Just as the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter famously found Lana Turner at a Hollywood drugstore, Christopher Franceschelli discovered artist Pamela Dalton at a Harlemville, N.Y., farm store. The Handprint Books publisher spotted her intricate scissor-cut images hanging on the walls—and tracked her down at her studio, a quarter mile down the road. Then he asked whether she would be interested in illustrating a picture-book adaptation of Saint Francis of Assisi's 13th-century hymn, "The Canticle of the Sun." (Franceschelli grew up looking at a hand-lettered portion of Assisi's text hanging in a picture frame by his family's telephone.)
The result of this serendipity: Next spring, the Handprint imprint of Chronicle Books will publish Brother Sun, Sister Moon, illustrated by Dalton—and translated into kid-friendly prose by Newbery Medalist Katherine Paterson, the reigning National Ambassador for Young People's Literature.
How did Franceschelli sign on Paterson? "She was absolutely the only person who popped into my mind," he said. He simply emailed her with his idea. Just 47 minutes later, she replied, "I would simply love to work with you on this." (She signed on before becoming Ambassador.)
Paterson and Franceschelli go way back, to when he was the publisher of Dutton Children's Books. The Lodestar Books imprint, led by Virginia Buckley, published all of Paterson's titles at the time. (Coincidentally, Franceschelli's wife, Sally Doherty, now executive editor at Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, also worked with Paterson when she was at HarperCollins.)
Paterson, the daughter of missionaries and the wife of a minister, was a natural for the project. She likes the canticle's message about "appreciating the earth," she said. "It was a green theme hundreds of years before its time." And she feels the book is not just for Catholics. "It can be enjoyed by people who don't think of themselves as particularly religious," she said.
After all, Assisi is the unofficial saint of environment and of peace. "He's a universal figure," said Father Nathan Castle, director of the Catholic Community at Stanford University. And his canticle includes universal themes, such as appreciating nature. "It's pointing to things that kids can observe—water and fire and air and ground—and pointing to the goodness in all things," said Castle.
To convey that message to kids, Paterson has ditched the stuffy lines. "She clearly recast it in language that I think would resonate with children that is not the formal church language of all the translations that we do have," said Franceschelli. Assisi's "praise be you My Lord" wording is gone. Paterson uses more kid-friendly lines, such as: "We praise you for our Brother Wind and every kind of weather, stormy or mild. For when he roars he reminds us of your might, and when he comes as cooling breeze, he tells us of your gentleness. Praise, too, for our ever-present Brother Air who, though invisible, surrounds us and gives us life and breath."
To redo Assisi for children, Paterson looked at his words and figured out what they meant to her. "It's a personal response," she said. And it's a short personal response. "I was aware that we had picture-book length," she said. "I wasn't going to expand!"
She stayed true to the theme of the canticle, even including "sister death." But she made a few changes, such as omitting the line "woe to those who die in mortal sin!" "I didn't want to talk about it in quite those dire terms," she said. "I'd have to say something about hell. I wasn't quite ready to do that." Instead, Paterson has recrafted the lyrics to be more upbeat. The original text ends (after the mortal sin reference) by asking people to "serve Him with great humility." Her version concludes by thanking God "for this wondrous universe in which we live, for family, for friends, for work and play, for this life and the life to come.... Give us, we pray, the grace to honor you this day and forever more."
The 10-by-10-inch, 36-page picture book will also include a page with a more literal translation—and a note that gives the history of the canticle and some historical context.
Finding Dalton while visiting his brother was a surprise for Franceschelli, who said he takes pleasure in scouting for new talent. "I always have my eyes open," he said. "I have a particular love for art that starts as cut paper, as embroidered fabric, as sculpted clay." This interest dates back to 1991, when Franceschelli was publisher of Dutton Children's Books, and Dutton commissioned Arthur Dorros to write text using the themes from a Peruvian women's collective, which created embroidered fabric scenes of everyday life. The result: Tonight Is Carnaval.
Franceschelli left Dutton in 1997 and started Handprint (which he describes as publishing "idiosyncratic books of high quality")—named for his newborn daughter, Anna. Though he sold Handprint in 2008 to his longtime distributor, Chronicle Books, he continues to run the imprint.
That's good news for fans of Assisi—and of Paterson. The Bridge to Terabithia author has finished her canticle text and has a middle-grade title, The Flint Heart, coming out with Candlewick in fall 2011 or early 2012. Meanwhile, she is enjoying her ambassadorship. "I love the idea that we're putting more emphasis on books for young people, and I love being able to talk about it in an official capacity," she said. "I've been doing it for 30-plus years. Now I have a title to go with what I've been doing!"
