You Broke It!, the picture book debut of New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck, is a fresh and funny deflation of adult authority figures. A series of anthropomorphized animal parents scold their offspring in familiar but contextually illogical ways: the title is voiced by a mother bird who’s peeved that her hatching offspring has broken the eggshell; a big raincloud tells a little cloud to “Stop crying!” Finck spoke with PW from a favorite café in Park Slope, Brooklyn, about fulfilling her longtime picture book aspirations, and her shifting sympathies for the characters in You Broke It!
Let’s start with the book’s ending. A New York Times profile described your work as chronicling “contemporary anguish,” which is seldom resolved. But this book concludes with a “grownup”—in this case an octopus—realizing it was too hard on a little octopus and offering it a multi-armed hug. Was it a struggle to give this book a happy ending?
My reason for chronicling anguish is actually kind of a happy one: I want to get it out there and make it something everyone can see and share and realize it’s something that we all feel a lot and care about a lot.
I spewed out a million different scenarios to Cecily Kaiser [publisher of Rise x Penguin Workshop], who had reached out to me through my agent, Meredith Kaffel Simonoff. Cecily nudged me toward a happy resolution. I’m a cartoonist and I don’t think in terms of linear narrative arcs, so it was a satisfying and “soft” way to see what it’s like to make a happy ending.
My earlier tries at children’s books were often very depressing. There was one about a dog that got left at home—it mirrored my own life as a freelancer, which is kind of lonely.
Your human characters often have an axe to grind, but your animals are usually quite happy and self-possessed. What was it like to draw “adult” animals who are every bit as disgruntled as your humans? Did your experience as a parent [Finck has a child who is “two and a few months”] have anything to do with it?
That’s such a good point. I think it was a little difficult [to draw grumpy animals]. I had always thought of animals as the id—although I know that’s not true now that I have a very ancient dog. I was very shy as a kid and afraid of other people and thought of animals as my friends and very safe.
When I first had the idea for this book, I had really strong memories of being reprimanded as a kid. I would like to redraw this book now from an adult perspective, because I totally get the mother bird: she’s angry her baby broke the egg, the precious egg that she made. Of course, the child had to break it to be born, but the mother bird is so tired of cleaning up messes and wants time for herself.
You’ve talked about wanting to be a New Yorker cartoonist since you were a child. Was being a children’s book author also a longstanding goal?
I’ve been trying to make children’s books all my life—it was really my first goal. Cecily was the person who was able to guide me to do it. I’m not used to working so closely with someone and I love it; magazines treat you like this magical image person. Cecily is very logical and strategic in a way I aspire to be. She’s good at putting emotion into precise words.
I still have all the books I read as a kid. I adored Maira Kalman and remember reading Sayonara, Mrs. Kackleman for the first time when I was four years old. I think that made me want to write children’s books. A lot of cartoonists are secretly children’s book fans, and a lot of New Yorker artists have been great children’s book artists, like William Steig and Roz Chast.
You have a book for adults coming out in March, How to Baby. What’s your next picture book?
I have another book with Cecily called Mixed Feelings. It’s an idea I’d had for a decade or two, but it’s transformed a lot into something with more heart—a book about kids having complicated feelings that there aren’t words for yet.
I’m not positive we’ve landed it yet, but it’s going to have a somewhat more complicated drawing style, and we have four different characters that we’ve fleshed out who go through different scenarios. I’m about halfway through drawing it, although I’m drawing the children much too big. I keep forgetting that they’re not adults.
You Broke It! by Liana Fincl. Rise x Penguin Workshop, $18.99 Jan. 23 ISBN 978-0-593-66040-9
