Tutorial Art Design: K-Fai Steele

Tsundoku: Unread Piles of Books as a Working Tool

I have a lot of books. Despite a cross-country move a few years ago that involved a massive book cull, I still find myself with three overstuffed bookcases, loaded shelves, no fewer than two books on my bed while I sleep, and several piles of books around my apartment, on the floor.

A visiting friend observed my book collection and told me about a Japanese word, tsundoku. It translates to collecting literal piles of books you don’t read.

I started to develop some shame around my tsundoku; all those books I was buying without reading. I subsequently made a rule for myself that I wouldn't buy another book until I began whittle down my piles. I had gotten to the point where I was buying books constantly, including through Instagram, and felt like I should probably slow things down.

Then I came across an essay by Umberto Eco called How to Justify a Private Library about why you should have a library of books you don’t read; why you should have tsundoku:

“...There are still people who consider a bookshelf as a mere storage place for already-read books and do not think of the library as a working tool… I believe that, confronted by a vast array of books, anyone will be seized be the anguish of learning...”

I no longer felt shame about my tsundoku because to me they represented potential; new ways to learn, grow, inform my practice, enrich my perspective, and add tools to my toolbox. A library as a working tool.

I started to ask some fellow kidlit folks about their tsundoku, and not surprisingly, many of them had them. Here's what's current:

Robin Rosenthal, also an author at Pen & Oink

Sarah Jacoby, who added, “I'm trying to do a couple things with this pile of books by my bed. Two book recent covers have caught my attention: Klassen/Pennypacker's Pax and Peter Brown's The Wild Robot. Now I want to know all about what's going on with middle grade books. Other than the Wildwood Chronicles, I haven't paid much attention to the genre lately but now, given how gorgeous these books are, I'm very curious. So after I read Pax and The Wild Robot, I'm planning on re-reading Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time series, A Gift of Magic by Lois Duncan, and The Brother's Lionheart by Astrid Lindgren-all books that I recall being completely entranced by when I was of middle grade age…”

And Katie Kath wrote up her list:

The Biblical Canon: It's Origins
Transmission and Authority
Moby Dick
Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages
The Once and Future King
The Murder of William of Norwich

Dr. Syn On The High Seas

Maybe in a way these tsundoku represent the ways we’re all exploring and growing. I was excited about pulling these lists together and talking about them with their owners. Often we chatted about each other’s lists (“that book is amazing” or “I always wanted to read that!”).

What is your tsundoku?

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K-Fai Steele is a writer/illustrator based in San Francisco. She writes and draws with watercolor and ink about anthropomorphized animals who find themselves in sticky situations.

Follow her on instagram or twitter.

Richard Scarry’s Division of Labor: Animal totemism and our responsibilities as writers for children

Recently I came across a few retweets and blog posts about a flickr set showing how in 1991, Richard Scarry updated his 1963 bestseller The Best Word Book Ever in the Busytown series to “show a more progressive attitude toward gender roles and race.”

I was excited to retweet/extoll the progressive-mindedness of one of my favorite picture book creators, when I came across a journal article that sociologist John Levi Martin wrote in Poetics from 2000 about Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day? (1968). Martin argues that despite bucking gender stereotypes, Scarry reinforced stereotypes about class and what types of animals—the stand-ins, or “totems” of people—tend to perform specific types of jobs. As a result, I became interested in what sorts of unintended or implicit biases we as writers and illustrators for children may bring to the bigger table when we’re toiling away at our drafting tables, and what implications this has for kidlit people now.

A unit of the Busytown FD

Martin notes that pigs were disproportionately employed in certain low-education/low-income jobs, those “involving stone, sanitation, and then the somewhat irresponsible (as it turns out in the text) fire-fighters and house-painters.” Cats and rabbits possess by far the more “feminized” jobs (seamstress, nurse, flight attendant).

In addition to being on the lower-end of the class system, the pigs are often involved in clownish problems, the hallmark “outrageous accident” Scarry illustrates. The data backs it up. Out of 272 characters, “fully 16% of the pigs are involved in a mishap and 75% of the time are the cause of that mishap.” Less than 2% of the other animals cause mishaps. In one poignant example, Daddy Pig “stuffs himself with food, getting so heavy he breaks his children's beds - they move into Mommy Pig's bed, while he lies snoring obliviously.”

Martin’s data analysis reveals some interesting patterns when it comes to what animals are in charge of in Busytown and have high-education/high-income positions: “foxes in particular, and predators in general, are most likely to be in positions of command.” The mayor is a fox, the doctor is a lion, etc.

Martin cites anthropologist James Fernandez: “Children come to quickly perceive a difference between a cow and a cat, chicken, dog, donkey, etc. … In their earliest search for identity, these children turn towards the imitation … of some animals rather than others, choosing animals that occupy the more desirable portions in the quality space of their culture." What does it mean when someone is referred to as a pig or lion? Children are highly aware of the differences and meanings of these animal totems and categories, and, according to Fernandez, they tend to learn them at the same time as they enter verbal thought. “In supplying this content, through literature and informal interpretations of animal behavior, adults shape the possible applications of the categorical structure of animals to the social world.” Many children could receive this way of categorizing through picture books like What Do People Do All Day? before they have a chance to experience or understand class on a first-hand basis.

Martin also notes that the title of the book is not What Do Animals Do All Day?, which reinforces that while seeing mice, dogs, cats, etc. on the page, you’re learning about people. By extension, how is the act of labeling and associating different animals/people to certain jobs reflected in the workplace and larger world?

Richard Scarry’s picture books—and picture books in general—are cultural artifacts that reflect a time and attitude, just like today’s stories will be remembered as cultural artifacts that will reflect, for instance, the Internet and technology, global changes, social movements like the We Need Diverse Books campaign. Richard Scarry was sensitive to the impact of his work on children, and his “updating” his books thirty years later (after receiving much public protest) certainly reflects his sensitivity and awareness of his reach to children globally (according to Amazon, he illustrated over 150 books that sold over 100 million copies and are translated into over 20 languages).

I don’t think that it’s wrong that Richard Scarry’s Busytown oeuvre expresses that society has class divisions. The problem occurs with implications when the author’s biases and values seep in. For example, what are the implications when the lower classes are depicted as the ones who are the source of most of the problems in a town? Or what is implied, for example, when slaves are shown smiling throughout a picture book?

Where does this leave kidlit writers and illustrators?

I emailed with John Levi-Martin, the author of the journal article about What Do People Do All Day?, about how he sees his thesis fifteen years after-the-fact, and in light of recent controversy. He wrote: “It is unfortunate that writing about the social implications of relatively innocent choices such as species-job matches probably only increases the tendency of current writers to censor their impulses and to write formulaic work that hugs the middle road… While there is room for deliberate care and thought… it can't come from rule following and creation-via-committee!”

I agree that a book that’s written by rule-following and perpetual hand wringing could create some of the least-creative, least joyful work out there for children. As someone who works with animals-as-people (though not as encyclopedic as Richard Scarry), I realize this is perhaps something to be conscious of when selecting animals to fill certain character types, as this could impact a child’s structural understanding of how people fit into the world. Animal characters should be assigned with care and thought, if not a creative, joyful touch. Is it the kidlit creator’s job to write books that reflect society or suggest its reform? I think there is room for both. But it’s important to acknowledge that books we put out have an impact. They can either open up new ways of thinking or confirm potentially problematic biases.

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K-Fai Steele draws and writes in San Francisco, and has a background in libraries and museums. She's interested in anthropomorphized animals and creative technology.

See K-Fai's drawings, stories, and more at k-faisteele.com

Interview with new SCBWI mentee, K-Fai Steele

K-Fai Steele was the recipient of the SCBWI Mentorship Award at the 2015 Summer Conference. Kidlit Artists would like to officially welcome K-Fai to the blog, and ask her a few questions about the Mentorship experience and about what she is up to these days.

Did the feedback you received during the mentorship critiques either change or confirm the
direction of your illustration? Are there any specific examples you can share?

The feedback I got during the SCBWI mentorship critique kind of totally reframed the way I think about my work, on both the long-term planning, as well as day-to-day technical aspects. I don’t have a formal illustration background; I’m for the most part informally and self-taught with most of my creative education starting after college when I worked for the artist/musician/actor John Lurie, at MoMA as an art handler, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as essentially an art janitor, and as a faculty member at the Philadelphia Institute for Advanced Study. For me, drawing was always one of the outputs of/compliments to a creative lifestyle. It was never a viable career goal. But I kept encountering the same problem: when I’d receive commissions, I would freeze because it was “real” (money was involved). My work would tighten up and you could see it in my line quality, which would lose all the spontaneity and joy. At the SCBWI LA mentorship critique I got the advice let my initial, instinctive drawing as my “finished” drawings. It was nothing that I didn’t know, but it gave me validation: these 5 brilliant people telling me that it was okay to be myself - in fact, they loved it when I was my most me in my drawings.

What kind of projects are you working on now?

I’m working on a lot of projects. In a previous job where I worked on several grants at once, I got the advice to find the common thread that tied them all together, essentially turning all projects into one giant body of work. So right now I’m working on a book dummy for the Creator’s Club about a young seal and her friend (a pig), a couple of reluctant learners who develop a friendship and a cool wearable electronics project together. I’ve done a lot of “maker” STEM education in the past, and seen a lot of kids who suffer from lack of self-esteem and lack of support, and this book was a response to that inner voice that tells you that something like math or computing isn’t “for you” because you don’t already know it.

I’ve been churning out ideas for books. At SCBWI I learned more about picture book structure, and over the past year I’ve taken a couple of writing classes. Those have helped more than I anticipated. I have a big backlog of story and character ideas that were just waiting around for me to figure out how to put them into 32 pages. Now that I’ve learned the structure, it’s sort of like I’m exploding all the time.

I’m also playing with electronics as a way to make drawings and stories a bit more interactive. Electronics plus writing and drawing a different way of feeding my brain and engaging a similar problem-solving mechanism. The results can be magical. I’m trying to develop some cool things before I try to figure out how to make it scalable into picture books.

Is there any type of illustration (or other work) that you’re hoping for in the near future?

The dream fun project: I’d love to do food or medicine packaging. I remember at some point over the winter getting the flu, standing in the aisle at Walgreens and wishing that the packaging indicated more about the specific ailments I had.

I’d also love to put the book dummy I’ve been working on out in the world. After working years in library education programs as an artist teaching STEM workshops, I noticed a dearth of books about making and the creative process when you don’t think that you’re a “math” or a “science” person.

Is there one really helpful piece of advice that you’ve gotten since pursuing illustration? Any one piece of bad advice?

I get a lot of practical advice from kidlit friends, but I think specific advice is only useful when it responds to your own needs and goals. And besides, most of the inspiring advice I hear or read doesn’t really come out of illustration or kidlit stuff; it will come out of poetry, essays, or articles. I read this amazing profile in the New Yorker on the swimmer Diana Nyad, and a quote from her has stuck with me over the past couple of years, “[in your life] there’s a real speeding up of the clock and a choking on, Who have you become? Because this one-way street is hurtling toward the end now, and you better be the person you admire.”

What was one of your favorite quotes or lessons from the SCBWI Summer Conference?

Pat Cummings told me to have a story in mind for each of the drawings that you make. My drawings are so character and narrative-driven, it's not that much of an extra leap, and is sort of a luxury to dream up after you’ve drawn it. I loved Dan Santat’s session on telling a story through pictures. He gave advice to develop the story through images first, then “sprinkle” the words on top (if you were with me now I’d be repeating his gesture). I had a ton of words in my picture book dummy that didn’t need to be in there, so this was a really helpful exercise in developing the second version of my dummy.

What were some of your favorite books when you were a kid?

My family read together a lot when I was a kid. I still read out loud with my dad when I see him, the last time was in Maine in July when we rowed out to the ocean, tied up to a buoy and read parts of My Struggle: Book 1 by Karl Ove Knausgard. The books that fueled my imagination, the ones I read over and over as a kid, were the Fox series by James Marshall, Alice in Wonderland, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, anything by Roald Dahl. I had a very loved copy of Owl at Home by Arnold Lobel. The Tinder-Box by Hans Christian Andersen really sticks out for me too, I just couldn’t get over the description of a dog’s eyes as big as wagon wheels, probably because my parents had an antique shop when I was growing up, and I knew exactly how large wagon wheels were. I read a lot of comics as a kid, and devoured Garfield, the Far Side, and those books by B. Kliban. When I read these, and watched sitcoms like Seinfeld and Cheers, I don’t think I understood the humor entirely. I read and watched them very seriously. I think comics and funny TV shows were a way for me to make sense of the adult world and adult communication.

Some other later-in-life inspiration: I got to hang out with Tomi Ungerer and Lynda Barry a few times through fortunate circumstances. I drew a lot with Lynda, she’s an amazing, brilliant inspiration. She is the exemplar of the artist I strive to be: someone who is a creative well, so everything she puts out in the world comes from a deep, curious, observant place.

Where can we find you online?

Visit my website to see my portfolio. If you want to see what’s going on in my head and in front of me, instagram @areyouokfai and twitter @kfaisteele

Thanks K-Fai!

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Tsundoku: Unread Piles of Books as a Working Tool

Richard Scarry’s Division of Labor: Animal totemism and our responsibilities as writers for children

Interview with new SCBWI mentee, K-Fai Steele

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