This year marked the 10th anniversary of author-illustrator Emily Winfield Martin’s bestselling picture book The Wonderful Things You Will Be, which has sold nearly three million copies and become a staple for new parents. “I still think of myself as kind of a weirdo, making these strange misfit things,” she said, “so it’s funny that I created this book that’s been enormously loved and embraced in this mainstream way. It’s surreal, but I’m so grateful.” In her new picture book, The Wildest Thing, a girl named Eleanor taps into the wild beauty of the natural world, ushering it into her home. Winfield Martin spoke with PW from her attic studio in Portland, Ore., about creation and curation, conscious and unconscious echoes of Maurice Sendak, and the gentle nudge of a squirrel and a rose that set her latest book in motion.
The word wild in the context of a picture book has a way of conjuring associations with Where the Wild Things Are. What were the creative catalysts for your story—Sendakian or otherwise?
This book took two years to make, and the Sendakian influence didn’t really dawn on me until I was well into it. I had made lots of dummies for the book, and I think it was when we decided on the title that I said, “Well, now everyone’s going to draw this association”—which is fine with me. But the catalyst for this book was really direct. My office is here in an attic, and in the fall, I always hear squirrels running on the roof, right above my head. Maybe two or three falls ago, a squirrel had gotten into the wall of my daughter’s room. We realized he had fallen into a vent and couldn’t get out. We heard his little scratching; it was so sad. I was just like, “Please don’t die in the wall!” But we had a pest guy come and get him out—he’s fine! And then at the same time, we have a thornless rose growing on the corner of our house and one of the shoots came in through the window. So, in the same week, there was a squirrel in our wall and a rose growing through the window. We just let it go, and every day it grew like a foot across the ceiling. And so, I had this idea: what if a little girl’s house went wild... and incrementally, over the course of the day, it got wilder? Then I was consumed with the idea. I put aside everything—I was supposed to be working on a book of short stories—to make this book.
When we landed on the title, The Wildest Thing, I really embraced the Sendakian connotations. I was reading tons of Maurice Sendak at the time. He has that great book of essays on children’s books and illustration, Caldecott & Co. He’s so opinionated and cantankerous. I related to so much of what he had to say about artistic struggle and influence. I loved the idea that I had inadvertently made Where the Wild Things Are in reverse: there’s the gender switch, and the girl starts out timid but loving wild things in this deep way, and then she kind of integrates all of those parts of herself, and by the end it comes into the home. The book just grew into itself; that influence and point of reference happened in an organic, magical way.
Was working in colored pencil a new approach for you?
Totally! I love painting, but I wanted something that I could do easily wherever I was, something a little more portable. And so I bought my first set of nice colored pencils, and I was like, “Oh, I’m going to treat myself.” I made a little board book for my daughter and her friend about their adventures on a giant cat, to have something that I could start and finish in just a few weeks. There’s something about the immediacy of the colored pencils that was really appealing to me. So then when I started on this book, I thought I could make a hybrid. So I was making colored pencil drawings and then painting onto them. But sometimes I did the reverse, where I would go back and then add pencil. It worked well for all the fur and grass and little things; I love that texture. It also brought a liveliness to the work that I really liked.
It’s also my first picture book in five years, since I had my daughter. I had this incredibly creative summer, just tons of ideas flooding into me.
You have a hand in many creative ventures in addition to bookmaking: gardening, sewing, toy collaborations. How do all of those passions fuel your art?
I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t dance around and do different things. It’s so important. It’s like making my own little world. I can sew and grow my flowers and make little things. I have a very intuitive sense of what I love and how I want to be surrounded. So that’s part of creating things that don’t exist, like toys, or clothes for my daughter, or my books. My little girl now knows to look under the jacket to see if the case wrap is different. I’m forging this little nerd who’s noticing all of that stuff!
I love seeing that kind of care and intention in books. My whole team—my art director [Nicole de las Heras] and my editor Mallory [Loehr]—when we’re working on something together, we’re so holistic. And I know many people who make picture books feel the same way. You’re thinking about every little detail. It all coalesces to create this portable world. I love that about children’s books, because I feel like there aren’t many things that someone has lovingly considered.
I don’t know how to be any other way. Sometimes it gets a little exhausting! But I don’t think you can be an artist and think, “Done is better than good.” Maurice Sendak would crush himself rather than do anything that he didn’t feel was his best. I have so much to do, so much that I want to make. That’s another Sendakian thing; he felt like he had this finite but very large amount of ideas inside. And he was like, I just hope I can live long enough to fulfill these things. I’ve always felt that urgency, too. I have all these beginnings that I need to see through. Right now, I’m working on that book of short stories and I need to do the illustrations for those. I also have some projects with Tara Walker at Tundra, which is exciting.
Returning to the new book, were you a wild child yourself?
It’s funny, because I think your sense of yourself is so different from how other people see you. My perception is that I felt very timid and small inside, like Eleanor at the beginning of the story. I was totally the kid who could just lie on the ground and look at bugs forever. But in retrospect, I think there were parts of me that had to be pretty fierce or ferocious at times. I remember getting in big, big trouble! Your emotional reality can be so different, especially as a child, than how you appear. That duality is something that is part of the work of our lives, marrying together all those aspects of ourselves.
There’s something I love so much that Arnold Lobel would say, because people always asked him, “Are you Frog or Toad?” And he would say, “I’m both. Of course, I’m both.” There’s no better answer. Everybody is both. I think about that a lot. I feel like that’s the wildest thing. It’s a classic kind of rumination on containing multitudes.
The Wildest Thing by Emily Winfield Martin. Random House, $19.99 Jan. 6 ISBN 979-8-217-02398-1
