Brooklyn Book Festival
I consider myself to be a pretty intermediate to advanced level traveler. I’ve been to so many developing countries, chaotic cities, and middle of nowhere icons. With this experience and my formative years spent growing up in New York City, I figured I can handle just about anything on a trip. Well my first trip back to NYC humbled me in many ways. This time I was older and had a one year old in tow. That certainly changes the vibe! We were traveling for 30 days straight. We were SO tired. We were SO depleted. We were so spoiled by the baby friendly city at home. My wishes for a highly productive NYC trip would not come true.
One of the highlights of the NYC trip that did come to fruition was being a part of the Brooklyn Book Festival! Of course there was climate change level flash flooding in NYC the day before it happened which was also the day we arrived into the city. However, the water cleared and the families flooded in to the festival!
Our activity was run by author, Dan Poblocki alongside illustrator Chris Danger and myself. Dan created a mad libs style story for the audience members to fill in the blanks. Along the way, Chris and I illustrated some of their wildly inventive scenes and characters.
After this illustrated story time was over, we signed books!
Of course, my number one fan was excited to get multiple books signed in person since it had been a while. <3
One of the best moments of this day was also when we went to Chipotle after. The burrito bowls had been missed, but the highlight was actually seeing a young girl reading a freshly signed copy of Big Apple Diaries at a table in there. I awkwardly waved to her and her family but she didn’t look up for even a moment. She was totally engrossed in my book, and I love to see it!
My nephew, Alex
Despite our absolute travel chaos, it was really special to be in NYC again
Writing and Illustrating a Graphic Novel Memoir for Children
This blog entry was originally created for the Children’s Book Council of Australia, Tasmanian Branch Blog in December 2022.
I always knew I wanted to create something special from my childhood diaries, and over the course of almost ten years, I turned them into a graphic novel called Big Apple Diaries. It all started while taking a comics class in 2012 as a student in New York City, where I was born and lived my whole life at that point. When I moved from New York City to Tasmania in 2015 I realized how important the New Yorker side of my story was. There is something about seeing it from a distance that made it clearer to me.
I used my diary entries and experiences to retell the story of my childhood in New York City around the September 11 attacks in 2001. These entries were so important for creating this book because I could capture the mindset of a young teen instead of relying solely on the memory of it. Of course, memoir-style writing can be triggering, so I don’t think it would have been possible for me to write about that part of my life without enough time and space between the experience and now.
Big Apple Diaries is my first ever long-form graphic novel so it was definitely a learning curve for me. I’ve illustrated many picture books, but the jump from 32 pages to almost 300 was a lot to think about!
All of the writing had to be finished first, and that is something that often surprises people. The storyline is the most important part of any book. I started with very simple drafts and didn’t worry about the spelling or specific wording yet. I made sure to create story arcs within my “real story.” Once that draft made sense, I went back over it and carefully rewrote it several times.
A very important part of the graphic novel process that makes it different from other writing is that I had to choose which parts of the story would be told in words and which parts would be told in pictures. I used different colours in my Word document to make this easier for me. Everything I wrote in black was the words of the story, and everything I wrote in blue was for the pictures. One of the best parts of the graphic novel medium is capturing emotion and subtleties through imagery. Sometimes big feelings don’t need to be named on the page, and a simple expression can speak for itself.
Once all of that was ready to go, I roughly laid out the text and created simple sketches to determine the layouts, pacing, and timing. Next came editorial feedback from the publishing team, adjustments, and sample art. Once all of the stars aligned and everyone agreed it was ready to go, I returned to page one again. This part was the most fun for me because all of that difficult problem-solving with layouts and writing was done, so I could just enjoy the process of making the artwork!
I underestimated how emotional it would be to create the images to go with something so deeply personal. It was wonderful exploring the visuals of New York City from that time and recreating the relationships with my parents and friends.
It was very meaningful to put together a story that took place twenty years ago and can still be relatable to readers today and in the future. I’ve enjoyed sharing this book with students here in Tasmania and virtually in the US. Even though Tasmania and New York City couldn’t be any further apart, the feelings that come with growing up bring everyone together.