Adam Rubin and Daniel Salmieri, the creative team who introduced taco-loving dragons to the world, think they have a hit with their next book. Just look at the cover, revealed here for the first time. Give High Five (Dial, Apr.) a slap. Really, that’s what the creators want you to do.
“I thought it would be funny to do a version of blood sport for children,” said Rubin, author of the bestselling Dragons Love Tacos and its sequel, Dragons Love Tacos 2. “I had seen all these videos of teachers doing these complicated and nuanced high fives with their students and I thought, ‘That’s underexploited.’ Every kid knows how to do a high five. Even Dan’s dog can high five. We need a book about extreme high-fiving.”
The result is a primer on hand-slapping excellence with tips on limbering up your fiving hand, and upping your game by adding finesse and flair. The narrator is a former high-five champion (who goes by “Sensei”) who instructs the audience to use “a fresh technique/that’s so unique,/It leaves me unable to speak,” in preparation for the 75th Annual High Five Tournament. Readers (or listeners) are invited to smack the book at various intervals to practice before the competition (against a parade of animals) begins. “The hope is that they come up with inventive ways of interacting with the book,” Rubin said.
The text is written in rhyme, a choice Rubin traces to Broadway. “A few years ago, I saw Hamilton and it just blew me away,” he said. “I had never done anything that rhymed but Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop lyrics were so beautiful. It’s poetry but it contains so much information about history. It really stuck with me and made me want to do something that rhymed.” He hopes the structure will encourage people reading the book aloud to put their own personality into it. “With Dragons Love Tacos we saw that it made a big difference when the adult really liked to read the book aloud,” he said. “There’s a performance aspect to it that makes for a richer experience for the kids, too.”
Salmieri’s challenge—to provide enough space for the occasionally huge handprint—required him to think big. “The first thing I thought was that the book would have to be bigger in size than our other ones,” he said. “Then the challenge was drawing the animals you high five in a way that shows it’s obvious you’re supposed to interact with them. I made a bunch of sketches working out the perspective of the animals in action poses with their arm and hand outstretched to the reader.”
Art director Lily Malcolm suggested a bright palette. Salmieri went with neons—magenta, cyan, yellow, Day-Glo orange—and loves the result. “When we saw the test proofs, the colors just glowed on the page, and we had to go with it,” Salmieri said. “Almost all the colors in the book are neon and super bright.”
Because High Five might take more abuse than the average picture book, editor Kate Harrison said they “upgraded the paper stock to make it sturdier and used heavier boards for the case cover.”
Still, Rubin said he imagines he might have to tell some readers to go easy. “My greatest fear is that some innocent grandmother might get smacked instead of the book.”
