Annie Barrows is the author of the children’s book series Ivy and Bean and The Best of Iggy, the YA novel Nothing, and the adult novel The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society with Mary Ann Shaffer. Sophie Blackall is a two-time Caldecott Medalist and the founder of Milkwood, a creative retreat for the children’s book community. We asked the friends and close collaborators about their new series for early readers, Stella & Marigold, and honoring the way young people see and imagine the world.
Annie Barrows: Stella & Marigold has a funny history. It began as the Ivy and Bean series came to an end, when we were both struck by the horrifying realization that we wouldn’t be working together anymore.
Sophie Blackall: It was a terrible thought.
Barrows: Not to be borne.
Blackall: We were driven by necessity: we had to come up with a new book project together. So we self-sacrificingly—
Barrows: Nobly, really—
Blackall: —took ourselves off to several remote seaside locations, where we did a lot of walking on the beach and talking and eating. We talked a lot about the books that had been important to us as children, and why they were important. Comfort, trust, and a world we wanted to return to were crucial.
Barrows: So was the wonderful way kids explain things to themselves and to each other, the way that they can entertain the possibility of the magical or imaginary right alongside the real.
Blackall: Out of all our walking and talking came the idea of a pair of sisters who love and trust and explain the world to one another.
Barrows: But since the whole idea was to make something together, we didn’t just retreat to our separate corners and do our separate tasks. We actually began working on the books while we were together.
Blackall: In the same room!
Barrows: Which made it completely unlike any other project I’ve ever worked on. For me, there was a feedback effect to watching you create the art. For instance, remember the day I was hanging over your arm as you drew Marigold for the first time? When I saw her take shape, she became, suddenly, a character who then had certain responses and adventures I hadn’t previously known about. Image generated story, and that was really cool.
Blackall: Another thing that happened on that—let’s call it a conjuring—retreat was that we talked a lot about our own childhood memories, and there was a combustion of memory and narrative. I was remembering things I hadn’t thought about in decades, and, as they unearthed themselves, they emerged fresh and clear, unlike the stuff I recall all the time, which has become layered and fuzzy from overuse. Accessing those memories—especially the ones of discomfort and misunderstanding—sent me hurtling back into the world of childhood, which I then poured into the creation of Stella and Marigold.
Barrows: Was there anything that surprised you about my writing process when you got to see it up close?
Blackall: Ha! Yes! When I write, it’s so hard. Every sentence feels like a kidney stone. Whereas you were giggling at your own jokes, typing and cackling away.
Barrows: I do find myself hilarious. But you want to know what surprised me about you? I had absolutely no idea that you pick a palette of color before you begin! I thought you—and everybody—just sort of chose whatever color seemed right for a particular image. But no. You’ve got a whole set of colors all prepared. And then I come to find out that the Stella & Marigold palette was inspired by a collection of Victorian billiard balls!
Blackall: Without a palette, there would be infinite indecision. Also, I love to think about what the world of the book is going to be like, and choosing the color parameters is part of that. It’s fun for me, but it’s also a way of layering another dimension onto the characters. For example, I think of Stella as calm and centered; she has a cool head about her, so her colors are cooler—blue and green—and she’s like her name, so her colors are celestial. Marigold, being a marigold, is yellow and orange and bright and fiery. She’s all the feelings all at once, which translates to warm colors.
Barrows: Ha! That’s exactly where the names came from! Stella is cool and serene and sees things from above, and Marigold is hot and round and centered in the ground.
Blackall: Oh, that’s good. I wasn’t thinking of Stella seeing things from above and Marigold from the ground, but that feeds into an idea I have about how as grownups, we forget to look at things from different angles, whereas kids are seeing the world from much lower down: small things, undersides, all that.
Barrows: Right, and that feeds into an idea I have: that the world grownups explain is not the world kids are seeing, and the discrepancy between what they’re seeing and what they’re hearing is the source of all those fantastical kid-explanations.
Blackall: Oh no! We’re running out of time, and I had so many more questions to ask you!
Barrows: Quick! Ask!
Blackall: When you were a kid, did you ever try to re-enact something from a favorite book?
Barrows: For sure. I was always hoping that I would find the magic coin from Half Magic, so every time I picked a penny up off the sidewalk, I’d start whispering wishes into it. Never got me anywhere. What about you?
Blackall: Equally sad. My cousin Tom and I pooled all our money—which wasn’t a lot—and went to the corner store, where we bought as many lollipops as we could. We took them home and planted them, hoping for a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory candy garden. We ended up with no money and candy too dirty to eat.
Barrows: That’s a terrible story. The main reason to become a children’s book creator is to fix the endings of stuff that happened in real life.
Stella & Marigold by Annie Barrows, illus. by Sophie Blackall. Chronicle, $15.99 Oct. 1 ISBN 978-1-7972-1970-7
