Julie Fogliano’s first picture book began as a late-night thought sent to a friend: “First, you have brown.”
Fogliano, a New York Times bestselling children’s author who has lived in West Shokan for 20 years, was then raising two young children and trying to find her voice through a daily writing practice. The thought became “And Then It’s Spring,” her 2012 debut, and helped define a body of work rooted in waiting, wonder, and the small observations of childhood.
Her latest book, “Because of a Shoe,” was recently celebrated in The New York Times. In a conversation with The Overlook, Fogliano reflected on Books of Wonder, the quiet of West Shokan, and why writing feels most joyful when she isn’t trying too hard.
Julie, how did you get started? What has been your journey?
I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was in high school. I didn’t know I wanted to be a writer for kids until college at Bard when I was in a writing workshop, and I was looking at the people around me, and they all just kind of seemed to know everything and have everything all figured out, and I was like, this is not the audience I’m interested in. I want a little wonder and joy in my writing experience. So that’s when I realized, “okay, I’m writing for kids.”
I was first a kindergarten teacher and then I just wanted to get my foot in the door, so I took a job in children’s publishing as a marketing assistant at Orchard Books, which was acquired by Scholastic. It just wasn’t for me. I’m not an office person. The people were wonderful and they had some great books, but it wasn’t the right environment for me, so it was short-lived, and that’s when I hopped over to Books of Wonder (a bookstore in New York City).
The experience working at Books of Wonder for four years changed my life. I felt like I got a master’s in children’s literature at the bookstore. Everyone had to read as much as we possibly could, and take it seriously, so we could be educated and properly make recommendations. I don’t know where I would be without them. I miss being in a bookstore every day.
But I wouldn’t say that I ever considered myself a writer until my first book came out, which is so silly, because you don’t need to be published and making money from something in order to be called a writer or an artist, but I didn’t allow myself to say the words until then. And even then, I was still a little bit like, “Why am I here?”
What inspired your first book, “And Then It’s Spring”?
My first book, “And Then It’s Spring,” literally came from looking out my window. I never thought I would look out the window and write about nature. Not that I don’t love nature. I thought I was gonna be a different kind of writer. I was just waiting for things to start turning green, and I was impatient, and that book just kind of popped right out.
George O’Connor, an illustrator and a writer, was one of the people that I worked with at Books of Wonder. George is an illustrator and a writer. He was always hearing me complain about not being able to write. I was always full of excuses. Years after we worked together, he came up to visit me. I had two little boys at the time, two little guys running around. I really had no time for anything. I was overwhelmed with life, and he said, “Okay, my birthday is coming up and for my birthday, I would love it if you would write for me one thought every day for a year.”
My response, “You’re nuts. No.”
Anyway, long story short, for some reason, I did it, and my thoughts were mostly observations about my house, my kids, what was out the window, what I had for breakfast, whatever. They were very silly and small, but it was the first time that I had ever gotten into a regular writing routine in my life, where I wrote every single day.
” It was really late at night, and I didn’t want to write my thoughts. I was annoyed, it was so dreary out. I just wanted it to be spring, and I was grumpy, and I was just ready to go to bed and ditch it, which I rarely ever did, because I really was committed to my thoughts of the day, and all of a sudden the words, “First, you have brown” came into my mind, and I wrote it down, and then all of a sudden, the whole thing, out it came.
I sent it to George because I sent him things every day, but then I also, just for the fun of it, sent it to my friend, Erin Stead, who I also worked with at Books of Wonder, and who was just finishing her first book, “A Sick Day for Amos McGee,” which went on to win the Caldecott. I sent it to Erin because it reminded me of a picture I saw on her blog, and she loved it and took it to her editor without telling me. And she called me the next day, “Neil Porter will be calling you. He loves it. He wants to publish it, and he wants me to illustrate it.” He did and she did.
Over the course of writing those thoughts to George, I started developing a voice. I had always tried to write a children’s book, I was always trying to be someone, you know, one of the people that I admired, and in this case I was just being me, and I was just writing about my little life in this little house in the middle of the woods, and it just slowly evolved into my voice.
How did you come to write poetry?
Neil Porter, who published my first book and later a bunch of my other books, asked, “So what else do you have?” I told him “I just have a bunch of these thoughts that I wrote, they’re not anything, they’re not books.” And he asked me to send the thoughts to him. And I sent him a ton. He said that I had “the start of a poetry collection”, and although I told him “I don’t write poetry. I have nothing to do with poetry,” he saw the poetry in what I had written. And so that was when I started working on my third book, “When Green Becomes Tomatoes,” which is a poetry collection about the seasons.
Are there themes that run through your books?
My editor, Neil Porter, has joked that he was going to call me, “Julie Anticipation Fogliano,” because my books, oh, especially my earlier ones, always seemed to involve some version of waiting. Like, waiting for spring, waiting to steal a whale, waiting for your birthday to come. It’s like you’re always waiting for something.
I guess that makes sense, because when you’re waiting for something, you’re so in the moment, and you’re so ready to snatch it up when it comes. I’m very slow moving, someone who likes to observe and wait and watch. So, I would say that’s a theme.
And also, my kids, they’re so much of my inspiration, especially when they were younger. So, the inner workings of their minds, it just always fascinated me, their language and all that stuff. So, you know, childhood.
What is your writing routine?
I would love for my routine to be that I get up every morning and work for two hours. It makes great sense. And I’d probably write a lot more books. My kids, the youngest is 13, they can now take care of themselves, I don’t drive anyone to school anymore, I don’t have to wake up at 7:00 and make lunches, and I’m kind of reinventing what that all means.
So I’m trying to find my way into a real routine because writing is the thing that I love to do the most. It makes me feel most myself and it makes me happy, even when I’m not writing something, just writing just for the sake of writing.
Right now, my writing routine is just kind of chaotic. It’s whenever I can snag a few minutes, it’s kind of loosey-goosey. Unless I’m working on something, if I’m working on something, then I’m in it, and I don’t want to move from it. But if I’m in between things, then I’m just kind of writing, there’s no real structure.
What is your process for a particular book?
I would say no organization, I always start with free writing. It’s just what worked for me when I first started writing and I’ve just stuck with it. Sometimes, it comes out of nowhere. And sometimes I’ll do it based on something that I think could be possibly a good thing to write about, like if my kids did something funny, for instance or asked a funny question. I write all those kinds of things down, and then I’ll just kind of free write off of that. But that alone doesn’t usually end up in a book.
You can have all of these ideas, but you have to find your way into them. For instance, my most recent book, “Because of a Shoe,” is about a kid who’s having a hard time. They have to leave the house. They are in a rush, but they don’t want to put their shoes on for one reason or another, and the kid has a tantrum, and the mom has a tantrum. And it was a subject that was very near and dear to my heart, because I was that kid once, and now I had that kid.
So in this case, weirdly, it was Sylvia Plath, which is a very unusual inspiration for a children’s book. For some book event in California, I was staying in a hotel and the word shoe kept coming into my mind, and then all of a sudden, I just kept hearing, “You do not do, you do not do, any more black shoe.” And that kept going on and on and on in my head.
It was a lot of months of thinking about it, but then for some reason, Sylvia Plath just helped me get on the right foot. Pun unintended. And then in that hotel room in California somewhere, the whole book popped out, just in one piece.
What’s the biggest challenge you have faced as a writer?
I’m not a structured person. I’m not very disciplined. And I also don’t like forcing myself into the chair to write. It’s hard for me. That’s my biggest challenge, because once I’m going, it’s great. It comes from a joyful place when I write.
And if I’m not feeling that feeling, I have a really hard time kind of working through whatever I’m currently feeling to get to the joyful place. And when I say joyful, I don’t mean happy, but the act of writing feels joyful.
Does a children’s book writer face challenges different from other writers?
One of the biggest challenges for a children’s book writer who doesn’t illustrate is getting over the fact that you don’t have complete control over your story because someone else is gonna take your manuscript and they’re gonna illustrate it the way they see it, including the cover.
That was always my biggest fear before I got started, how am I ever going to let go of that control and feel safe and confident that the illustrator is going to see what I see? But then I realized that I don’t really see anything. I hear it, and I feel it, but I don’t really see when I’m writing, it’s much more about the sound of the words and the feeling that they give.
That’s become actually my favorite part of all of it, seeing the magic that happens between two people in two different places.
Are there books or authors that have had a meaningful impact on you as a writer?
As far as children’s books go, I would say the number one inspiration for me is Ruth Krauss. Her writing completely blew my mind when I first read it, because it was nothing like anything I had ever read. She wrote “The Carrot Seed.” It’s a great book, and I love that one, but it’s her other books which blew my mind because they’re not at all like a regular, straightforward narrative. They’re a kind of stream of consciousness. She understands, or not even just understands, but the voice of childhood lives inside of her. She captures childhood in a way that just amazed me. So she is hands down my number one.
What books did you love growing up?
I did go to the library a bunch, the library in Livingston, New Jersey, Mrs. Chen was the librarian, and she was amazing. I remember sitting on the floor in the library, reading “George and Martha,” by James Marshall, which probably was one of my favorite books of childhood. Still one of my favorite books of adulthood.
Of course, “Where the Wild Things Are,” I remember sitting on the library floor reading that one too, and being completely inside of that book when I was reading.
I love Shel Silverstein, “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and “A Light in the Attic.” I will sometimes write and I’ll be like, “oh, hi, Shel.” I’ll feel his inspiration.
Do you hear from readers?
Yeah, I get reactions. I have friends in publishing and friends who are teachers, and lots of friends and family with kids and grandkids, so I do get feedback, and I always really love and appreciate that.
A friend of mine just told me this, it actually made me cry; her daughter just turned 13, and when she was, probably around the time her daughter was, like, five, my book, “When’s My Birthday,” came out. And when that book came out, every night before her daughter’s birthday, my friend would read the book to her daughter. And every single year they had done it, and this year, on her 13th birthday, her mom, I don’t know if she forgot or just didn’t do it, for whatever reason. And the daughter grabbed it off the shelf and brought it in to her mom, and made her mom read it.
I couldn’t ask for something better than that. A 13-year-old wants to hold onto that tradition of reading this funny little book about a kid impatient for their birthday.
Has living in West Shokan influenced your writing?
Oh, it influenced me so much. Maybe just looking out that window. I lived in the City prior to living here. And even though I was totally immersed in children’s books, I was working at the bookstore or I was a kindergarten teacher, whatever I was doing, I was always involved in children’s books, but I had a very, very hard time writing. I think I was overstimulated in the City. It was like I just couldn’t even sort out what the heck was going on with me.
Moving up here, and doing that exercise of thoughts of the day, and just not even trying to write any kind of epic saga, just literally looking on my kitchen floor and thinking, “Oh, write about that pancake that’s under the kitchen table.” Like, just that feeling of slowness, and yeah, looking out the window and being able to just see something quiet and pretty and just write about that.
This is more my rhythm than the City, as much as I love it, and I just really thrive in a more peaceful environment. I really love it here. I find it really inspiring, and I have a lot more room to think.
Do you have additional projects underway?
I have another book that will be coming out. It’s called “Imagine a Horse.” And it’s being illustrated by Erin Stead, who illustrated my first two books. I don’t know when that’s coming out. And then, I’m always working on things. I’m working on a middle grade novel, but then I also had a YA novel, but novels scare me, so I work on them and then I put them away and go back to picture books.
Why do novels scare you?
The only thing I’ve written that wasn’t a picture book, even though it kind of was, was the poetry collection I did “When Green Becomes Tomatoes.” Other than that, it’s all been picture books. And that’s really like where my heart is.
My picture books, basically, it’s like a poem, an illustrated poem, is what the picture books really are. And I really love the challenge of fitting everything into as few words as possible. I just love that. Like, the removing of words and the boiling them down to their essence.
I’m now, I think, 11 or 12 books in now, and I’ve never written a character with a name. I don’t write people, I write their voices, I write their feelings, but I don’t write who they are, and their backstories, and what they look like. Those are things I don’t think about. But if I’m writing something longer, I have to build all that stuff in. And that’s what’s scary.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.