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Publishers Weekly Children's Features

Cobtown: An Invitation to a Simpler Way of Life
Stephanie Hartman -- 8/17/98
A fictional town provides the basis for six forthcoming books

Heralding the innocence of Christmases past, A Cobtown Christmas by Julia Van Nutt, illustrated by Robert Van Nutt (Doubleday, Oct.), re-creates small-town American life circa 1845. In doing so, it not only tells a sweet-spirited holiday tale, but proposes to put a new town on the literary map of imagined worlds. As Andrew Smith, director of marketing for the BDD Books for Young Readers division, explained, looking ahead to five additional Cobtown books under contract, "It's the launch of an entire world."

The company's high hopes for Cobtown are evident not only in the initial print run (75,000) and the hefty marketing budget allotted to the project. Smith explained that the marketing campaign is being geared as much toward creating an audience for future books as it is toward establishing the inaugural title. The second title, Mystery of Mineral Gorge, is lated for February 1999. The third book, Pumpkins from the Sky, is slated to appear in time for Halloween next year, providing more opportunities for holiday tie-ins.

A cornerstone of the marketing plan is a six-foot, three-tier floor display that was Smith's brainchild: a cardboard recreation of the town painted by Robert, with a dozen books tucked between the houses, and as many bean-bag "Oinkey" pigs, to be given away with the purchase of a book.

The text for A Cobtown Christmas is in the form of diary entries written in 1845 by 10-year-old Cobtowner Lucky Hart. Ticket stubs, receipts, the music for a hymn, the local newspaper and handwritten recipes and craft ideas add to the impression of authenticity. Marketing and promotional materials designed by the Van Nutts include similar vestiges of 19th-century life: the "teaser" materials sent to the sales force, booksellers and media included recipes and tickets that look hand-written, printed on rustic paper with illustrations resembling woodblock prints. These mock keepsakes point to a world beyond the book, which the Van Nutts go to great lengths to make as real as possible. "It seems like betraying Cobtown to say it isn't [real]," Julia said during a recent interview in the Van Nutt home. The husband-and-wife team emphasized that the book is the product of meticulous research, saying that no visual detail or turn of phrase is anachronistic.

In a sense, Cobtown d s exist -- in the Van Nutts' Greenwich Village apartment, in the form of a model of the town, imagined down to the last detail and painstakingly crafted by Robert. Crooked frame houses perch on a foam rubber hill, while people whittled out of wood gather in the general store, or perhaps in handyman Fliberty Jibbert's workshop. The paper leaves of the trees have been applied one at a time; an owl, all but hidden in a hollow trunk, has pinhole eyes that light up.

Robert said that the most challenging feature to design was the cart and carriage that circle Cobtown on a dirt path, with no visible means to propel them. The cart is drawn by a toy goat, lured along by a carrot the driver dangles in front of him. Other engineering feats include a tiny working cider mill that "really d s press," according to Robert.

He worked from this model when he did his acrylic paintings for A Cobtown Christmas so that the spatial relationships between buildings, and the details of the settings would be consistent throughout the book. Future books will include photographs of the model, and of dioramas Robert builds, as well as his paintings.

As the existence of the model suggests, A Cobtown Christmas is just the tip of the iceberg. The five books to come will keep the Van Nutts living in Cobtown through the year 2001. And their knowledge of the town reaches still further, to the townspeople's most secret crushes and how their grandparents made a living. The physical artifacts of Cobtown's existence also extend beyond the newspapers and letters in the book. A quilt that began as a painting in the second book is now a real quilt, for which Robert's mother embroidered the squares. A cookbook, shown in the frontispiece of A Cobtown Christmas, is currently in the works. Such items (there are many others) may eventually spawn merchandise tie-ins.

Life B.C. (Before Cobtown)

It is tempting to view the Van Nutts' creative pasts as so much preparation for their work as custodians of Cobtown. After meeting in graduate school at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where they were studying sculpture and painting, the Van Nutts moved to New York City. They spent the 1970s working in the theater, designing sets and costumes.

In the 1980s -- "We reinvent ourselves every decade," Julia remarked cheerfully -- Robert worked with Rabbit Ears to animate stories for Showtime. The animation cells were then used to illustrate book versions. A favorite project was "The Emperor and the Nightingale," during which the Van Nutts immersed themselves in Chinese culture, down to wearing kimonos and playing mah jong. But the project they loved most was the animated adaptation of Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Learning about the time period was "a kind of revelation about American culture," Robert said. "We were enraptured with the beauty of early America. It's on a human scale, so honest, so directly appealing." While Cobtown was inspired by the towns of the Hudson River Valley, it is not set in any particular place. "People often think it's where they're from," said Julia.

The notion of re-creating the life of an entire town evolved organically. Seven years ago, Robert built a toy town to go under the Christmas tree. Julia bought an electric train for it, but because it had a metal body, obert said, "I wrecked it and built my own out of wood." The little town became more and more elaborate over the years, and "we started fantasizing about who lived where," Julia recalled. They called the town Cobtown, after a phrase Julia remembered from her childhood that was used to describe an "unsophisticated" rural person.

Despite their appreciation of the simplicity of rural life, the Van Nutts wouldn't think of leaving Manhattan. "We love to walk out the door a block and buy squid ink pasta or truffles," Julia said. Robert admitted, "Some of the romance of rural life would fade if we had to live it." Besides, they need the libraries: their knowledge of the period comes from many hours spent at the New York Public Library, the Museum of the City of New York and the New York Historical Society, as well as at such sites as Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts and the Smithsonian.

While Cobtown seems remote from Manhattan in 1998, the Van Nutts do not see the two environments as opposites. Cobtown is in fact poised on the brink of change, in the midst of "exciting clashes of nature and 'progress!'" as a promotional poster trumpets. In 1845, the invention of the railroad has just begun to import modern forces from the nearby "big city," called Ploomajiggy. What enables Cobtown to keep its identity, they said, is the knowledge of its past maintained by the town elders. Cobtown's respect for its older citizens and can-do spirit offer not so much escapist nostalgia, they believe, as values worth reviving.

Bringing Cobtown to Readers

The Van Nutts credit Doubleday, particularly their editor Francoise Bui, with being enormously supportive and committed to the integrity of the project. Finding Doubleday was fortuitous -- but not easy, they said. Robert had included Cobtown drawings in his portfolio to get illustration jobs, and one children's book editor encouraged him to make up stories to go with them. The books took form when Julia got involved in writing the stories. Robert went around to publishers with mock-ups of all six books, but did not get their attention until he engaged an agent, George Nicholson of Sterling Lord Literistic. Part of what attracted Craig Virden, president of BDD Books for Young Readers, to the project was "a certain classic look and feel" and the completeness of its world. "There are a lot of stories lurking in this town," Virden said.

Bui voiced confidence in the books' ability to appeal to both children and adults. Adults will respond to it as a piece of "pure Americana," she believes, while "kids will identify with Lucky's adventurous spirit."

Doubleday will wait to tap what Bui sees as the "huge potential" for merchandising until the books are established, but it is likely that Lucky dolls and period toys are in the future. So far, bookstore response has been positive. Ads are being placed in Americana-focused magazines, and the book will be sold in museum gift shops and other specialty markets. According to Smith, BDD has placed "the largest number of displays that we've ever placed for a fall season," and said the the title has "gotten great acceptance across the board, across all channels."

In the meantime, Robert is hard at work constructing a life-size Oinkey that will be able to walk, grunt and wiggle its nose. He will do all these things while accompanying his creators on their fall publicity tour. Fortunately, they won't have to travel by a goat-drawn cart.
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