Seasoned children’s author and illustrator Selina Alko creates a “poetic ode” to beloved writer Judy Blume in Otherwise Known as Judy the Great, a poetry collection characterized by vibrant mixed media collages and diverse poetic forms, from free verse to haiku. Loosely organized chronologically, her poems offer snapshots of Blume’s childhood, pivotal and mundane moments alike. PW spoke with Alko about working with Blume, the continued relevance of her books, and Blume as a champion for free speech.
You open your author note, “Judy Blume’s books were everything to me growing up in Vancouver, Canada.” How did you decide this was going to be your next project, and did you go back and reread all of the books?
I love doing biographies. I spent five years working on a Joni Mitchell picture book, and I realized after that my next subject is someone I have to be totally obsessed with, because I’m going to be spending a lot of time looking into this person’s life. I was obsessed with Judy Blume’s books—they were so comforting to me. I read them over and over again late at night. They were such a big part of how I navigated adolescence and growing up, and so it was a joy to choose her as a subject and to learn more.
I definitely re-read my favorites. And then I read some that I hadn’t read. I was young in the ’70s and early ’80s, so I missed Here’s to You, Rachel Robinson and some of her later titles; I did read a few of them. I wasn’t as into the Fudge books—and many of them came later. I did love Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, which was the inspiration for that whole series. I loved Deenie and Blubber. I was obsessed with Starring Sally J. Freeman as Herself—that’s probably my favorite—and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. And when I was a little bit older, I loved Forever—I had a boyfriend in eighth grade, and we read it together. That’s how I learned about the important things that you need to know when you’re first in love and experimenting. I liked Iggie’s House a lot. They just lined my shelves, those Dell paperbacks.
This is the first authorized book for kids about Blume’s childhood. How did you first approach her about doing the book?
My editor and I agreed to wait until I had a finished dummy. And that took some time, probably a couple of years, because it started as a regular narrative story about her childhood and then I switched it up to a series of poems, so it’s more like little vignettes and moments in her childhood. And then I did the sketches and we had it in pretty good shape before sending it to her, not knowing if she would even reply. But she did respond—she responded right away, mostly enthusiastically, but she did have corrections. It was amazing to have her involvement at that point, to set the story straight on certain things.
How did you decide the book should take the form of a poetry collection and how did the process of writing and creating the art unfold? Do you have any favorite details?
The poetry format was a suggestion by my editor, Christy Ottaviano at Little, Brown, and it was a fantastic suggestion, because it did allow me to highlight certain incidents, but not in such a linear form. The poems are kind of fun. I have a limerick. I have an acrostic poem. Some rhyme, most don’t. It just was a chance to loosen up and play. I loved to be able to weave in nods to things that happened in the books. One thing I regret, because there wasn’t room design-wise: the poem called It’s Not the End of the World takes place when the family moves to Florida for two years. I wanted the title of the poem to be Florida: It’s Not the End of the World. But there just wasn’t room to write Florida in there.
When I do sketches, they’re in black and white, but first I fill an entire sketchbook with just painted images and associations—sort of an unconscious visual diary. I filled this whole sketchbook with paint and color and collage and from there I go on to Xerox pages to put together my black-and-white dummy. The way I make a dummy is almost like how I do my final art with collage. I like to cut and paste things and I love to use found papers. I did Xerox some pages from her books and I integrated those into the images. Wherever possible if something felt relevant, I tried to collage it in.
I had fun coming up with the metaphor of the family being held in the sweater all together. The funny thing about that image is that in my first sketch, I had the Granny at the head because I just assumed it’s like a family tree, but when I shared that poem with Judy, she said, “No, my father was definitely the head of the family,” so I made that change. I also really like Tales of a Fourth Grade Reader and all the books that she read as a child. Some of them were the same ones I read—the Wizard of Oz books, Nancy Drew—so that was a fun one to illustrate.
Why do you think Judy Blume and her books remain relevant today? And, as her books continued to be banned, can you share your thoughts about censorship?
She’s such an amazing storyteller, telling the truth about topics that kids want to know about. Nowadays there are more books like Blume’s, but she really cracked it open for kids of my generation to learn about questioning religion, family dynamics like unhappy parents and divorce and sibling rivalry, puberty, periods, bullying, self-criticism, body image. I remember as a child strongly identifying with her characters and feeling what they felt.
There are people in our culture who are threatened by these very real topics that are just part of humanity. Girls get their periods and Judy wrote about it, and these book banners—I don’t know why they want to prevent this information from existing. It baffles me. It’s a crazy time we’re living in and I’m so grateful that Judy Blume’s books exist and that she has become such a champion for free speech. That’s actually one of the reasons I thought it was important to do a biography about her, not only because the books she wrote are still beloved, but also because of the work she does to promote literacy and the freedom to read what one wants.
Otherwise Known as Judy the Great: A Poetic Ode to Judy Blume by Selina Alko. Little Brown/Ottaviano, $18.99 Feb. 17 ISBN 978-0-316-57063-3
