Franklin’s serendipitous inception sprang from a joyous milestone in Bourgeois’s life—the birth of her first child—and a subsequent sleepless night. Bourgeois had worked as an occupational therapist and a journalist in Toronto, but embarked on a different career path after her daughter, Natalie, was born in 1983. “I decided I wanted to stay at home with Natalie, but I also realized we had a mortgage,” she recalled. “So one day, I said, ‘Ah-ha! I'm a writer and a mother, so why not try writing a children's book?’ So I went to the library, babe in arms, and read just about every picture book in the children’s section. By the time I finished, I understood the rhythm of the language and appreciated the importance of story and simplicity.”
But Bourgeois had no idea what she wanted to write about. That problem solved itself late one night, when she turned on the TV in hopes of calming her fussy infant. She tuned into a rerun episode of M*A*S*H, in which Alan Alda's character, Hawkeye, quips that he's so claustrophobic that if he were a turtle he'd be afraid of his own shell. "As soon as I heard that, I said, ‘That's it!' " Bourgeois explained. "I knew then that I wanted to write a book about a turtle who finds a way to deal with his fear of his dark shell at nighttime."
The author noted that the story came together "embarrassingly easily" after she came up with the concept of Franklin's friends comforting him by confiding their own fears, and she finished a first draft (then entitled The Turtle They Called Chicken) relatively quickly. But Bourgeois received rejections from six U.S. publishers before submitting her manuscript to Kids Can Press. "We didn't have a large Canadian publishing industry at the time, but I realized that there were changes afoot, and the country was starting to have a really interesting publishing scene," she said. "I approached Kids Can Press, which was the best move I could have made."
No Turtle's Pace for Franklin
When Kids Can accepted the manuscript and lined up Brenda Clark to illustrate the book, a 28-year-long collaborative relationship began. As a result of Franklin in the Dark's success and readers' requests for more stories, Bourgeois and Clark created 29 additional core books starring Franklin. Throughout the years, their collaboration has been smooth, according to the author: "Brenda and I respect each other's arena of talent completely. I tried to be vague in terms of the visual aspects of each story and let Brenda create Franklin's world. Going over her thumbnails for each book, I was never once disappointed."
To create her storylines, Bourgeois said she drew from common childhood experiences and emotions—as well as suggestions from Clark, Kids Can editors, and friends. When the series was adapted into a TV series in 1997, airing on the Family Channel in Canada and, beginning the following year, on CBS in the U.S., the first two seasons' episodes were based on the original Franklin books, after which new TV spinoff books were created by additional writers, under the guidance of Bourgeois and Clark. Kids Can launched a second wave of TV tie-ins in 2012, after a new 3-D animated show debuted on Treehouse in Canada and Nick Jr. in the U.S.
Over the years, Franklin has attracted an international fan base, which, Bourgeois noted, "absolutely came as a surprise. I didn't appreciate the true universality of the stories and how they touch readers until they began to appear in other languages." The author noted that, though Franklin is called Franklin in most countries, several publishers re-named the turtle—he's known as Sam in Belgium and the Netherlands, Morten in Denmark, and Konrad in Finland. Coincidentally, Bourgeois chose the name for her protagonist before she learned that Hawkeye's full name was Franklin Benjamin Pierce. In another name-related fluke, Franklin is called Benjamin in the books published for Quebec's French-speaking readers.
In any language and by any name, Franklin shares the lessons he's learned with crystal clarity. Bourgeois cited one constant in the Franklin stories over the years. "Franklin is the one who solves whatever issue he's confronting, with the guidance and support of his parents and teacher," she said. "And since I think all children experience the same issues and feelings as Franklin at some point in their lives, I am gratified that readers feel a kindred spirit to him and his friends—and feel as though they, too, are a friend of Franklin."
