Peter Brown, FRED GETS DRESSED

[1:20]Zibby Owens: This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen vaccine research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write a New Publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens..com.

[1:55]Zibby Owens: Peter Brown is the author of the children's book Fred Gets Dressed. Peter is the author and illustrator of many bestselling children's books, including Children Make Terrible Pets, Mr. Tiger Goes Wild and the Curious Garden. He's also the author of the bestselling middle grade duology, The Wild Robot and The Wild Robot Escapes. He's the recipient of a Caldecott Honor for Creepy Carrots, two E. B. White Read Aloud Awards, a New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book Award, and a Children's Choice Award for illustrator of the year. By the way, Creepy Carrots is one of my kids favorite books. Welcome, Peter. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Fred Gets Dressed and all your other amazing works. And we're joined here, maybe by my son who's six years old. Well, hello, both of you. Yeah, it's nice to be here. Thank you.

[2:43]Peter Brown: So Fred Gets Dressed, we saw Instagram that it was inspired by a moment you had with your own mom. Could you share the moment and the sort of the inspiration for the picture book? Sure. Yeah. Well, when I was a little kid, when I was about five years old, I was kind of exploring through my my house and I I wandered into my parents' bedroom and I started playing with my mom's makeup. You know? And as a little kid, I was really artistic. I loved drawing. Like most kids, I loved drawing with painting, all that kind of stuff. So I had always been, like, curious about the color that my mom put on her face. And so that day when I found myself there in her in the room alone, you know, I started kind of experimenting with her makeup naturally. And eventually, my mother walked into the room and she found me like that, and and her reaction was just really sweet and simple and lovely. And she just sort of smiled, and I had makeup smeared across my face at that point. She just kinda cleaned off my makeup, and then she showed me how she put on makeup, you know, and I kinda followed along. And we just had this sweet little moment together, kind of a fun, playful moment just playing around with makeup together. And, you know, it wasn't a big deal. It was just a quick little thing, and we had fun, and and that was that. But it that memory always stuck with me as, you know, later in life when I look back on it, that memory just it just seemed like a great moment of parenting, you know, on my mom's part. I just really felt like, wow. She kind of nailed it because, you know, there could have been any number of different of any number of different reactions to finding me like that. And her reaction was just to sort of be there with me and join me and share the moment with me and kind of answer questions. So, I mean, obviously, I was curious about her and about how she presented herself with makeup and then and, you know, I was also curious about her clothing. You know, I remember trying on her high heeled shoes at times and, you know, playing around with her jewelry and other occasions. And so so I don't know. I just really love that moment and my mom's reaction to finding me like that. And I thought, you know, I thought there's something in there for a book. I wasn't quite sure what it would turn into, but that was the starting point for my idea for Fred Gets Dressed. Aw. And I hope that I was so sad to hear that your mother passed away a few years ago. I'm so sorry for that. Yeah. It was a bum it was it was sad, obviously. And the one nice thing was I had already started working on Fred Gets Dressed. So she and I had a chance to kinda talk about the book, about that moment, and so she knew I was working on it, and I'm glad. I think I wish, of course, she had seen the finished product, but I'm glad she knew that, you know, that I was choosing to kind of highlight a moment from our own experience together in a book form. So I think she really was excited about that. Oh, that's so sweet.

[5:26]Zibby Owens: How did you get started? I know you mentioned you had been an artistic kid and everything. And by the way, don't think like everybody is super artistic. They don't all go on to be. Well, sure. Perhaps you were on this, you know, one side of the of that spectrum. But how did you get started with this as a as a career, like illustrating? I know you've done most illustrating, writing, and number one bestsellers, and all this great stuff. Where did it begin? How did you get Well, into say this. I do think I do think most kids are artistic. Right? I think most kids are creative in one form or another, whether it's drawing or painting or dancing or using you know, dressing up or

[6:05]Peter Brown: they like using their imaginations. I think I talk to kids a lot when I visit schools and and I just say to them, you know, the difference between me and other kids was that I just I loved making art so much that I just kept making art. Then over the years, I got better at it. You know? Like with anything, the more time you spend doing that thing, the better you get it at whatever it is. I think most kids love making art or being creative, but some of them choose to stick with it like me and others, you know, focus on other things as they get older. So I stayed with it, and I always loved drawing. And I think part of that was because my grandfather was an artist. He wasn't really a professional artist. He studied art at a Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and when he was a young man and then kinda went into another field altogether. And then in his retirement, took up painting again. So when I was a little kid, I'd visit my grandparents, and I'd see my grandfather at his desk making drawings and paintings. And and so I think that helped also as I had an artistic role model who kind of showed me that I could make art for the rest of my life, you know? And so that's what I did. And I just drew all the time, and I took art classes in school and extracurricular classes and anything I could find, you know, community college classes. As I was in high school, I was going to I was taking figure drawing classes at the local community college. And I had some great art teachers in high school, especially. I had an art teacher named doctor Oboyle who was, like, just an incredible life changing teacher. And so a lot of those things kinda fell into place for me to get to a point where my skills were good enough to get into art school. I went to art school and I took some children's book classes and realized that that's really what I wanted to do, writing and illustrating. Because I'd always liked writing also. I really just love my using my imagination, coming up with stories and characters and worlds. And children's books seems like a really great way to combine all of my favorite things. You know, there's only so many jobs where you can write and draw and have some creative freedom, and picture books, and children's books seemed like a great one. So so once I was in college, then I got really serious about making children's books and, you know, worked on my portfolio, and then I moved to to New York City where books most books get published. I met an editor and an agent, and before long, I had my first book deal, and I've been making books ever since. Yeah. Sorry for the interruption.

[8:20]Zibby Owens: My son has snuck in again. It's not useful. They do that, don't they? I know about sneaking. I was sneaking into my mom's room when I was a little kid. Yes. Exactly. I try to have him, like, come in and do it with me. But, you know, interestingly, this morning, he is really into art, and he came out and handed me his iPad. He's like, can you download this thing? It was like Skillshare or skill something rather. He's like, it'll teach you how to draw anything you want. And I was like, okay, I'll download that app. And next thing you know, he's like, I need the markers. I need paper. And he was, like, learning how to draw. I don't even know what for a while. So I was like, you know what? Go for it. That's great. I mean, when I was growing up, of course, there were no iPads. And so I'd go to the library, and I would get out these, like, how to draw books. You know, how to draw 50 animals, how to draw 50 houses, how to draw 50 trees, whatever. And those books are actually really helpful. And I bet there's apps

[9:07]Peter Brown: basically doing the same thing as those books were doing when I was a kid. And I learned, you know, if you follow those books and you you know, it's sort of a step by step instruction of how to draw different things. You If actually follow those instructions and you do it over and over again, pretty soon you can do it from memory, and pretty soon you can change the drawings in your own way. So there's it's great. I mean, I'm I'm excited. I kinda wanna see what what app this is, you know, because out of curiosity to see

[9:34]Zibby Owens: what it is that's available today for kids. You know? I I think it was called Skillshare. I think Skillshare teaches all sorts of different things. Right? It's not just about Yeah. But I think one of them was no. I think one of them was art. But they're also you know, often he and his sister watch YouTube drawings where they try to draw like a poodle or I don't know, you can search by like, what you want to learn how to draw. And then they sit there and like do it along with it. But we also have some of those books about like learn how to draw. And some books have that in the back as well. So but yeah, I mean, it's all about sort of repetition. I mean, the thing about practice that you were saying yesterday, I got my husband this like cornhole set for Father's Day. Yeah. So and I have four kids. We were all out there playing. And I have to say I was like better than anybody, but that's okay. But as we were throwing, I was like, wow, imagine how good we're all going to be at this by the end of the summer if we keep this up. And it was just like one of those moments where it's like, we all start at whatever skill we have, right? But it's whoever's going to practice the most is going be the best at Cornell by the end of the summer. And it's sort of like a life lesson,

[10:35]Peter Brown: whoever does it the most is going to be the best. It's like More often than not, that's the case. I mean, obviously, there's occasional people who are naturally gifted, and it's just no denying it. Right? Like you with with, right, playing cornhole. But by and large, you know, if you put in the time, you're gonna get better at sports, at art, at whatever it happens to be. So, yeah, that's the that's a good lesson I I think to share with kids, of course, is put in the time and you'll improve. And there's there's really no doubt about the fact you'll definitely get better. Will you be the best? Maybe not, but you don't always you usually don't need to be the best to really enjoy it and get something out of the experience. So As long as you see some improvement. Right.

[11:17]Zibby Owens: And I I mentioned earlier, one of our favorites is the creepy carrots series, if you will. Or are there more of those in the works by any chance? I also interviewed Aaron Reynolds, by the way. Yes. Well, we've got a third one coming out. I think this fall in time for Halloween will be

[11:32]Peter Brown: creepy crayon. So Jasper rabbit I mean, you can you can sort of under you know the basic idea is Jasper finds this cool crayon, and it ends up haunting him. So but exactly how the story unfolds, I'll leave that for when the book comes out. So I just finished up the artwork for that a few weeks ago, and yeah. So stay tuned for creepy crayon.

[11:54]Zibby Owens: Alright. Awesome. And what other projects are you writing? Are you working on with the writing? Well, I have my I have a chapter book series called the wild robot,

[12:01]Peter Brown: and the sequel to that is The Wild Robot Escapes. And I've now recently started working on the third Wild Robot book called The Wild Robot Protects, and that's gonna take a while. These books the chapter books take usually, like, a year and a half, two years for me. I'm hoping to speed things up a little bit this time around now that it's my third book. I've done a few of these. I'm hoping it'll happen a little faster. But that'll at least take the next year of my life. So beyond that, I have other books, other chapter books I'm gonna be writing. I have another picture book I'm gonna write and illustrate. They're, you know, a couple years off, you know, so I'm not talking about them too much, but there's a lot in the pipeline that I'm excited about. So it's it's been nice since I wrote the wild robot chapter books. I really feel like now now I kinda have freedom to just basically do whatever I want, you know, whatever kind of story I wanna come up with. If it's a picture book, great. If it's a chapter book, great. Maybe someday I'll write for teens or it's hard to imagine me ever writing a book for adults, but I won't rule it out. Maybe in, you know, twenty years. Maybe after I have a few more chapter books under my belt, I'll write something for an older audience. But Well, The Wild Robot, by the way, was on my I have older kids too who are now 14, but it was on their required That's reading

[13:11]Zibby Owens: great. We have we have those as well.

[13:15]Peter Brown: Yeah. You covered all the kids in my house. Thank It's been nice. It's nice that I can I you know, a lot of authors will go will do, like, school visits? We'll spend a day at a school talking to kids about, alright, writing, illustrating, stories, all that stuff. And it's it's pretty great now that I have the chapter books because I can really go to an elementary school and talk to everybody at their level. You know, I can talk to the kindergarten or first graders about my younger picture books. I can talk to the second, third graders about maybe my older picture books or maybe the wild robot books. And then fourth, fifth graders, I can obviously talk to them about the wild robot books. And so in the earlier in my career, would have to talk to fourth, fifth, sometimes sixth graders about picture books, which I still think a lot of them like picture books and I wanna talk about picture books, but it does feel like the wild robot books are a little more relevant to them overall than than my picture book. So it's kind of a cool thing to have something for everyone when I walk into a school. Yeah. Your your whole career is just based around efficiency. You could just go through One thing, you know? Feel like I do wanna make something for everyone. You know? Like, I wanna I wanna sort of check all these different boxes, and I may not make the same kind of story over and over again because I wanna move on to other subjects, other themes. You know? Excellent. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

[16:50]Zibby Owens: $4.06, and $8 biggie deals how you want them at Wendy's. Pricing participation may vary. Single items at regular price. Prices may be higher in Alaska, California, and Hawaii. I still am thinking about in when Fred gets dressed about why it is that men's clothes are so much harder in general to Yeah. Put on as a young kid. You know? What is it with neckties? Why are they so impossible?

[17:11]Peter Brown: Well, when I was a little kid, I'd look at my parents' closet, and not only was my dad's side my dad's clothing more complicated with lots of little buttons and laces and neckties and you know? But it was also less interesting. His clothing was and maybe that says more about my dad than about men's clothing. But my dad's you know, he wore khaki pants and brown loafers and a button down shirt basically every day. In the summertime, he had, you know, shorts, I guess. But his wardrobe was very limited. And juxtaposed to my mom's side of the closet or my mom's closet, it was like hers was so much more colorful. There were patterns and different textures. There some of the the materials were fun to touch, and they're, like, silky smooth, some of them, you know, and she had hats and different sunglasses and different shoes. I mean, so many different kinds of shoes that it just it didn't make any sense to me. So I was just more curious about my mom's stuff in part because it was more interesting and more varied and more colorful, and a lot of kids like color and pattern and texture, and I certainly did. So so for me, was no comparison. It was like my dad's side of the closet was boring, and my mom's side was interesting, and that's where I gravitated, which is why in Fred Gets Dressed, you know, I I mentioned earlier how I had tried on my mom's makeup, and that was sort of the inspiration for Fred Gets Dressed. But I decided that it needed I wanted to go further than that and have Fred really get dressed up like his mom in her jewelry, in her clothing. I never did it to the extent that Fred did, but I tried all these different things at different moments. Right? And so I I decided to kind of combine them into one moment for this particular story because I just remember being so curious about all the different things and the you know, trying to walk around in my mom's high heeled shoes. I never really could do it, and I still don't really understand how how people do it. But it was like her stuff was just there's so much more variety that I wanted to kind of capture that feeling, and Fred gets stressed of, like, dad's side being a little boring. Like, fine, but not particularly interesting. And then he turns around and he sees his mom's side of the closet. It's like an explosion of color and patterns and textures, bright colors, you know, so that the reader can really kind of understand what I felt when I was a little kid looking at my parents' stuff and what Fred feels when he looks at his parents' stuff. I wanted to make it really clear and really obvious. So actually, Fred's mom's clothing, her wardrobe is a little probably a little crazier than my mom's my real mom's clothing because I just I wanted the impact, you know, and the and the the high contrast between the two parents' wardrobes. Well, I think that's I mean, I had the same thing as a kid. My dad had my dad's whether has like rows of suits. They were all gray. That's still what his closet looks like, you know. But my mother, like, even now, I'm obviously a grown woman with my own kids, like my closet, and maybe it's interesting to them, although doubtful, but like hers was just as a child, the wonder of it. And, like, would this be something that I would have as a grown up? Is this what being grown up even meant? And, like, oh my gosh. I can still feel like her pleated skirts and the beads on these fancy dresses. And, like, I don't have pleated skirts or beaded dresses now. So you know? Or, like, fur coats or, like, all these things. They're not even around anymore. So Well, the the world has changed too. Right? Like, I do feel like when we were growing up, there was just different fashion was different. And women and everybody just sort of carried themselves differently. I I love I watch a lot of movies and TV shows and and including, you know, like period pieces where it could be turn of the century. And I you just watch these people wearing, it's summertime, and they're wearing suits. Like Yeah. Wool it looks like they're wool suits, they got hats. And I'm like, I just think how uncomfortable that must have been. But everybody did it. You know? And so now, of course, like, I think over time, people have started dressing more casually and more comfortably, and and I understand it. But, you know, and there's still people out there who really seem to have fun with their clothing, and I admire them. You know? I'm not one of them. I my wardrobe is about as boring as my dad's was when I was a kid. I was gonna say you are sitting here in a black t shirt. No judgment. Yeah. Well But, you know? Yeah. It's funny. I I I let my I sort of let my work do the talking. You know? I try to make books that I'm really proud of that can show off my sensibilities. But when it comes to how I dress, I really just wanna keep it simple because I wanna spend my time drawing and writing and illustrating, and I don't wanna spend that much time shopping. I don't wanna spend that much time thinking about what I'm gonna wear. So I kinda have a uniform, you know, in the winter colder months, I wear a button down and usually dark jeans and maybe boots. And then in the summertime, I'll wear a simple t shirt and maybe shorts or light pants or something because I I wanna spend my energy on different things. But when I see people who clearly wanna spend their energy on their wardrobe, you see people, men and women, you're walking around in these amazing outfits, and their hair is amazing and maybe their makeup is amazing. And I'm like, wow. That's I really it's like they're like works of art in my opinion. People who take the time to really get the details right. It's pretty cool, but I'm not I doubt I'll ever be one of those people, but I do admire them.

[22:09]Zibby Owens: Yeah. Well, I think that that's what makes your book so appealing. Because most people I think are more like you and me, who we look at other people with this admiration and particularly like our parents, but just yeah. And also just the tactile pleasure of like, all that stuff that was there for us to sort of explore. So your book evokes that feeling of sort of wonder and awe and fun. So thank you for that. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Great. Well, what advice would you have for aspiring authors?

[22:40]Peter Brown: Aspiring authors? Well, just as I was saying earlier, how when I was a kid, I practiced drawing a lot and then I developed my skills. Feel like that's the same is true with writing, of course. First, you have to first, you have to love to write. So if you love writing, then hopefully, you wanna spend the time writing. And hopefully, that comes pretty easily to you. And the more time you spend, the better you get. But I also like to tell kids that to be a good writer, you really have to be a good reader. I learned so much by reading. I learned so much about writing from reading. My favorite authors, the way they turn a phrase, the way they structure a story or even a chapter, their vocabulary, they're sort of some of them are one of my favorite right now, I'm reading a book by Kurt Vonnegut, I've read most of his books. But the way he puts a sentence together is just so charming. Some of that is hard to replicate, but it's good to be aware of what speaks to you. And maybe you wanna nudge your artwork in that direction or your writing in that direction. So I read a lot and I learn a lot from the writers that I love. So that's another good piece of advice for aspiring writers is to read and and take note of what appeals to them, what they really like. But at this age, if they're young, if they're kids, you've gotta develop the tools in your toolbox. So it's really about exploring and experimenting and putting in the time and the energy and hopefully having fun. If it's not fun, then maybe you don't wanna be a writer, and that's okay too. But but it's funny. It can be hard as I'm a professional author and illustrator, and I don't always wanna write. I don't always wanna illustrate. There are times when I wanna do anything but those things. Right? And that's okay too. But obviously, when you're younger, you still have to develop those skills in the first place. So you gotta find a way to put in that time and energy. Yeah. I don't know. There's some advice.

[24:28]Zibby Owens: That counts. That was really good. Was great. That was great. Well, I'm sorry that my son kept making cameos and that there's all this background noise in this this sort of my least professional interview in a while. So I'm I'm sorry about all of that if you can even hear I can't. Okay. Great. Well, then never mind. Forget I said anything. Anyway, thank you. I will be thinking of you in my closet next time my son like tries on my pajamas because I have nothing more exciting to try on. And thank you for Fred Gets Dressed and for entertaining literally all my kids and so many kids in so many places. So keep it up. And I'm so excited for Creepy Crayons. Yeah. Stay tuned. Lots more lots more Peter Brown books in the future, so keep an eye open for those. Alright. I I I will for sure. 100%. Thanks for having me. Alright. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Take care. Bye bye. Bye bye.