazing dancers just arriving there at that particular moment in time.
[3:22]And I was this little girl, you know, just kind of swept up into it all and getting to dance
[3:28]with some of them in the same performances as a child that you came from Puerto Rico.
[3:34]Yes.
[3:34]And how old were you when you?
[3:36]I came here when I was 11 and started into seventh grade.
[3:40]I arrived right before seventh grade.
[3:42]So it was a huge change, of course, when we were coming from Puerto Rico.
[3:47]But I had, it's not like it was the first time I had come to New York.
[3:50]I had been here before for like a summer program at ABT the year before and just, you know,
[3:57]trips.
[3:58]But so it's about that and about just being a girl who loves ballet and my experience with that.
[4:05]And then also it goes into the fact that I did not end up becoming a professional dancer.
[4:13]So it was, you know, a little bit of a different story than I thought was out there at the time.
[4:19]And tell me a little more about your injury that halted your career.
[4:23]Well, it was a torn ligament in my ankle.
[4:27]And it was, it wouldn't have halted my career at another time, I think.
[4:32]It's not the kind of thing that you can never recover from a dance again from.
[4:36]But at the time it happened was, was not a good time because it was the time when I really needed
[4:43]to just strengthen up so much that they could see, okay, you're going to get in the company,
[4:49]you're not going to get in the company, you're going to get a job, you're not going to.
[4:51]And so it was just a very bad time for it to happen.
[4:54]And it never really strengthened up back to where it had been before.
[4:59]And you kept dancing instead of really getting a chance to get to the beginning.
[5:02]So it was really down here.
[5:04]And it just, yeah.
[5:05]So the effect of that torn ligament lasted for months and months because I waited a long time
[5:12]before I finally get the cast stopped dancing.
[5:14]So it was, it was really a year, it was kind of like a year long process of realizing that
[5:20]it was going to have a really bad effect on my dancing life.
[5:25]And when you were growing up, you turned to all these great books about dance.
[5:29]And I was particularly interested and excited to see Jill Cremens is about
[5:33]a very young dancer because I loved that book, that whole series of books, very young,
[5:38]everything, very young skater, very young chef or cook or whatever.
[5:42]And I, my mom saved those books and now my daughter reads those books all the time.
[5:47]So then I saw in the graphic novel a picture of that book.
[5:50]So that was fantastic because I, you know, you never know who else is reading what you love
[5:54]as a kid.
[5:54]I know.
[5:55]I absolutely loved that book.
[5:56]I did read all the other books too.
[5:58]And I went to the School of American Mallet with a very young skater.
[6:01]The girl was a very young skater.
[6:03]She was in one of the school at the time.
[6:06]But I just, I read it and read it and read it.
[6:09]And I would study every detail.
[6:11]I loved all the details of the photos and just was, you know, I loved the fact that there
[6:17]was this girl who loved the same thing as I did.
[6:20]And, you know, we had so much in common even though we had so little in common.
[6:24]And, you know, me living in Puerto Rico at the time.
[6:27]And, but I just really wanted to do what she was doing.
[6:32]that was so clear to me.
[6:34]I wanted to go to New York.
[6:36]I wanted to go to that school.
[6:38]And, you know, she made it happen.
[6:40]That's incredible.
[6:41]Yeah, it's really incredible.
[6:42]It was, I mean, and I mean, that's just this one moment in the book that is, you know,
[6:47]so, so amazing was that when I arrived at the school,
[6:51]my first class at the school was the level that she was in when the book was made.
[6:56]My word, the savior and color.
[6:57]And that was just like, oh, this is a very young dancer.
[7:01]And within a couple of months of arriving,
[7:04]I was, I started, you know, getting to be in, in the nutcracker and the performances
[7:10]that the children can be in at New York City, Ballet.
[7:14]You know, rehearsals and it was so exciting.
[7:17]Just, it was a dream.
[7:18]You could drop some names.
[7:20]Well, oh, yeah.
[7:21]I mean, that's that.
[7:21]On your, it's a performance is Lincoln Center.
[7:24]Okay. Well, that same year was the year when
[7:26]Baruchnikov, Michel Baruchnikov decided he wanted to leave American Ballet Theatre,
[7:31]work with Balanchine and come over to New York City Ballet.
[7:34]So he was there and, and they revived Harlequinod for him to play Harlequin.
[7:40]And I got to be in that.
[7:41]And so I was, you know, I was backstage with, I was super embarrassed.
[7:45]Baruchnikov and Patricia McBride.
[7:47]And you know, just all these amazing dancers and getting to be, you know, in the same
[7:54]jail with him, not at the same time.
[7:56]But I still think it was such a weird, I don't know if you used to watch Sex in the City
[8:00]that they cast Britishnikov.
[8:02]Yeah, yeah.
[8:02]Much later.
[8:03]Very, very, very, very, very.
[8:04]He readjust 11 to say that.
[8:05]Yes, I did see it for this.
[8:06]Right.
[8:07]So, right back to the lot.
[8:08]He, yeah, he ended up going into act, uh, quite a bit of acting.
[8:11]But that's the time, you know, he actually was acting at the time too.
[8:15]And a few, you know, ballet do like white nights or something.
[8:18]He did white nights and he did the turning point around that time.
[8:21]Like they were making movies at Ballet at the time.
[8:24]You know, that's how kind of ballet was like kind of a bigger part of, you know,
[8:28]mainstream culture that it is now, I think.
[8:30]And the people that stars, you mentioned like Suzanne Ferrell, all those people,
[8:33]like I still remember their names, but I could only maybe tell you one name of a dancer today.
[8:39]No, they like the exact same thing.
[8:40]Miss Choco, yeah, I know, thanks to my daughter on PBS live all the time, you know, performances
[8:47]of the Met, the A-B-T in Arizona, LA, and making movies about it.
[8:51]Yeah.
[8:52]Yeah.
[8:53]Yeah.
[8:54]Yeah.
[8:55]So this whole period of your life, you've condensed essentially and turned into a graphic
[8:59]novel.
[9:00]Yes.
[9:01]Mark, you have this whole graphic novel background you started for a second, which produces
[9:05]like a bazillion graphic novels, all different types, all different ages with all these
[9:09]different collaborators.
[9:10]And you've written and illustrated so many books yourself.
[9:13]You could have done anything with Sienna's story and you're married.
[9:17]So you had like an extra pressure to only get good.
[9:21]Why in this book?
[9:22]I had been hearing, you know, what was interesting to me is, I mean, it's a bit like
[9:26]we both had, we had these two languages, you know, Sienna had the language of ballet.
[9:31]And I had the language of comics and what was interesting was that, you know, she wasn't
[9:36]especially warm to comics to begin with and I wasn't especially warm to ballet.
[9:40]So we had to kind of learn each other's language, you know, and she would, I mean, before
[9:45]we started into the project, you know, it came about because I was very interested in
[9:51]the fact that she was, she would look at life as a dancer and I feel like the way she
[9:59]would talk about.
[10:00]What a football game.
[10:02]She was actually talking about dance.
[10:03]The way I think the way Sienna writes is a kind of dance.
[10:07]And that to me was very interesting.
[10:09]And then a graphic novel is more verbal,
[10:13]but it's also visual.
[10:15]There's a different use of time, you know?
[10:17]So, and it's very hard.
[10:19]I find it very hard looking at ballet books generally,
[10:22]like especially picture books,
[10:23]they tend to be very wooden.
[10:25]They're drawn after photos and it shows.
[10:28]And it doesn't have any of the sense of time,
[10:32]the sense of movement.
[10:34]And so I had to learn, Sienna took me to some shows
[10:38]and to see some ballets.
[10:39]Actually, I had to learn how to read a ballet.
[10:42]And she had to learn how to read a comic.
[10:44]And for her, it was more instant.
[10:47]I think it was like Persepolis.
[10:48]There was a couple of graphic novels that you read
[10:51]that were like your entry points.
[10:53]And for me, it took a little while of,
[10:56]I think what it was was that at first,
[10:57]I would go to a ballet and I was looking for plot.
[11:02]So I'm looking like it's a movie or a play.
[11:05]And if you do that, it's horrible.
[11:07]You know, mostly they're really bad plots.
[11:09]You know, except maybe Jazelle and a couple of those.
[11:11]Balanchine doesn't do,
[11:13]if it doesn't do plots.
[11:14]It doesn't do plots.
[11:15]No, no.
[11:15]Mostly except the knock-off or they're not plots.
[11:17]So it took this shift to actually get into,
[11:20]like, reading with my feeling life.
[11:24]And that was a big shift for me.
[11:26]It was a deep moment.
[11:27]It happened with Symphony and C.
[11:29]And it was a video of Suzanne Farrell and Symphony and C.
[11:34]And it was like, I got it.
[11:35]I was like, oh, you know, it moved me.
[11:38]And I was like, okay, that's what gets a person hooked
[11:40]on this stuff.
[11:42]And then I could kind of enter into Sienna's language.
[11:46]You know, and then we brought the two together.
[11:48]So we were doing things.
[11:50]What I found was a really interesting challenge
[11:54]for myself creatively was that, you know,
[11:56]we had some events.
[11:57]We had like 10 years of Sienna's life to work with.
[12:01]And I interviewed her.
[12:02]We were on long walks up in Westchester
[12:04]in the Rockefeller farms with a little recorder, you know,
[12:07]and like hours and hours of interviewing
[12:10]was how we started.
[12:12]And she told her stories, told these moments.
[12:15]And but when we distilled it down,
[12:18]like our core intention with the project
[12:20]was to try and capture, there was four distinct feelings.
[12:25]And that to me was a really interesting challenge.
[12:28]It's not a concept.
[12:29]It's not an idea.
[12:30]It's not like a sequence from a plot, you know,
[12:34]or a mystery or something.
[12:35]It's like, how do you get a reader into feeling things,
[12:41]like four things in a deep meaningful way?
[12:44]You know, and I feel like it's funny
[12:46]because we first, this for book first published
[12:49]about 12 years ago from Simon & Schuster.
[12:53]And at the time it was right before the explosion
[12:56]of the graphic novel.
[12:58]It was just two years before.
[13:00]It really went bananas in America specifically
[13:04]and turned into the fastest growing category
[13:07]and publishing now.
[13:08]But at the time it was just ahead of that.
[13:10]And so we had a limited amount of pages to work with.
[13:14]You know, we were told like 64 is already crazy
[13:17]for our picture book.
[13:18]You know, and we wanted 120 and they were like,
[13:20]what are you thinking?
[13:21]And, but then so we put it out.
[13:23]And then I had other projects over the years
[13:26]and we got this chance basically
[13:29]to do an updated special edition,
[13:31]which is what's coming out right now.
[13:34]And that's a pretty rare thing for any authors,
[13:37]you know, to have like 12 years later
[13:38]you get to rework some of the artwork,
[13:41]add some of the interstitial things that we had to cut.
[13:44]The text didn't change at all.
[13:46]The text didn't change.
[13:47]Yeah, yeah.
[13:48]But we, you know, so we,
[13:49]and we added to see and added a whole scrapbook
[13:51]of memorabilia.
[13:52]Which I love.
[13:53]That was so great.
[13:54]That was so fun to do.
[13:56]I just thought, you know,
[13:57]I happened to have kept scrapbooks.
[14:00]My mother was a big like,
[14:02]don't get rid of anything.
[14:03]One day you're gonna need some of this.
[14:05]You see, she always thought I might write a book
[14:07]about the experience and she's the one
[14:08]that saved everything and kept it all and said,
[14:10]you know.
[14:11]And the kids and the playbill.
[14:12]And I thought, wouldn't it be so fun for people
[14:14]reading it to see a photo,
[14:16]a real photo of a moment that's in the book
[14:19]and be able to connect the two together
[14:21]and be like, oh, that was that time.
[14:23]There she is doing, you know,
[14:24]there's Hannah and Harlequin out of costume.
[14:27]So that was really fun to put together.
[14:29]I mean, this is basically what's coming out now
[14:32]is the book that we really wanted to put out.
[14:35]Mm-hmm.
[14:36]In the beginning.
[14:37]It's so good.
[14:37]It's so weird.
[14:38]Yeah, yeah.
[14:39]But I felt like, so getting to that,
[14:41]you know, the, the meshing of these two things,
[14:43]like the graphic novel allows you to play with time
[14:46]in a different way.
[14:48]And to get into, you know,
[14:49]you can switch out of the verbal into the nonverbal.
[14:53]And they are two different kinds of literacy.
[14:56]And then there's like the mix of the two, you know,
[14:58]like, and one of my favorite moments from the story
[15:01]is the football scene, you know,
[15:03]and we used to joke with our editor at the time
[15:06]that it would be the only ballet book
[15:07]with the football scene.
[15:09]But it's like,
[15:10]Sienna, I mean, this is how, to me Sienna's mind works,
[15:12]you know, it's like she, we're sitting there looking
[15:14]at Miami Dolphins.
[15:16]And when you read the running captions,
[15:19]you know, she's talking about dance through football,
[15:23]you know, and I love that.
[15:24]Few people would consider this year as Miami Dolphins
[15:27]to be skilled in anything.
[15:28]No, dance or other ways.
[15:30]You know, this is, you know, where we're actually in.
[15:33]This is like, Dan Marino, right?
[15:35]Not even before.
[15:36]The Golden Age.
[15:37]It's been heavy tough.
[15:38]It's been heavy tough.
[15:39]But Mark, graphic novels to you.
[15:41]So you kind of were ahead of the eight bulbs, whole trend.
[15:45]When did you start your company around it?
[15:47]And how did you originally get interested?
[15:50]And you said you've always been interested in comics.
[15:52]And you grew up in France part of the time
[15:53]the other interesting background.
[15:55]How did this all happen for you?
[15:56]So my dad's American, my mom's French.
[15:59]I grew up in France, pretty much my entire childhood.
[16:03]And what's interesting with comics is that they followed
[16:05]a very different path in specifically in France,
[16:09]but also in Japan.
[16:11]And in both places in the 60s and 70s,
[16:15]they basically became part of the mainstream reading diet.
[16:19]So if you're a reader and you wanted to have a well-rounded knowledge,
[16:26]that would include some graphic novels.
[16:28]You know, and there were some shows like book TV shows
[16:31]that were very, very popular in France.
[16:33]And there'd be, you know, they'd have like some American authors.
[16:36]There'd be like the Norman mailers and these people.
[16:38]but then there'd be like regularly a cartoonist in the mix,
[16:42]in the literary conversation.
[16:45]And that, you know, I missed when I came here for college.
[16:49]And then, you know, so that wasn't really readily available.
[16:54]There were some indie comics publishers
[16:56]that were very much under the radar of big publishing in America.
[17:01]And then what happened was like 2004,
[17:04]let's see, we moved to New York in 2000.
[17:06]So 2004 was the peak of the Japanese invasion.
[17:11]So the manga, at the time there was borders books,
[17:14]you know, pretty much every week you would go to borders.
[17:17]There'd be a new bay, you know, added to just have like this flood of manga.
[17:22]A lot of people were kind of freaking out about it.
[17:24]They were like, it reads like right to left.
[17:27]And it's like, I can't, I don't get it.
[17:30]But a lot of young readers couldn't get enough of these.
[17:33]And what happened was two very, very good things came of that moment
[17:38]in American publishing.
[17:40]First of all, this flood was noticed by the big publishers
[17:44]because millions of dollars were changing hands
[17:47]and they were not getting a piece of that pie at all.
[17:49]So they were like, what do we do around 2004?
[17:52]Every week in publishers weekly, there was some new statistic
[17:55]of insane numbers, you know, for manga specifically.
[18:00]The other thing manga did is that it almost overnight in America,
[18:05]it flipped the readership from about 85% of comics readers were stuck.
[18:11]We're talking 85% male, like aging male readers
[18:16]to within a space of a year or two, about 65% female and young.
[18:23]And a lot of those young readers would later become some of the star authors
[18:28]that I publish now.
[18:29]You know, when you look at people like Faith Aaron Hicks or Gen Wang
[18:32]or Vera Brosgull, they didn't grow up reading like Wolverine.
[18:36]They were, they were reading manga, they were reading Sailor Moon.
[18:39]They were, you know, they, it's like different.
[18:41]They came a different way.
[18:43]So the fact of that change was huge.
[18:46]And then right around that time, I had just gotten into publishing.
[18:51]And I was trying to get a break in picture books.
[18:53]And everything happened all at once.
[18:55]You know, I got my first picture book with see dogs.
[18:57]And I did that into this comic style.
[18:59]And it was noticed.
[19:00]And it won the Texas blue bonnet.
[19:02]And so it did well at the time it popped.
[19:04]I started editing, I translated some French graphic novels
[19:08]that made it onto the New York Times bestseller list.
[19:11]And, and then I was meeting some people way above my pay grade in publishing
[19:16]because of that.
[19:17]And because at the time, the manga explosion was causing this publishers to go,
[19:23]okay, what do we do?
[19:24]How do we do this?
[19:25]Do we do fake manga?
[19:27]Do we just repurpose manga?
[19:29]Do we do superheroes?
[19:30]Do we, you know, and they were wondering.
[19:33]And John Sargent was the head of McMillan.
[19:36]I met with him with my, this crazy vision for a literary graphic novel imprint.
[19:41]It would be a house that would be author driven rather than like merch and movie driven.
[19:47]And it would really be about cultivating authors, you know, and, and upping the bar on the whole
[19:53]and right at the same time.
[19:54]So Sargent's, you know, we had an amazing conversation and he was like, go for it.
[19:58]So cool.
[19:59]And McMillan.
[20:00]that backed me, you know, and then what happened was things changed. I mean, some of the stuff
[20:05]I thought would take us 10 years to accomplish happened in the first year, like getting the
[20:10]literaries in 2006 was when when when we we were in stores in 2006. We started, you know,
[20:18]we were winding up for about a year. And then we hit the stores in 2006 and then that fall,
[20:24]Gene Yang American born Chinese happens. It's the first graphic novel ever nominated for
[20:30]a national book award. And then come I think January at ALA, it was the first comic ever to win
[20:37]the prince. And that's the big team librarians award. It was it changed. I mean, that was history
[20:43]making for American publishing for American comics. And his trajectory goes, you know, stellar after
[20:51]that. I mean, he's now writing the Chinese Superman for DC, but he his own books. He got another
[20:56]national book award nomination. And he was made the ambassador to children's literature for two years.
[21:04]He just finished. So and then we had other things, you know, several other titles like this one,
[21:09]summer is the only book by the Tamaki cousins. It's the only book to ever have made the
[21:15]Caldecott and the Newberry list. No book is ever. And that's an interesting property of the
[21:20]graphic novel is it blurs all the categories, age categories, genre categories. So anyway,
[21:28]so for second became that house, like overnight, we were the darling of librarians. We still are,
[21:34]I think. And because we're cultivating authors, we're speaking the same language as it's a
[21:38]literary approach to the whole thing. And then I have my own projects, you know, and when I started
[21:43]for a second, I knew that it would be a terrible mistake. I would regret all my days if I put my
[21:51]own projects on hold. Typically, you know, it just goes to sleep and you never wakes up. But so
[21:57]I negotiated that, you know, I would continue with my own projects. And I would make sure and have
[22:02]the time to do that. And we were, I mean, it was basically a year before that.
[22:07]The same year when Jean Yang won, when American War in Chinese won the Prince was the same year
[22:13]that two dance got the cybert at the same time. So it came out at the same time.
[22:18]It was all happening. And we were starting a family. It was a busy time.
[22:24]It was, there was not a lot of sleep during it. But, but it was amazing. And I think with
[22:28]two dance, you know, we, it was a little bit ahead because it was like, you know, there was just this
[22:33]whole thing taking off. But it was embraced, you know, and we still, you know, for the last
[22:42]ten, twelve years, we've had to turn down invitations, you know, to go all over the place. Because
[22:47]it's like it, I think those feelings that we were trying to convey, you know, they're in there.
[22:54]For all its imperfections, it's like it works at some level. And that's really exciting.
[22:59]So do you ever, I mean, for as a parent with kids who love to read graphic novels,
[23:05]is there any truth to when people are like, well, don't just read graphic novels,
[23:09]you should read books, right? Like, you're cheating in a way. Like, it somehow like a cop out,
[23:13]and you know, and it like a hack to actually sitting there with words only texts.
[23:18]How do you feel about that? I have feelings. Tell me your feelings.
[23:23]I mean, just from our own, you know, our own family, like our, our, both our kids are
[23:28]incredible, voracious readers of everything. They love graphic novels.
[23:33]How do your kids?
[23:33]Well, 14 and 12.
[23:35]14, okay.
[23:37]But so here's the thing is, you know, I've had a chance to meet now with thousands of
[23:40]librarians and booksellers and educators. I do that kind of around the year. The librarians,
[23:47]all educators, including librarians and teachers, school teachers, they are on board.
[23:52]The course adoptions are huge for graphic novels. They'll tell you that oftentimes the
[23:59]vocabulary for the same equivalent in prose. It's much more advanced in graphic novels.
[24:05]And that in general, you know, kids who are growing up enjoying their reading are going to
[24:10]be lifelong readers. And that, I mean, now we have, you know, a decade of data to show they do,
[24:18]they, they read everything. And what's interesting is when you talk to librarians,
[24:23]they will sometimes tell you, especially teen and children's librarians, they'll say we're not
[24:28]the problem. The teachers are not the problem. The last holdouts are parents. Interesting.
[24:33]And, you know, when you think about if graphic novels are getting national book awards and getting
[24:39]prince awards and newberry awards, that's not for nothing. It's an indicator, right? Now is everything
[24:47]good? No. But point to any, any, neither all the prose books. I mean, look at novels, right?
[24:54]Novels or movies or music is 90% crap. I mean, generally it's fair to say it's 90% crap. There's
[25:02]a lot of stuff. But then that 10% are like the gems that are going to stand the test of time.
[25:08]Now there's a lot of that 10% in graphic novels. And there's some stuff where if you have a
[25:14]prejudice against that form, then you may not be exposing yourself or your kids to some really
[25:22]remarkable new voices that are doing some work that will, I think, stand the test of time.
[25:28]Yeah. I still, I do feel that they, they shouldn't replace reading prose and novels without pictures,
[25:36]because I think that there's a lot, a lot of value in picturing things in your own mind.
[25:44]And not being, you know, like having the imaginative space while you're reading to see what you
[25:50]think it looks like. And also there's a kind of a stamina about just reading words with no pictures
[25:58]that I think is built by doing it more and more, where sometimes I feel like it would be lost,
[26:05]that stamina would get a bit diminished by only reading graphic novels. But of course,
[26:10]they're never going to just read. Well, no, and they have to read. Yeah, they're different.
[26:14]I mean, I think they do, they operate on different parts, different circuitry in our minds.
[26:20]Yeah, they do. So they're different reading experiences and they're good for different things.
[26:24]You know, they have different strengths, you know? So you have, I do think that there's some books,
[26:29]you know, I get as an editor, I get a lot of submissions of people saying, oh, well, let's adapt
[26:34]this book from prose to graphic novels. And I, I tend to resist that because I feel like if it
[26:40]works, why mess with it, you know, and you're going to end up with a kind of diminished echo
[26:49]of the original thing. You know, it's like Orson Welles used to say he only wanted to adapt
[26:53]mediocre novels to make great movies out of. And I think with, you know, when people,
[27:00]you know, like you're saying, it's not, nothing is a substitute. It's a different reading
[27:05]experience. It's a different form of literacy. It really is. I mean, there is now a visual literacy
[27:11]that our kids are growing up with that it's a vital medium for them. Just like you look at the 60s
[27:20]and you can't think of the 60s without pop music. It's like that is the vital medium of the 60s.
[27:26]Right now you look at things like podcasting, you look at things like graphic novels. There's a
[27:31]reason why these connect. They're right now. They do. There's a freshness, you know.
[27:37]I'm interviewing tomorrow somebody who wrote an Amazon original like an audiobook only.
[27:42]Yeah. And I was talking about that to some people on an older generation who were like, well,
[27:47]that's not reading if you listen to these books. And I was like, I mean, you're not using your
[27:51]eyes, but you're consuming the story your brain is like consuming the story anyway.
[27:56]Yeah. But it is interesting that audio does also work through a different circuitry.
[28:01]So it affects you in a different way. And then there's the voice and there's the acting and
[28:07]that now comes into it. So it's different when you're reading prose, the voice is forming up in
[28:15]your own mind. The imagery is forming up in your own mind. What's interesting with graphic novels is
[28:19]that it's not it's certainly not like a lazier experience because it's actually a very active
[28:25]reading. You know, you are actually filling in a lot more than you are seeing in some ways.
[28:31]I mean, nobody would accuse anyone who's interested in art of being lazy, right? And it's
[28:35]essentially the mix of art and reading, right? So why would it be a lazy thing you're doing
[28:39]double time? You work overtime and it's something that sometimes people have to learn to do
[28:45]which is to to take the time to look at every picture. To read the picture. Sometimes children
[28:52]will just read the text and forget that there's a picture to look at and like go real fast and
[28:56]then miss out on all the artwork and all the pictures. And so you have to you have to get into the
[29:02]right speed in order to yeah, I feel like you were such an early adopter of this medium. Do you see
[29:08]any other like burgeoning trends coming either in the graphic novel space or just even in the
[29:14]literary world given that how much exposure you have to so many readers and well, it's interesting.
[29:20]Yeah, well, the graphic novel is not has not peaked. Right now, the hot category, a lot of
[29:27]all the houses are buying a lot of middle grade kind of contemporary or memoir, which, you know,
[29:33]Reina tell Gamaire paved the way, you know, for that. And we have books like, you know, with Shannon
[29:39]Hale and Lewin fam that they're great because they're yes, they're middle grade fiction, but
[29:44]they're emotionally very true. And it comes through in the art and in the writing and it's just
[29:50]so there's a reason why these connect. But I think we're on the cusp of now because many of these
[29:57]readers are growing up, we're looking at teen and we have...
[30:00]of like this year, three incredible teen hits.
[30:03]You know, one of them is Lorde and keeps breaking up with me.
[30:06]And there, I think the teen spaces that's about to explode
[30:11]for graphic novels.
[30:12]And then, you know, you can see that trend going all the way
[30:15]into adults in time.
[30:16]Adult is still, it's a hard nut to crack,
[30:18]but we also, we're doing well with adult nonfiction.
[30:22]Adult fiction is a harder one.
[30:25]You know, you can get like five, six-star reviews
[30:28]and get media attention and still,
[30:30]the sales are nothing like middle grade, but that's changing.
[30:34]Would you two ever work on a project together again?
[30:36]Like how is the collaboration as spouses and collaborators?
[30:39]Are you already working?
[30:40]We are, we are, we are amazing.
[30:42]There's going to be another take on my story called Tiny Dancer.
[30:47]Oh.
[30:48]Yeah, and it's going to be, it's actually going to be focusing more
[30:52]on the time you asked me about, which is what it was like during
[30:56]and after the injury.
[30:58]And that whole shift in like perception about what I was going to do
[31:02]with my life and am I going to be a dancer?
[31:05]Am I, and that time is going to be more of the focus.
[31:08]And it's, it's in the works.
[31:09]It's going to, it's a little darker.
[31:11]It's, it's older for older readers.
[31:13]And that's a full-blown graphic novel.
[31:16]And that's in the works.
[31:16]I think there's not enough about what happens to athletes pass their prime.
[31:21]Like there's not enough sort of, I mean, it's a time of real emotional,
[31:25]you know, darkness.
[31:26]I think for a lot of people who are, have a single man did focus for so long
[31:30]and then they come off it.
[31:31]Yeah.
[31:31]Yeah.
[31:31]So that's going to be a large resource.
[31:35]Yeah.
[31:35]Well, we got, there was a beautiful moment.
[31:37]It's on Instagram.
[31:38]It's on your Instagram, right?
[31:39]There's somebody, I think somebody's mom wrote to you about,
[31:43]about to dance.
[31:44]Yeah, because she actually bought to dance for her daughter,
[31:47]her teenage daughter, or a gift, a Christmas gift a few years ago,
[31:51]who was a girl who loved ballet and then had to stop ballet.
[31:54]She didn't say why, but something sounded like an injury that, you know, caused her not
[31:59]to be able to dance anymore.
[32:01]And apparently the girl just needed something about
[32:06]through dance just to be able to go on with, you know, in herself.
[32:10]And read it a hundred times.
[32:12]Yeah.
[32:12]So anyway, now she's grown up.
[32:14]And now she's like, I mean, she's, I think she's a senior.
[32:16]So this happened earlier, I think.
[32:19]And they posted this photo of her with the book with the new edition.
[32:23]And she's in tears looking at it.
[32:25]It's a beautiful photo on Instagram.
[32:26]But what the reason I brought it up is what you wrote,
[32:31]we sent her a copy of the new edition and you wrote,
[32:33]what did you write in the inscription to her?
[32:36]I wrote that there's plenty of time, you know, life for more than one dream.
[32:41]And even if she feels like, you know, that was her dream and that's not going to happen,
[32:46]it will affect other dreams and cause other dreams to be able to happen.
[32:50]I mean, I feel like that's such a, that's such a good
[32:53]vitamin for so many people, you know, I feel, and that was, I think part of
[32:58]Sienna's own journey was being so zeroing in on the one pursuit.
[33:03]Yeah.
[33:04]And then having to find a bit 17 like, oh, what am I going to do now?
[33:08]And, you know, it was, it was really, really hard.
[33:11]So the next book is going to, is going to focus on that.
[33:15]Oh, I can't wait for that.
[33:16]Yeah.
[33:16]It does different things.
[33:18]And like, you know, in New York has more of a presence.
[33:21]And it's just like, it's a, it's a different creature.
[33:24]But it's, it's very exciting to see that take shape.
[33:26]So yeah, so we're working.
[33:27]Yeah, it's great working together.
[33:29]I love it.
[33:30]It's difficult because we have to, you know, carve out that time and space
[33:36]to do that together, which is different from all other aspects of life and our family life
[33:41]and everything else going on.
[33:43]But I, it's one of the joys of my life is just being able to do this.
[33:48]And we, and I feel like we generate, you know, we generate together.
[33:51]Like it's like we, you know, we'll sit down for a session.
[33:54]And almost invariably, you know, walk away with more than was there.
[33:59]You know, so it's kind of, I think it carries us to some degree, which is pretty special.
[34:04]Oh, yeah.
[34:05]Do you have any parting advice to aspiring authors out there?
[34:08]Maybe even aspiring collaborators or aspiring graphic novelists.
[34:12]Take your pick.
[34:14]I mean, I, I do, like, I get asked that, you know, I meet a lot of young and aspiring authors.
[34:20]Sometimes I'm tempted to say, like, don't overload on a device.
[34:23]You know, you get a lot of, you get a lot of it.
[34:26]And it's, and, you know, when someone comes to you asking for a device,
[34:30]it does a little, it tickles up your ego, it feels nice.
[34:33]You know, it's to be like in that, in that seat.
[34:35]But then, you know, ultimately you get some people who are spending like thousands of dollars
[34:40]on seminars and they're reading books and methods.
[34:43]And yes, there is a craft which you do need to learn whatever kind of storytelling you're doing.
[34:51]So there, there's a need to actually train and kind of get some skill.
[34:56]But the biggest thing is doing it.
[34:59]You know, it's sometimes all that noise can take you away from actually doing it.
[35:04]You know, and I think it's the same for everything.
[35:06]Like, if you do a podcast, I mean, how much can you learn before you just get on that mic?
[35:12]And, you know, like, that's where you're really going to learn, you know?
[35:15]And then if you need to find like, oh, how does someone handle an interview that really goes
[35:20]south or something, then you go searching for the, you know, that skill set, you know?
[35:26]Maybe I should ask.
[35:27]But I haven't.
[35:27]I'll make you know how to do it.
[35:29]Just put this for the music.
[35:30]No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we get every day.
[35:32]No, no, it's great.
[35:33]It's great.
[35:34]We definitely have an art of putting people that he's really doing.
[35:38]Thanks.
[35:39]I don't actually feel like I have any advice.
[35:41]Oh, that's ridiculous.
[35:42]I don't really know what I told you.
[35:43]You must.
[35:44]What about advice for getting, like, switching gears?
[35:46]I love your dream advice.
[35:47]I mean, I know that I love class.
[35:49]Let's keep that as yours.
[35:50]That was so special and, like, really inspiring too.
[35:53]Because life is long.
[35:54]I mean, not good.
[35:55]But, you know, life takes people in so many different directions.
[35:59]And I think it's so unique to have a dream so early.
[36:02]Exactly.
[36:02]It's over by the time most people even have their first dream.
[36:05]But people are like, what should I study in college?
[36:07]And you're like, I've had a career already.
[36:08]Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[36:11]And I feel like you're putting that.
[36:12]You know, you're putting your, it's like you're doing your dance.
[36:16]You know, this is like your dance.
[36:17]Your dance is happening in teaching and writing, you know,
[36:23]and when you meet with these, like we had one time we were in the projects
[36:26]and DC with this marvelous foundation called Open Book Foundation.
[36:30]Yeah, yeah.
[36:30]There are some, they gave 90 copies of the book to these.
[36:35]I think they were like 10 to 13.
[36:37]Yeah, they were girls.
[36:38]They were.
[36:39]And it was in the projects.
[36:40]I mean, we arrived.
[36:41]We were like, I don't see a school here.
[36:43]It was in the basement.
[36:44]Oh my gosh.
[36:45]But these kids, you know, had them dancing.
[36:48]And it was just the most transporting couple of hours.
[36:51]And then they all got a signed copy.
[36:53]They were all reading.
[36:54]It was actually for most of them, the first book they'd ever owned.
[36:58]And it was like, that's your dance also.
[37:00]And you know, that is like,
[37:01]you guys should do like a little video for your website or YouTube or something
[37:05]of the two of you dancing together.
[37:08]Oh, we have tried to dance.
[37:09]You tried to dance.
[37:10]You're so excited.
[37:12]You know, it would be funny.
[37:13]How do you do this?
[37:14]Funny is right.
[37:15]Yes.
[37:15]I mean, you never know.
[37:16]I'll handle the funny.
[37:20]Well, thank you so much for coming on mom's entry book.
[37:23]I'm doing a pleasure.
[37:24]Wonderful stories.
[37:25]Pleasure.
[37:26]You've been listening to mom's and have time to read books
[37:28]with Zibi Owens.
[37:30]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter at zibiowans.com
[37:33]to get more updates about episodes like these
[37:36]and also lots of live events.
[37:38]Thanks so much to Claire Maiser and Eric Osrullo
[37:41]and their amazing podcast, A Thing or Two,
[37:43]which you should definitely check out.
[37:45]You can follow me on Instagram at mom's don't have time to read books.
[37:49]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[37:53]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and now
[37:57]trim music.
[37:58]Thanks for listening.
[37:58]You could always email me at zibiatzibiowans.com.