William Joyce figures that Rocket Puppies is his 53rd book—although don’t hold him to that. What’s clear is that this story of a team of interstellar, incredibly cute puppies who save the Earth from despair caused by villain Snarly McBummerpants and his poo-shaped henchmen, has a particularly profound backstory. Joyce was getting ready to celebrate his son’s 30th birthday, but he took time out for a delightfully discursive conversation with PW that started with those adorable puppies, but quickly moved on to themes of loss and finding love, French pencils, the wisdom of classic movies (he co-hosted TCM Movie Camp in 2015), and holding his own in modern-day Hollywood.
On Instagram you recently noted that you started Rocket Puppies during the pandemic, when everyone needed cheering up. Given the current national mood, does it seem like that intention is more relevant than ever?
Don’t it, though? [Laughs.] It’s kind of sad to say that. I actually thought I had sort of missed the boat [in terms of pandemic timing], but it’s still a happy book, and now it’s even more necessary.
What was the reaction of your editor, Caitlyn Dlouhy, when you told her your idea?
We were sitting in the café at the Museum of Modern Art when she asked, “What are you going to do next?” I said I had two titles and I don’t know what’s going to happen with them—and that’s never how I work.
She asked, “What are they?” And I said, “The first one is called Rocket Puppies,” and she spit out her coffee. “I can only imagine what you’re going to do with that one. Dare I ask what the second title is?”
And I said, “It’s called Glitter Kittens.” They supply joy but they’re not self-aware [laughs], and sometimes they’re just too glittery and so enamored with their glittery-ness. They think it’s essential to other people’s happiness: “Hey, we’re here to brighten your world!” and people respond, “Yeah, Glitter Kittens, you’re bright and shiny and we’re not.” They’re just a little weary of the message. Glitter Kittens start to play hide and seek with their best friends and then a glitter-eating monster sees the Glitter Kittens’ tracks... everything works out, although they’re still completely not self-aware. That one is due out next fall.
Did you try anything different with the illustration style for Rocket Puppies?
I’m always trying to evolve my style a little bit and always searching for a style that fits the story. There’s always a tonal shift in how I do each one. This book is so simple and sweet and funny in a sly way.
I kept thinking about those Dick and Jane readers from my childhood. There’s such a bright, shiny kind of glorious, simple, innocent feel to them. But I wanted to do it in a different way [in colored pencil], which is not something I’ve tried for a whole book before. I went to this awesome pencil store in New York that’s no longer there and bought every kind of amazing colored pencil I could get my hands on. I just started drawing to see if it would look cool and I loved the way they evoked the Dick and Jane stuff.
Things feel so cynical and angry and dark. I wanted to hearken back to the most innocent things I can think of from my childhood. Even as a child I was aware that those Dick and Jane books looked prettier than life, but I loved them. It’s part of what made me an artist—I loved the drawings so much. The picket fence world, everyone’s clothes so beautifully colored. The artist was already in me and I just wanted to eat the colors. It made me feel good to recreate that in my own way.
Of course, those books have got huge cultural chasms in terms of who’s missing. So that’s another thing I tried to address in Rocket Puppies. I have twin 13-year-olds at this point [from his second marriage] and their classroom is completely different from the ones I grew up in. I thought, “All right, I can do Dick and Jane with a broader spectrum of what the world is like now.”
Among the many characters in the book are Laurel and Hardy. What inspired you to include them?
It made me happy to put Laurel and Hardy in there. They should not be forgotten. When I was growing up, their movie shorts were on TV all the time. David Mamet said the only really innocent thing that came out of Hollywood was Laurel and Hardy. They’re so childlike; they beat each other up all the time, but in the end, they’re absolutely devoted to each other and their friendship. They’ll be brave and kind and silly, two child-like people walking through an adult world and trying to navigate it with terrible skills, and they always get jobs that they’re completely unqualified for... and they’re happy. I just want kids—or their parents—who don’t know who Laurel and Hardy to ask, “Who are these fellas? They look so fun and cheerful and incongruous, wearing flowerpots on their heads, playing ukuleles.
You’ve referred to this as “the most happy book I’ve done in a long, long time.” Can you elaborate?
The stories I was writing [previously] were darker and dealing with loss [Joyce’s daughter died in 2010 and his first wife died in 2016]. I’d been building my life back, I found a wonderful woman, and Rocket Puppies is the breath of fresh air that I needed. Hilary [his second wife] and I had gotten together, then we were in the pandemic with this new little family, and I would tell them stories every night. And it was really fun and healing to have these twins, a little boy and girl, on either side of me, and I just improvised.
Hilary could hear the stories and she said, “These are really good.” Rocket Puppies came out of that, after the title came to my head, and the same for Glitter Kittens.
Another story I came up with [during the pandemic] is Franken Cookies. He’s from a family of mad scientists, but he doesn’t want to make a monster—he likes to bake. It was something I gurgled out when I was trying to get the twins to go to sleep. Hilary said, “Do you remember Franken Cookie?” and she retold it to me. I’m on the floor, I’m laughing so hard. It might be the next book.
It’s not that I’ll ever stop grieving, but to find a lifeline to joy—someone said, “All you look for when you’re grieving is a ray of sunshine to graze your shoe.” That’s what Rocket Puppies is.
Is it hard to do happy and funny? It seems like it can be difficult to walk that line between sentimental and ironic.
I’ve submerged myself in the old masters of lighthearted entertainment. When you watch Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, the early Betty Boop and Fleischer cartoons, Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny, and then you grow up with Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Stuart Little—I didn’t catch how mournful it was when I was a kid, I just wanted him to find Margalo so bad—they ride this edge of pure joy with a tinge of melancholy. And the best ones dare to be optimistic.
Since the mid-’90s you’ve spent time in Hollywood working on award-winning films and TV series. Can you catch us up on that side of your life?
I was asked to come to Hollywood at a very interesting time. It was the advent of computer-generated films and that was exciting to do, but I never quit writing books. It’s a bifurcated life and it fuels two sides of my nature, I guess.
You do a book and it’s you and your editor and you get to put everything you want in there and the vision stays; there’s not many people who say no. In the movies, you get regimes of people who come and go and it takes so long to make these movies. You can be working with people from the studio head all the way down for four years and then they get fired and you have a whole new group with new ideas of how to spend money and you try to weather that. If you’ve got 25 people in a room there, there’s going to be five smart ones. One of the first people I worked with in Hollywood was Francis Ford Coppola, and he told me if you get 30% of what you’re trying to do on the screen, you’re doing good.
With Rolie Polie Olie [the Disney Channel TV series] it was so early in cable land—they believed in the story and it tested well with audiences and they just left us alone. I feel like Rolie Polie Olie was exactly what I hoped. It was subversively cheerful, right? But I also wanted it to be grounded in the emotion of what happens in a family. All that stuff got to be in there; the craziest stuff we came up with succeeded and wasn’t squashed.
But all the studios are in chaos. So I started a development company five years ago called HowdyBot. I found I was happier when I was in control of the development process. I raised money so I can go to the studios and say here’s the story and here’s what it looks like, and keep the erosion process at bay. I’m just now completing those projects to the point I’m ready to take them out. I’ll find out in the next couple of weeks if one of them is going to get made—it’s something I’ve been trying to bring to the screen for a long, long time.
I’ve been trying to do an animated version of The Great Gatsby with a script I’ve worked on with Brian Selznick. We’ve had the best time. I think The Great Gatsby film adaptations haven’t succeeded because it’s not about the real world—it’s a dreamscape that resembles our world. It should look like J.C. Leyendecker illustrations from the 1920s or Vanity Fair or Vogue at the time—Fitzgerald was reading those magazines. Then I think Gatsby as a film will resonate more fully.
Before we say goodbye: in case of future emergencies, how do we get in contact with Rocket Puppies?
I’ve been working with their people [laughs] and I’m trying to get a solid, consistent line of communication to them. Apparently they did come once, and they don’t often repeat visits, but I think they’d love to help us out again.
Rocket Puppies by William Joyce. Atheneum/Dlouhy, $18.99 Nov. 5 ISBN 978-1-6659-6133-2
