Interview #1: Deborah Diesen

The kids have been wanting to try their hand at doing an interview for some time now.  They've practiced on me in a couple of previous posts.  We recently got our first big chance when author Deborah Diesen visited a nearby library.  After the storytime wrapped up and the crowds eventually thinned, she kindly spent some time visiting with us.  The five of us sat in a circle on the big storytime rug and had a great little chat!  We had lots of fun -- Thanks Deborah Diesen!
(Portrait of Mrs. Diesen by Gracie)

Dad:  Alright, before the interview, how about you kids tell our readers a bit about Mrs. Diesen's book "The Pout-Pout Fish"...
Isaac (age 11):  Okay, it is about this fish.
Gracie (age 9):  Mr. Fish.  Hee hee!  I like the name Mr. Fish.
Isaac:  He had a pout.  He is always pouting.
Gracie:  He's "a pout-pout fish with a pout-pout face, so he spreads the dreary-wearies all over the place."
Lily (age 6):  He met these guys -- underwater people -- that said, "Stop pouting."
Gracie:  He sees a clam that says, "Stop pouting!"  He sees a jellyfish that says, "Stop pouting!"  He sees a bunch of guys that always say "Stop pouting!  Stop pouting!"  But he can't stop pouting because he's a pout-pout fish.  But then he meets Shimmer.
Lily:  Shimmer is a kiss-kiss fish.
Gracie:  And instead of saying "Stop pouting," she says... nothing... actually.  She just kisses him.  Kissie-kiss!
Isaac:  Then he starts smiling and kissing people.
Lily:  He knew he was a kiss-kiss fish instead.  He was never pouty ever again!  He spread the cheery-cheeries all over the place.
Dad:  Great!  Thanks guys!  And now, we get to talk with the author of this wonderful book, Deborah Diesen!
Deborah Diesen:  First, I really love your blog.  I've looked at it before...
Gracie:  You have?!
Deborah Diesen:  Mm-Hmm.  And my friend Boni loves your blog too!
Dad:  You guys remember who that is -- Gracie, you drew a picture of a dragon eating her.
(laughter)
Deborah Diesen:  She loved that!  So, do you like doing the blog?
Isaac:  Yeah.
Lily:  I like drawing the pictures.
Dad:  These guys are little artists.
Deborah Diesen:  Writing gets encouraged in kids a lot... but drawing, not so much.  So I love to see kids drawing and doing art.
Gracie:  Our family would be VERY different if we didn't draw as much.  Totally different.
Dad:  As a kid, the worst punishment I ever received was not being allowed to do anything art related for a whole day.  I don't remember what I had done wrong, but I can assure you that whatever it was, I never did it again.  It was torture to be kept from touching a crayon or a pencil all day.
Gracie:  Gasp!  You poor thing.  That's terrible.
Dad:  Alright, let's try an interview!  Who's got a question for Mrs. Diesen?
Isaac:  What is your favorite part about "The Pout-Pout Fish"?
Deborah Diesen:  The thing I like most visually about the book is the cover.  I'm not a very visual person, and to be honest, when I wrote it I didn't know what Mr. Fish looked like.  But when I saw the art that Dan Hanna made, I said, "That's it exactly!"  The cover is so striking, and it tells a little bit of the story with just one picture.  Dan Hanna did a tremendous job with the pictures throughout the book.  But the cover starts to tell you the story.  The story doesn't start on page one.  It starts with whatever part of the book you see first.
Dad:  And guys, look at all the funny stuff happening on the back cover, for when you are done...
Lily:  On the back cover there's a whole bunch of sea creatures behind the pout-pout fish!  On the front it looks like he was alone.  But on the back there's a whole bunch of creatures, and they're even having tea parties.
Isaac:  How would they have a tea party underwater?  Ha ha...  All the tea would just be floating around!
Deborah Diesen:  Dan Hanna has a real sense of whimsy about those details in the illustrations.  There's going to be a sequel to this called "The Pout-Pout Fish in the Big-Big Dark," and he had a lot of fun with the details.
Gracie:  How did you come up with the idea for these books?
Deborah Diesen:  I was making faces with my son because he was in a grouchy mood.  We were just horsing around about looking pouty, exaggerating our pouty faces to each other, and I suddenly realized we looked like fish.  I wrote down the phrase "Pout-Pout Fish" on the back of an envelope.  It was a few days before I started writing the story, but at least I had grabbed the idea.  Because good ideas are like birds.  When you are lucky enough to have one land on your shoulder, you need to write it down immediately -- or it will fly away and land on someone else's shoulder, and they'll write your story instead of you.
Dad:  This book has the catchiest refrain.  We'll be out in public somewhere, and I'll find myself randomly saying out of the blue, "I'm a pout-pout fish with a pout-pout face..."  You guys hear me say that all the time, don't you...
Lily:  Yeah...
Gracie:  "I'm a pout-pout fish with a pout-pout face, so I spread the dreary-wearies all over the place."
Dad:  Not that I'm pouty at the time.  You've just worked up a very catchy phrase there!  It sticks in your head like music.
Deborah Diesen:  It may come from the fact that I played the clarinet when I was growing up.  I have at least a passing familiarity with musical rhythms.  When I'm writing things I hear them like music.
Gracie:  There's actually a fish called a "pout fish."
Deborah Diesen:  That's right, there is!  I didn't find that out until after I had written my story.  At first I was sad because I thought, "Well, now I can't have this story about a pout-pout fish."  But then I thought -- they are actually entirely different from each other.  I think the real pout fish is an eel.
Gracie:  Their names are different too.  This one is the "Pout-Pout" Fish, and that other one is just the "pout" fish.
Dad:  Interesting!  I had imagined that you stumbled across the pout fish and thought, "Oh, that sounds like a story."  But that's not the case.
Deborah Diesen:  Right, it was the other way around.
Lily:  How did you choose which guys the pout-pout fish would meet?
Deborah Diesen:  After I decided to write about Mr. Fish, those were just the creatures that went through my head when I thought of the ocean.  I probably should have worked a little harder to keep them all in one part of the ocean.  I picked fish and creatures that don't necessarily hang out together.  But Dan did a good job at putting the creatures into their actual environments.  But mostly, those were just the ones I thought of... the clam, the squid, the jellyfish, and... whom have I left out?
Gracie:  The octopus!
Deborah Diesen:  Yep.
Isaac:  Wasn't there a worm in there too?
Deborah Diesen:  Yeah, the ones that aren't named are ones that Dan added.  Dan lives in California so he has some familiarity with the ocean.
Gracie:  What kind of fish is this?  "Shimmer" is a pretty fish.
Deborah Diesen:  She's another made up fish, just like Mr. Fish -- there's no other fish in the ocean that looks like him.  And she's just made up too.  Although, Dan Hanna may have modeled her after something.
Lily:  I have another question...  Did you write any books when you were littler like us?
Deborah Diesen:  Yep!  Right around your age is when I started writing.  You are seven?
Lily:  Six...
Deborah Diesen:  Okay, I was probably a little older than you.  But right around your age I started writing a lot of rhyming poems.
Gracie:  Isaac hates writing poems.
Deborah Diesen:  And that's okay!  You've got to write what you like!
Isaac:  I'm good at it...  it just takes me forever to think of one.  Once a poem just came into my head, and I was very proud of it.
Deborah Diesen:  Do you have a Rhyming Dictionary?
Isaac:  Uhhhhh...
Dad:  I do.  Isaac, I'll get it out for you when we get home.
Deborah Diesen:  That helps get ideas sometimes.  That's how I came up with "kaleidoscope of mope."  I was looking in the "ope's" and thought, "I've never seen 'kaleidoscope' and 'mope' put together - I'll try that."
Isaac:  Dad, is that where you got your rhyming word for Orange?
Dad:  Uh, no.  I did not.  No.
Deborah Diesen:  My rhyming dictionary doesn't have a rhyme for Orange!
Dad:  When I was a kid I knew there was supposed to be no rhyme, but I was determined to prove that wrong.  The closest I managed was "Door Hinge."
Deborah Diesen:  That is petty close!  And I also think it's fine to just make some up.
Dad:  Well now, I have a question...  I wonder if you are a good speller?
Deborah Diesen:  I have to work at it.  I'm not a great speller...
Dad:  So that shouldn't discourage anyone here from writing?
Deborah Diesen:  Not at all.  I have misspellings in some of my drafts and that's okay.  I don't worry about my penmanship when I'm writing my stories, I don't worry about my spelling...  Worrying about those things doesn't come until the second, or third, or sometimes even the fourth draft.
Dad:  Wonderful!  Well, are you guys happy to meet a new author?  To make a new friend?
Kids:  Yeah!
Deborah Diesen:  Well, I was thrilled to meet all of you.  I just love your blog.  I hope you keep doing that.  And I hope you keep writing and drawing and reading lots of books.
Gracie:  We will keep reading books.  You should see how big the bookshelf is in our room!
Deborah Diesen:  Ha ha, I can imagine!
Gracie:  It's like our house is a mini library!  We have books everywhere.
Dad:  Anything else you guys want to say?
Kids:  Thank-you!
Deborah Diesen:  Well, you're welcome.  (shaking hands) Lily, pleased to meet you.  Isaac, pleased to meet you.  Grace, pleased to meet you.  I feel very honored.
Lily:  You forgot my Daddy.
Deborah Diesen:  Oh, pleased to meet you!
Dad:  Ha ha, very nice to meet you too.

the pout-pout fish, by Isaac

shimmer fish about to kiss Mr. Fish, by Lily

shimmer fish, by Gracie

Author: Deborah Diesen
Illustrator: Dan Hanna
Published 2008, Farrar Straus Giroux
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Review #26: A Wrinkle in Time

Dad:  So guys, we are going to review "A Wrinkle in Time."  We finished reading this three weeks ago but, because of our vacation, we haven't had a chance to review it until now.  Do you think you can remember enough about it?
Isaac (age 10):  Maybe.
Gracie (age 8):  That was only three weeks ago?  It seems like forever.
Dad:  Tell me about the characters.
Lily (age 6):  Charles Wallace is a very, very smarty guy.  He's a little five year old.  He has an older sister Meg who I think is like 10 or 11, and sometimes she doesn't even know what Charles Wallace is talking about.  I have no idea how he got so smart.  He can make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Gracie:  He could read minds.
Dad:  He could tell Meg was going to come down to the kitchen in the middle of the night, and he had a sandwich all ready for her.
Gracie:  And then Meg was like, "I can't finish all this," and Charles says, "Yes, but I think Mother would like some too," and just then the mom comes in and says, "You think I would like what?"
Isaac:  Charles Wallace is a five-year-old genius.
Gracie:  He uses giant words.
Isaac:  Charles Wallace never talks to anyone else besides the people in his family.  So everyone else thinks he's a little brainless kid, when he's probably the smartest five year old in the world.
Gracie:  He's probably even smarter than that two-year-old on the news who can count in Spanish.
Dad:  Tell me more about Meg.
Isaac:  She's not one thing or the other.  That's what Charles Wallace said.  But I don't know what that means.
Dad:  She doesn't fit in anywhere.
Gracie:  It's because she makes a whole bunch of mistakes, and she doesn't think her life is ever right, and she talks bad to the principal.
Dad:  Tell me about Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which.
Gracie:  Mrs. Whatsit was funny because she wears long underwear and like five scarves and a big bundled up coat and a hat and boots, and right after she tried taking her boots off she sprains her 'dignity' which is her buns, and then she says "You have to put ointment on my dignity," and then after they finally get her boots off she puts them right back on!
Lily:  They are really creatures.
Dad:  Disguised as humans.
Isaac:  One of them is a star.  And one is a, well, imagine a centaur with wings.  Imagine it shining, and it's the most beautiful creature, or horse, or whatever-it-is you ever saw.
Gracie:  Mrs. Whatsit was the centaur with wings.  And Mrs. Who has giant glasses.  And she always quotes things in different languages.
Dad:  They weren't very good at pretending to be people, were they?
Gracie:  Mrs. Which thinks it's very tiring to show her whole self, so she's just faded and you can only see a little of her shimmering.
Lily:  Mrs. Which talks in this scary voice.
Dad:  Ha ha ha...  At least the way Dad reads it, huh?  Tell me about how everyone traveled from planet to planet.
Isaac:  They tessered.
Lily:  You can go all the way from one place to another and it takes a really short time.  If you are going to a place that's really far away, you just tesser and you get right there in a second.
Gracie:  "Wrinkle in Time."  That describes a tesseract.  If there was a big string and an ant was walking across the string, it would take him forever to get from one end to the other.  But if you bring the two ends together the ant could just hop over.  That would be like tessering.  But for an ant.
Dad:  But instead of traveling on a string, a tesseract is a way to jump through time and space.
Gracie:  It would be awesome to tesser!  I'm going to try it!
Isaac:  Like to Florida.
Dad:  Wouldn't that have been nice if we could have tessered to Florida on our vacation instead of driving for three days?
Isaac:  I liked driving for three days.  Because then we could stop at hotels and go swimming.
Dad:  That's the sad thing about when Meg tessered though the universe...  She couldn't stop and go swimming on different planets.
Kids:  Ha ha ha...
Dad:  Where was one place they tessered by accident?
Isaac:  The 2-D planet.
Gracie:  It hurt!  It felt like you were getting squished by a cement truck.
Dad:  The three Mrs's forgot the kids couldn't go to a two dimensional planet.  Why were they doing all this tessering anyway?
Lily:  The kids had to find their father and fight the evil thingie and save their father.
Dad:  And they found their father on the planet Camazotz.
Isaac:  Bad place.
Lily:  On Camazotz everyone did the same things.  It's freaky - when one person went inside, everyone had to go inside.  Scary!
Isaac:  Everything was like the same, like the same, like the same.  They do everything at the exact same time, exact same time, exact same time.  Like if someone was jumping rope and someone was playing ball, the rope would hit the ground, hit the ground, when the ball hit the ground, hit the ground.  Everything was in rhythm and everything was the same, was the same, was the same.
Gracie:  At the exact same time all the doors opened, all the mothers came out, all the kids put their stuff away, and all came inside at the exact same time.
Dad:  What's so bad about that?  I'd love it if I could make you put your toys away...
Isaac:  But nobody's happy, nobody's sad...
Gracie:  You can't even breathe in your own rhythm.  They were all controlled by "IT."
Lily:  And "IT" is gross.
Gracie:  "IT" is a giant, squishy brain.
Dad:  Did they find their father?
Gracie:  Yes.  Meg thought that once they found her father, he would save the day.
Dad:  Is that what happened?
Gracie:  No.
Lily:  He killed the day.
Gracie:  WHAT?  Ha ha ha hah...
Isaac:  Charles Wallace 's brain got captured by IT.  And if he went away with the others, he would explode because he wouldn't be able to bear being ripped away from IT so suddenly.
Dad:  Meg wanted everyone else to solve her problems.  But in the end, who had to save the day?
Gracie:  Meg.
Dad:  Even though she wasn't as smart as Charles Wallace, or as powerful as Mrs. Whatsit...
Gracie:  But she had love.  "I love you, Charles Wallace!  I love you!  I love you!!!"
Dad:  We didn't talk about Aunt Beast yet, and that's one of my favorite characters from any book I've ever read.
Lily:  She is a creature too.
Isaac:  A kind of creature with no eyeballs.  They just have dents where the eyes would be.
Gracie:  They are tall and have four arms.  And they are dull gray.  Everything on that planet is dull and gray.
Dad:  Because they don't need colors... no eyes.
Gracie:  But they have the best, amazing, yummiest food in the world.  And they have tentacles.  A lot of them.  And that's how they speak.  Through their tentacles.  And smell.
Dad:  The beasts couldn't understand when Meg was trying to describe what "sight" is like.  Wouldn't it be weird to have someone describe a sense that we weren't built for?
Isaac:  Like, a shark has a sense that we don't have, I think.
Dad:  We don't even know what senses we don't have.  If someone was trying to describe one, we wouldn't know what they were taking about -- we'd have nothing to compare it to, no frame of reference.
Gracie:  The beasties have a sense we don't have.  They can read thoughts.  You think of something, and they can see what you are thinking.  You better not think of something bad about them!
Dad:  So was it a good book?
Gracie:  Awesome book!  People should read it!
Dad:  Did you know there are more in the series?
Gracie:  What.
Dad:  "A Wind in the Door" is next...  it has strange creatures too.  A cherubim.
Gracie:  What is a cherubim?
Dad:  Oh, ho ho... I'm going to have to show you a picture.  I have two copies of it, each with a different cherubim painting on the cover.
Isaac:  Aren't those the things with zillions of eyes and wings?
Gracie:  Then let's get it!  Right now!  In this very room!

Aunt Beast, by Lily

front row: Charles Wallace, Meg, Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit;  back row: Aunt Beast, Mr. Murry, Mrs. Which, Mrs. Murry - by Gracie

Mrs. Whatsit transformed, by Isaac

Author: Madeleine L'Engle
Published, 1962: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
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Review #4: Holes

Dad:  For our bedtime story, we recently spent a few nights reading "Holes" by Louis Sachar...
Gracie (age 8):  It's about digging holes.
Isaac (age 10):  It was exciting.  There were lots of parts where, at first you don't understand what's happening, but later in the book it tells you more about it.
Gracie:  Like Stanley's dirty rotten, pig stealing, great-great-grandfather!
Dad:  So that's an example where, at first you don't understand who he was...
Isaac:  Yeah - but now we know why they called him that.
Gracie:  Dirty rotten, pig stealing, great-great-grandfather!
Dad:  I like how there were a whole bunch of things that seemed separate from each other, but as the book goes on...
Isaac: ...all the stories start combining into one.
Dad:  So what happens?
Isaac:  Zero ran away from the camp because he was mad, and Stanley chased after him...
Gracie:  Camp Green Lake -- it's a terrible camp.  You would rather go to jail than that camp.
Isaac:  He was gone for eight or nine days, and there was no water or anything.  But he brought his shovel with him, and he dug a hole under a boat that said "Mary Lou," and they found some old spiced peaches...
Gracie:  Sam the Onion Man had a donkey named Mary Lou.  But Zero and Stanley thought the boat was named after a person, not a donkey.  They said, "Man, she must have been important if someone named a boat after her.  I bet she looked great in a bathing suit next to her boyfriend."  That was SO FUNNY!  I'm imagining Mary Lou in a bathing suit right now, and it is HILARIOUS!  Do you hear me people?  HILARIOUS!
Isaac:  I can tell you why the kids dig holes...
Gracie:  No!  We don't want to spoil the mystery for the listeners...
Isaac:  WHAT???
Gracie:  Shame on you!
Isaac:  People are not just going to go read the book after they read this!
Dad:  Well, they might-- that's why we're doing this!  A book review is supposed to make it exciting for people so they'll want to go out and read it themselves...
Gracie:  Yah!
Dad:  So, Lily, what did you think was exciting?
Lily (age 5):  The lizards in the book had yellow spots and glowing red eyes and very sharp black teeth and a loooong white tongue.  They like to live in holes.  And no matter what, if the lizards bite you... you will have to die.
Dad:  Oh no!
Lily:  But they don't bite you if you have onion blood, because they do not eat onion blood.
Isaac:  The ending was one of the best parts.
Dad:  Gracie was so excited, she couldn't sit still!
Isaac:  They were surrounded by yellow spotted lizards in a hole...  It made me feel worried...
Gracie:  I was freaked out.  And when I'm freaked out, I jump around and get scared.
Lily:  I remember when it was happening, I didn't move at all.  I thought there was a lizard... crawling... up... my... face...
Dad:  Any last comments?
Isaac:  It's a good book.  You really should read it.  I wish I could tell you more about it... but I can't.  They won't let me.

spitting into the hole, by Lily

Mary Lou in a bathing suit, by Gracie

yellow spotted lizard, by Isaac

Author: Louis Sachar
Published, 1998: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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