Happy Birthday, Tumble!

 

Hip hip hooray! What an amazing first year for Tumble!

Happy Birthday to Tumble which turned 1 year earlier this month. For a lyrical picture book about a tumbleweed, this book has had quite the year! To recap, over the last year TUMBLE has received starred reviews from:

• School Library Journal
• Kirkus
• Publisher's Weekly.

(Photo: Alethea Kontis)

Tumble was chosen as an American Library Notable Book. It was also selected as A Best Children's Book of the Year by Bank Street College.

This tumbleweed picture book was listed as one of Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best picture books as well as an Evanston Public Library Blueberry Honor book. It was in the Scholastic Book Fairs for a split second, and lots of family sent me photos to share. I love it when people spot Tumble in the wild!

It was also the featured book at a beautiful literary event in Florida and holds a very special place in my heart.

Happy Birthday, sweet book! Keep on tumblin'!

Teachers and parents, if you're looking for activities, STEAM tie-ins, and more, you can find worksheets here.

The Grumpy Artist

 

When I first started writing this a few weeks ago, I thought it would be about celebrating the one year birthday of my book, TUMBLE, sharing my new art, paintings, and summer plans. But, so much has happened in the land of social media and how it affects artists that I could not gloss over the chilling effect it has had on how I share my work.

The backstory: Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) has decided to scrape all existing images to train artificial intelligence engines (and probably resell it to users in the form of a new app or whatever). At the same time, Adobe (parent company of Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign) has also decided to scrape the usage data and art created by millions of its users industry-standard software to continue to train its own artificial intelligence engines. Adobe was/is likely already scraping our data. 

Last year, they rolled out Adobe Firefly, a generative A.I. tool where users could generate entire sections of their compositions using text prompts. I think most artists signed up to use the toolset that Adobe provides to make creative work and meet industry standards for design and illustration. I highly doubt any of us signed up for Adobe's subscription to feed some engine with our creative work, only to then have it regurgitated back to us for the low-low price of a monthly subscription fee. I've been thinking hard about whether I want to continue to share my art digitally and whether I want to use Adobe tools to make my work. It's a very hard pill to swallow after literally decades using and mastering these tools.

Jump here if you don't want the backstory. All of this artificial intelligence drama has affected how free I feel sharing my work on the internet. It has further solidified my own thinking that I should go back to blogging and dedicate more time to making in-person connections, doing school visits, and writing.

Whenever I start thinking too much about all of this, I just get really down. The solution tends to be making art by hand and "touching grass," as well as focusing on telling stories through my art and words. I guess that's what I'll be doing more of in the future.

Motivation: the look on a child's face when they read one of my books and it sparks curiosity or connection. That makes it worth it to me to keep going. Hope it does the same for you.

2024 STORYSTORM GUEST! Adriana Puts Her Thoughts in Order

Originally posted on January 23, 2024 as part of STORYSTORM 2024! 

By this point in Storystorm, I’m sure you have a LOT of ideas. Smoke might even be pouring out the sides of your ears. Your eyes might be spirals of overwhelm. 😵‍💫 Do not despair! Let’s take a moment today to organize your ideas and get a few of them ready for the rest of the writing process. Clearing your mind a little may even inspire some new ideas when you’re done.

Firstly, how are you keeping track of your Storystorm ideas? Maybe you’re using the official Storystorm notebook, maybe each idea is on a separate page or post-it note, or maybe you prefer a digital list on your phone. Whatever you do, make your ideas easy to access and simple to find. Bring all your ideas together in one place.

Next, let’s sort them. It helps me to do this on paper so I can think without distractions.

Take a moment to look at your list of ideas one by one. Do any of them stick out to you or give you a little jolt or make you smile? Does your imagination run away with any of them? Do any ideas make you want to draw or write more? Let’s mark those ideas as your top contenders.

For my top ideas, I like to doodle and do a bit of visual note-taking. Take your top three concepts and let’s doodle!

You can see my full guest post over on https://taralazar.com/2024/01/23/storystorm-2024-day-23/

Adriana Hernández Bergstrom is a Cuban-American artist and children’s book author-illustrator. She loves languages and literacy and is the author-illustrator of ABUELITA AND I MAKE FLAN, TUMBLE (Orchard Books, 2023) and COUNTDOWN FOR NOCHEBUENA (Little, Brown, 2023). Follow her on most social media channels as @adriprints, or check out her blog and website adriprints.com.

Part 2, Sketch to Final: Abuelita and I Make Flan

 

Back in 2017, when I started writing ABUELITA AND I MAKE FLAN my story looked like a list of ingredients (literally) and a recipe. I took this to my first writing critique group (!!Qué pena!! but you have to start somewhere). I had a hazy vision in my head for a story about a grandchild and grandparent making flan together.

The story changed shape many times between 2017 and it's publication in 2022.

 

In between, I realized the story was missing 'the heart'. So I combined a memory of baking with my own Abuelita with that feeling where you think everything's going wrong, but you're still safe and loved and accepted as an imperfect child deserving of love. This was a big step in learning to write for kids. There needs to be some kind of heart or hook or something for kids to relate to.

 

Next, I did a sketch dummy from Debbie Ohi's site:  https://debbieohi.com/resources/. I played with different thumbnail illustrations until the story made sense to me (and my agent!). Then I enlarged it to a full size dummy, refined the illos, and began the back and forth of editing and revising.

 

I needed to add more tension! Here are some of the people who saw it and offered editing thoughts: critique partners, mentors, teachers from various courses and organizations, professional/industry critiquers, peers, and my mother*. And this jogged a memory of me breaking my mom's wedding plate while we were moving back in with my grandparents.

*For my second and third books, I did not have to take it so far and wide for editing. It took a lot for me to grow confident in my writing abilities! Also, sometimes your family doesn't know what makes a good children's book!

And that was the key! Once I added that broken plate, it all came together and we sold the manuscript to Charlesbridge in 2020, and it finally came out in August of 2022.

These days, my process for writing is more like a yes/no flowchart: outline or list, then a test draft in prose (does it work? yes/no), if no, a draft in lyrical language. When I think something's working, I'll exchange with a critique group (love/hate/boring?)... rinse repeat until it's feeling ready-ish enough to submit to my agent.