Cece Bell’s latest book, Animal Albums from A to Z, is a veritable kid lit Gesamtkunstwerk. Bell created 26 record albums for fictitious animal soloists and groups—each one reflecting musical and graphic design tastes from the 1940s to the 1980s. She wrote a passel of letter-themed song titles (like “Judy Jumps on Jupiter” for a duo named Jaguar Jamieson & Jenni Jerboa. She created complete lyrics for one of the album’s songs, and then took on the role of record producer to bring it to life. (Readers can listen via a QR code on the book’s copyright page.) As Bell spoke with PW about her version of Behind the Music, she also touched on what it meant to create an audio-themed book as a deaf person and the challenges of getting young digital natives to grasp what a record album actually is.
The scope of this project is extraordinary. Was there ever a point when you thought, “What have I gotten myself into?”
It took about three years to do, and I didn’t work on anything else. But I never thought I would have another book that felt so right to me. El Deafo [Bell’s 2014 award-winning autobiographical graphic novel about being the only deaf child in her school and community] was very hard and challenging in a different way and that was a book where I thought, “What have I gotten myself into? This is never going to end.” But I never felt that way with this book. I’m just having so much fun making stuff.
I feel like Susan [Van Metre, her editor at Candlewick] gave me a lot of freedom and really let it be what I wanted it to be. I’ve been spending my advance to pay for the music. But that’s OK because [she flexes an arm muscle] it feels like art! I’m riding this wave of having a good time. I’ll be sad to see it finished.
How did you pitch such a big undertaking?
I knew I wanted to work with Susan, who was also the editor of El Deafo. I knew she loved music and had a deep connection—her father-in-law was Pete Fornatale [a famous figure in FM radio and progressive rock].
I basically said, “Hey, here’s what I want to do.” I made a couple of fake album covers, which didn’t ultimately make it into the book. That was all I had. I didn’t realize I would be rewriting song lyrics, or how it would all come together. It took us a while to figure out the best way to make it work. Once I decided to write out a song from each album, I realized it could also be a kind of poetry book.
Were you concerned at all that young digital natives may not even know what an album is?
The biggest roadblock for Susan, who I love dearly, was that she felt like kids wouldn’t understand what an album is. But I had a couple of things working for me. Vinyl and all that analog stuff is making a comeback. Also, on Spotify and the other streaming services, when they show you an image that represents the artist, it’s always a square. It doesn’t have all the names of the song on it like the old albums do, but it’s still a square. That iconography is enough. That’s how I won her over. But it was a little bit of a tough sell.
And it doesn’t matter if kids don’t get it right away, because there are pictures you can look at.
What’s the book’s origin story?
About five or six years ago, I took a year off when I didn’t sign contracts or deadlines and gave myself freedom to make things. I ended up making these collage paintings based on actual old albums from my parents’ collections—the weirder the better. Then I put them away and forgot about them.
When I did feel like I needed to be doing something, I didn’t have any compelling stories in me at the moment. I knew I wanted to make an alphabet book, and for a while I thought it would be an alphabet book about everything in the world I love. That got out of hand very quickly. But while I was rethinking it, I started making these little square boxes that could have things in them that represented whatever the letter was. And then I thought, “Wait a minute, these boxes could be those album covers.”
In this very sort of subtle underhanded way, the book is also my response to well-meaning people who ask if I can hear and appreciate music. When I answer yes, because I wear a hearing aid, the answer is met with so much shock. People need to be reminded that every disability is on a spectrum, and my experience of deafness is one of a deaf person who uses hearing aids. I also wanted to remind people that we can enjoy music visually—on MTV, on the Grammys—and in tactile ways, like when we put a record on the record player.
How did you decide to record 26 different songs?
Ultimately, music is meant to be heard. I only thought I’d do five songs, but it just grew and grew. Almost everyone involved is in some way connected to my years in high school marching bands [in Salem, Va.]. A bunch of the kids I grew up with became professional musicians and then they knew people, too. So many musicians are connected to each other in the way that people in children’s publishing are connected. The grandson of my band director is the guy who recorded a majority of the songs.
I was 100% involved in the El Deafo cartoon series [on Apple TV], and it really forced me to be a grown-up in terms of being forthright with people—“This is how it’s going to be”—really protecting myself and standing up for myself when I needed to. I’m not somebody who wants to put on the big girl pants. I also got to see a line producer at work—the person who made sure everything was happening at the right time and the right place. From watching his process and organization, I learned skills that had nothing to do with illustration, which was helpful in managing the musicians I hired for the songs. I really was a music producer.
I had this one beautiful spreadsheet. I had to schedule the recordings, make sure the musicians were there on time, and pay them. In the end, we had over 60 different people involved in the songs. I was trying to get as many different performers and singers as I could, so each song and “voice” was unique.
The plan is that every album cover in the book will be on the book’s website; you can click on one and hear the song. I’m also hoping to make sure they can be available on streaming services.
Why did you pick the time frame of the 1940s to the 1980s for your albums and genres?
Mostly because that seems to be the period that record albums were the main way that folks listened to music, and those seem to be the periods that are reflected in my parents’, my siblings’, and my own record collections. I wanted to have access to as many genres as I could, since I needed 26, and there are a lot of genres available in that 40-year period.
You commit to the bit, as they say, from the book’s introduction. You conjure up a Behind the Music story of an entire genre of music-making animals—along with a story of why you loved collecting these fictional albums. It’s written so persuasively that grownups may find themselves doing a kind of double-take. Why was it important to you to set the stage like that?
I had a great time working on the introduction. I was trying to make people think that there really was a brief period when animals were recording music in the studios.
There was a book I was obsessed with in the 1970s when I was in third grade: Gnomes [by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet]. I have my own copy as an adult now. It had those beautiful, accurate paintings—it looked like an anthropological book—and everything about gnomes: what they looked like without their clothes, what kind of food they grew. And I believed all of it. “These are so real, the people who made this book must have had a reference.” The book belonged to a friend of mine who I think knew that it wasn’t real, but she wanted me to believe. She let me take it home. I enjoyed that period of believing, and I wanted to give readers the same feeling.
You note that “Every bit of the final art was by hand.” Did you experiment with materials and media that was new to you?
Cutting out paper, gluing things—that’s how I make my craft stuff and gifts for people. But I’d never used those methods to make a book.
I did use a computer to plan out everything, but it is all handmade including most of the lettering. Candlewick asks that text be black so when they do foreign editions, they only have to make one plate. But I didn’t want black text, so I just decided to make all the type on the albums handwritten.
It was challenging in terms of time, but it was easily the most fun I’ve ever had working on art for a book. Each one felt like a fresh start, like figuring out little jigsaw puzzles.
Are you interested in taking the concept of Animal Albums further in terms of performance?
I have been working on MTV-style music videos that go with the songs. I’ve made three, and I’m aiming for five with lots of animation. I’ve made these massive costumes that look like characters from the albums—I made giant elephant costumes. I’ve been having so much fun with the videos.
If someone said, “We need you to write songs for Sesame Street,” I’d be all over that.
What’s next for you?
I’d like to do a book of nursery rhymes—like Father Fox's Pennyrhymes by Clyde Watson and her sister Wendy Watson. That was a favorite of book of my husband, Tom Angleberger, when he was a kid. I love the absurdity, but also the sweetness, of nursery rhymes—and their great rhythms! I really like how the Watsons made all their illustrations fox-based to unite their rhymes, and I would love to try something similar, but perhaps quite a bit goofier. Old nursery rhymes often do have some kind of reason for being, some kind of historical significance, but if you don't know what that is, and I generally don't, the rhymes make you say, “huh”? But I like that they seem nonsensical, and that would totally be what I would go for. Though I have come up with some little poems, it's all still very much in my head. So we shall see!
We’re going to make 40 copies of an actual Animal Albums LP. I need a couple for school visits. I want to show up with a portable record player and pull out a record and say, “Kids, these are from olden times.”
Animal Albums from A to Z by Cece Bell. Walker US, $19.99 Mar. 26 ISBN 978-1-5362-2624-9
