Transcript:
[MUSIC] Yeah, so when I was a kid, I grew up in Hawaii. Which is everything’s outdoors. My my parents are both really, um. They worked very hard at teaching us different aspects like my mom and my dad had a deal where my mom would take care of the schoolwork, and then my dad would take care of the other education outside of school so every weekend we’d go outside. We you know, go to the beach. We play in trees climbing. We were outside a lots and in terms of like writing and drawing. I was always drawing. I drew a lot of dogs. I still do, but and the things been published with that yet and I used to like writing poems and stuff when I was a kid, and they were about flowers, too, so I mean. I’ve kind of just stuck outside, really. I wasn’t athletic. I didn’t, I wasn’t very sporty, but I kind of like to just sit outside and, yeah, so I went to university to do illustration because I wanted to do picture books, but I didn’t feel very confident that I would be writing it. I never really thought that would happen. I it’s not that I didn’t have ideas. I just didn’t think that I for some reason. I didn’t think. I had legitimacy and being able to write it like oh. I studied art like I don’t have a degree in writing, or I don’t know if it’s worth it or oh, you know, because I read a lot, but I didn’t in my head for a long time. It didn’t translate that I could write myself. I got into writing kind of late. I guess, and in life, it was in university, at least what story and mine, essays and stuff. I’ve done loads, but and it usually kind of came forth from drawing my characters. You know, when you’re when you’re a kid, I think growing up everyone kind of dissuades you from doing art as a career, though you will make money or oh, you know, and it’s and I really, and I it affected me because I always loved drawing, and I didn’t think anything of it, but up until pretty late in in high school, I wanted to do like journalism, which actually is writing but somehow. I felt like okay. I could do it if I take lessons to do it, You know, but I had a really really incur our teacher, and I realized that it was just I shouldn’t push away. What was natural to me that? I loved drawing. I know something I enjoy doing and it something. I really cared about when you’re in high school. I were in here in school. It’s really hard to find something that really, like speaks out to you. And sometimes it makes you feel like oh. I’m not doing something work like I’m not doing it, right, but yeah, that was drawing for me and I did a book. It was like a book contest and like my school and it was just -. It was a really dorky project, but I really loved it. And I mean, when I go to the library with my mom, I was still always in the children’s book section looking at things up until I was far too old, and I and I did the point. I didn’t even have context. I wasn’t researching to do books. It was where I wanted to be. I guess, so I’ve written two books and I’m kind of in the process of writing more. I mean, we’ll see, so while it was my first book. And I did that right out of university. I think that came out in 2013 and not one. You know, that one was really. It was really lucky hoe. It did pretty well and it’s now. Squid, it’s distributed everywhere, But and then the next book I did was a little gardener, and that was with the same publisher Who’s flying our books and now ones about, like a little gardener literally just trying to. I mean, just kind of having like this crisis of wondering like, if anything he does. Has any meaning to it. You know, because it doesn’t seem like he’s being successful, but I mean, you have to read the book to see if he is, and I’ve done some illustrations for other ones as well. Um, a lot of bears dogs. Yeah, good stuff. Yeah, it’s. I guess I’m really influenced by my family, and someone told me this interesting quote from like Maurice Sendak. Where a lot of the children’s illustrators he knew or children’s book makers have really good memory of their childhoods. And not everybody has that which? I thought was interesting because I remember I don’t know, Maybe I’m, you know, amazing parts of it. You know, I’m exaggerating, I don’t know, but I remember a lot of mine and with with wild and also the little gardener. My dad died a few weeks before I actually got commissioned to do wild, and so that was kind of like, a process of like making it was kind of therapeutic Because I was also in mourning, so a lot of kind of ideas. Kind of came together while I was working on it. Like I guess because my dad was mentally, ill so at points. He was kind of not socially acceptable, which was a hard thing, but it was a good. I mean, it was a good thing. When your kid – because you get to see how people can treat others so differently based on like what they think is acceptable and yeah, so it was it’s kind of a story about acceptance and love, and you know, if you really love, somebody have to accept them at any kind of stage. They’re on, even if, yeah, so so a lot of it kind of shown through with while that was was a good time to be making that book so the first time. I saw my book in a book, sir. Um, I’m trying to remember which one it which store was that it was. I think I might have seen in a shop window, actually, and I was very sure it was really weird. I think this feeling where I was like somehow that it was out in the open and like this weird space and not in the actual shelf made. It seem less real to me like it seemed like it was still kind of like. Oh, here is this new book. And then they might check it out at the end. There’s something like it still was really weird. I think the feeling of being like, really like oh like. I’ve done it kind of key more when I saw it at the library. And my mom like I saw it like the Public Library. I’m almost sent me a picture of it as well where someone drew on the cover, and that was a really really big deal to me. That’s when it’s like, oh, it’s being used. I know kids are reading it. I know pairing so reading it there already. You know, plagiarizing it like that’s when it became an actual object. I think in someone’s life. That made me feel really excited. Yeah, I love doing books because it’s really fun. Problem-solving where you can’t really get anything wrong totally. Because it’s no one can really argue too much with the world that you’ve created if you really believe in it yourself, so what makes me really excited when making books is when I have an idea or when I draw a character and I really, I find them to be like alive or have more personality because I draw all the time, but sometimes I draw something and I’m like. Oh, there’s something to it, there’s something and then I when I create the stories that’s usually to put the character in a situation that was really difficult for this purpose character in general and when I and I’m the thing I find hardest is resolved, so when I can get to a point where I figured it out or figured out how this character can triumph in any way that makes me really excited. [MUSIC].