Author/ Illustrator Interview with Anna Dewdney

The DMS was lucky enough to interview Anna Dewdney. Fairday reviewed her children's book Llama Llama: Time to Share, and it was great to share our thoughts about it and hear yours! We're excited to learn a little more about her story. So, without further ado... take it away, Anna!

What inspired you to write the Llama Llama books?

I had Llama Llama’s story kicking around in my head for a few years when my children were small (for obvious reasons), but the protagonist became a llama when my little girls and I started driving past a llama in a field and I started to say, “llamallamallamallama” every time we went by. I loved the sound of the word, and so the story became a llama – llama story. He is “little boy” because during the final incarnation of the story before I submitted it for publication, my own children were older and I was working at a boarding school for young, dyslexic boys…and I put them to bed several times a week. Therefore, I was thinking about little boys and separation anxiety.

How long does it take you to write a Llama Llama book?

That is very tough to say!  In reality, it takes years. The gestation period can be two to fifteen years, and the actual official scramble with the writing can take from three months to two years. And I’m often still fine-tuning things are the book is going to print! In fact, the latest Llama Llama book, LLAMA LLAMA , GRAM, and GRANDPA, is being fine-tuned right now…. while the paintings are en route to China.

What made you choose a Llama as your character?  

Well, as I mentioned…..it’s the sound of the word that initially attracted me.  However, llamas are such wonderfully weird animals; an artist has a lot of room to play with a physique like that.

What are some of your favorite books from childhood? Were there any specific authors who inspired you?

Oh my goodness! There are so many books that I loved and continue to love.  HIGGLETYPIGGLETY POP, by Maurice Sendak, is probably my favorite picture book. I adored Tasha Tudor when I was a child, but I like her work somewhat less, now. I did want to be Tasha Tudor when I was a child, and I suppose I’m a version of her, now. Barbara Cooney, Garth Williams, Ruth Krauss, Beatrix Potter….the list goes on. I wish I could have known E. B. White and Garth Williams; I think we would have understood each other. Kevin Henkes has been a real inspiration to me. Knowing his work was out there kept me going through all my years of rejections…. I figured that if people responded to his work, that there had to be room for mine. (Not that I’m comparing the quality of my work to his! But he and I are dealing with very similar issues in our picture books.)

If you could live anyplace real or fictional, where would it be? Why?

I’m living precisely where I want to be! I have yet to find a place or people that I feel more comfortable with than Vermonters in Vermont. We are a stoic, yet loving and respectful people up here. I don’t like the cold, but I put up with it so I can have the rest of the year. And I used to think that I wanted to go back to the 1800’s (as Tasha pretended to), but that was until I had children. NO WAY would I want to go back in time, as a woman! 

Ah, Vermont.

You are the author and illustrator of the Llama Llama books. The illustrations are enchanting and the rhyming cadence is appealing. What is your process of weaving the illustrations into the words to set the scene?

My books come together almost like quilts. I’m happy that I chose a quilt as the endpapers for the first LLAMA book; it suits the entire series. The book starts with a feeling (anxiety, fear, anger, frustration, etc.) and develops into snippets of language and image.  I work on the text and the images together until I get to the “official” writing stage, and that’s when I get a working dummy together. I’m never able to write well without a set of drawings. Some author/illustrators are more illustrator than author (or the other way around); I think I’m very balanced. Both pieces play an equal role in the creation of the book inside my head and on the page.

In Llama Llama: Time To Share, Llama learns how to share with a friend. What is your advice for parents who are teaching their children how to play nicely with others? 

Sharing is very hard to do…. for everyone! Grown-ups are lousy at sharing, yet we expect our children to do it. The truth is, some things really are not meant to be shared, especially things that have deep emotional resonance. If they have to be shared, then it is important to address that difficulty head-on. A parent can’t gloss over a child’s difficulty with that. Demonstrating that sharing is not the same as losing can help (i.e. “Even though we are sharing our blocks, we will still have them when so and so goes away.”). Young children aren’t developmentally able to reason well. And we shouldn’t ask them to share things that they have deep emotional attachments to until they are ready to do so (unless they have to share a parent with a new sibling, which is a more complicated issue).

Are you currently working on a book? If so, can you tell us a little bit about it?

I’m always working on new books! I’m currently officially scheduled through 2021, but I have many more books that I’m gestating that may find the light of day well into the middle of the century. The official books that are on their way to publication this year and next are: LLAMA LLAMA, GRAM, and GRANDPA, a book (not officially titled) about a little piece of heavy machinery, a second book (not officially titled) about Nelly Gnu, and some early readers. I’m working on the heavy equipment book right now, and it brings me so much joy! I first wrote it back in 2005, and it’s morphed a bit since then. It took me a while to learn to draw my little guy, but I think I’ve got him now. He’s chugging around with me all day.

Author, Stephanie Robinson and Llama Llama at the 2014 UCONN Children's Book Fair

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