More than a decade has passed since William Joyce, author and illustrator of George Shrinks, Santa Calls, and other titles, has published a children's book. His fans will be pleased to learn that he is back. The Guardians of Childhood, a series of seven picture books and six chapter books that tell the formative stories of such childhood icons as Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Sandman, debuts in September from Atheneum. The inaugural releases are a picture book, The Man in the Moon, which has a 350,000-copy announced first printing, and a chapter book, Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King, coauthored by Joyce and Laura Geringer and illustrated by Joyce, which has a 150,000-copy initial print run.
Joyce is also returning to BEA after a long absence. "I am very stoked to be here," he says. "I've been away too long but for all the best reasons. I've been working very hard on this book project, and now I'm ready to show everyone my stories." He will be doing just that today at 3:30 p.m., when he signs copies of The Man in the Moon at the Simon & Schuster booth (3652–3653).
Joyce originally conceived of the Guardians of Childhood in the early 1990s, when his children were very young. "I realized that I had to start sharing the stories of childhood icons with them, and I was excited about it," he recalls. "I remember as a kid asking my parents how Santa Claus and the Sandman do what they do, and I was very perturbed that they didn't have much to offer. ‘They just do it—no one needs to know how or why,' they'd tell me. But I wanted to have something more satisfying to tell my kids. I wanted to find a mythology for these icons. What if they all knew each other? What if they all worked together?"
For years, Joyce mulled over the idea, while keeping very busy. In addition to writing and illustrating his other picture books, he created the Emmy-winning animated TV series Rolie Polie Olie, developed character concepts for Toy Story and A Bug's Life, and made animated films, including Robots and Meet the Robinsons. He is now writing, designing, and producing The Leaf Men, a Fox Animation feature film based on his book. And 18 months ago, he cofounded Moonbot Studios, whose first animated short film, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, premiered in February. (Starring a book-loving man, the film was inspired by—and written for—the late Bill Morris, a longtime pillar of HarperCollins and beloved friend and mentor to Joyce.)
Over time, the concept for the Guardians of Childhood expanded and, says Joyce, "the idea got so big and ungainly in my mind that I couldn't find a way to get started. The longer I spent on it, the richer it got—and even more daunting. I realized that this was going to take years."
Yet the Guardians of Childhood concept eventually gelled, and Joyce decided that the series would include chapter books as well as picture books. "I realized how much fun it was to imagine an entire world for each of these icons, and it was hard to get enough into just a picture book," he explains. "I found the narratives lending themselves to something longer." Though he had never before penned a novel, Joyce notes, "I've worked in long form before, with motion pictures, which have a three-arc structure."
Joyce also came to envision bringing together the characters featured in the individual Guardians of Childhood books on the big screen, and when a number of major studios expressed interest in the project, he selected DreamWorks Animation, which will release Rise of the Guardians in fall 2012. Directed by Peter Ramsey and codirected by Joyce, the film features the voices of Chris Pine, Hugh Jackman, Jude Law, Alec Baldwin, and Isla Fisher.
The author is thrilled to be part of the film project. "Writing and illustrating is a pretty isolated endeavor, and collaborating with really talented people on the film has been one of the glories of my creative life," Joyce says. "I love filmmaking, and animation has a sense of craftsmanship and an esprit de corps that somehow feels old-school, even with the new technology. It feels like publishing in a sense."
