Children’s Book Author Jarrett Dapier with Brian Wilson
ABH note: To view Mr. Dapier’s ABH Collaboration with Adam Lazar, please click here.
I have worked as a Children’s Librarian at the Evanston Public Library now for nearly 20 years. I find many aspects of my job rewarding, and one of the things I most enjoy is discovering great new picture books. I also love discussing picture books with patrons and co-workers.
2021 has been a terrific year for inventive works possessing rich language and vibrant illustrations. And two of the year’s very best are written by Jarrett Dapier, whom I met when he worked at the library. Over the years I have spent many fun hours talking about books with Jarrett. And it is now so cool to talk with him now about books he himself wrote. Jazz for Lunch! (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, 978-1534454088) hit bookshelves on September 7, 2021, and is a bouncy romp starring a boy and his Auntie Nina who love jazz and cooking. Illustrated with unabashed joy by the supremely talented Eugenia Mello, the book also features a lot of information about jazz musicians.
Meanwhile, the raucous, rollicking and surprisingly moving Mr. Watson’s Chickens (Chronicle, 978-1452177144), out October 5, 2021, shows what happens when Mr. Watson and his partner end up with over 400 chickens. Told in a captivating style meant to be read aloud, the title contains knockout, intricate comical illustrations from Andrea Tsurumi.
I interviewed Jarrett via email in August, 2021. Our conversation is below.
Hi Jarrett! First I must congratulate you on these absolutely fabulous books. What inspired you to create these stories?
First, let me say what a treat it is for me to converse with you in this context. You’ve been one of my favorite children’s librarians since I started working at Evanston Public Library in 2009 and my kids were young. I’m a diehard believer in the power of read-aloud for kids of all ages and in my eternal quest for more and more books to read to my (then) young ones, you recommended so many wonderful picture books that we loved. I know that more than a handful of the books you introduced me to back in the day inspired my first three picture books, the two coming out this fall and the one that will arrive in fall of ‘22.
But, to be more specific, Jazz For Lunch! hit my brain like an Art Blakey cymbal crash - bright, clear, and joyous - one autumn afternoon when my daughter was 6 years old. She was home from a half-day at school and while listening to Benny Goodman on the stereo, she and I were making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. As she sort of danced in her seat during the food prep, I said to her, “You know what we’re having? We’re having jazz for lunch!” and then in time with the song I said, “Pit-pat the peanut butter!” and without losing a beat she sang, “Slap on the jelly!” Both of those lines made it into the final manuscript. The phrase “jazz for lunch” reminded me of when my mom took me to Andy’s Jazz Club when I was 7 or 8. That was my first introduction to jazz, just like it is for Junior in the book. The next day after I hit on the idea, while walking my son in his stroller, I started rhyming to him, just messing around, and I came up with the first three pages of the book. I wrote down what I had, but life intervened and it wasn’t until about 6 years later that after strong encouragement from my agent I really got down to writing it for real. Another inspiration was Skit Skat Raggedy Cat by Roxane Orgill and illustrated by Sean Qualls. I read that book repeatedly to my daughter when she was little. There’s such a warm and loving tone to that book (which is very fitting given it’s about Ella), and the language is playful (like Ella was), while the illustrations just leap off the page with heart and raw texture (again, that’s Ella’s voice). I know that was in my mind.
As for Mr. Watson’s Chickens, it arrived to me in a dream. Literally. In late 2016, I had a dream in which I was reading a book I had written called Mr. Watson’s Chickens aloud to a class of 1st graders. I snapped awake startled as I do sometimes from a bad dream - like someone or something had shoved me out of sleep - but instead of feeling scared or disoriented, I thought, “that was a pretty good book!” I got up and started writing all the lines I could remember from the dream on a random piece of paper while standing there in the dark. I remember my wife woke up and said “are you OK?” I mumbled, “Yeah, I just dreamed about some chickens.” She rolled over as if this was perfectly normal and went back to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, I found the paper with my - ahem - chicken scratch notes on it and was pleased. One of the lines I had written down was, “‘Whose chickens are these?!?’” “‘That’ll be me,’ said Mr. Watson with a 1-2-3!” That line is a refrain that occurs in the second half of the book and remains in the final version.
Your respective illustrators both tap into what makes each story special and unique. How did the two illustrators become involved?
I was lucky in that Taylor Norman, my editor at Chronicle Books, and Caitlyn Dlouhy at Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy books, included me in the process of choosing an illustrator for both books. At the point when we were searching for illustrators for both books, I had been working at Skokie Public Library for a couple years and as part of my job I was fortunate enough to get about 6 regular hours per week on the youth services desk. This allowed me to advise the youngest of readers and their grown-ups on great picture books to read and just generally immerse myself in picture books new and old for a good chunk of my hours on desk. I loved that part of my work. It also aided my search to find the right artists for the books.
Taylor and I agreed that MWC needed an illustrator with a wild sense of humor, the skill to effectively capture joyful chaos on the page, and someone who would understand Mr. Watson’s love for his chickens. When I read Andrea Tsurumi’s Accident! It was like lightning striking. She has such an unbelievable commitment to comedic details in her illustrations and her work evokes Richard Scarry for me, which was absolutely a writer/illustrator on my mind when I wrote the book. Scarry was a favorite of mine when I was very young.
Meanwhile, Caitlyn and I agreed that JFL! needed an artist with a deep love of jazz, a proven ability to capture movement, rhythm, and dance in their work, and someone who just fundamentally understood the playful connections between food, family, and jazz. I’d never seen Eugenia’s work before, but as soon as Caitlyn showed me, I could tell she was right. We also loved that as a female creator, Eugenia would be contributing art to a large canon of jazz picture books that is almost totally illustrated by men.
I am incredibly lucky because both Andrea and Eugenia delivered art that is full of flair, joy, and originality and at the same time their work looks so incredibly close to what I envisioned in my mind when I wrote the books. While I might not have imagined chickens putting on a play in the kitchen breadbox or Auntie Nina playing celery like a trumpet, these flourishes, so abundant throughout both books, are what I’d hoped the illustrators would be inspired to create.
Something people are always surprised to learn is that in many cases with picture book collaborations, authors and illustrators do not actually communicate during the process. Was that the case with these two books? At one point did you start seeing the illustrations they were creating? What were your thoughts? And have you spoken with the artists?
There was hardly any communication between us once the process went over to them after I’d turned in my final manuscripts. Andrea and I connected briefly via email over our mutual love of John Bellairs books illustrated by Edward Gorey early on, and we got a chance to have coffee in Washington DC during American Library Association’s annual conference there in 2019, but that’s it.
Eugenia and I have traded messages about our love for each other’s work, as well as our dream to sell Jazz For Lunch! merch like bands do at concerts, but not a lot more. I was able to see their work when it was close to final form and make suggestions here and there through the editors, which were mostly implemented.
One memorable exchange I had was when Andrea reached out to me after a close friend of mine died at a young age in summer, 2020 from cancer. Andrea, because her heart is so big, offered to put my friend Dana’s portrait onto the wall in Mr. Watson and Mr. Nelson’s home. I was incredibly moved by this gesture, especially when I got a physical copy of the book and saw my friend smiling at me from inside our book. Thank you again, Andrea.
Thanks to energetic language and witty wordplay and recurring phrases, your books are very story time friendly. You are an actor and a playwright and a musician, did you “rehearse” these books while writing them?
Absolutely. I like to say that I write as much for the kids as I do for the grown-ups that will be reading the books aloud to the kids. My wife, who also trained in theater, and I have read probably one thousand books or more aloud to our two kids since our first one was born 15 years ago. As former actors, we love the act of reading aloud. But, also, we love the closeness with our children these reading sessions always engendered. We’ve always been big readers (which is one thing that brought us together, along with a mutual love of jazz) and we both have parents that love books, so reading aloud came naturally. It’s a way to ensure that our kids would pick up on our enthusiasm for reading and a way to share our love of stories with them. I always tell new parents that Jim Trelease’s Read-Aloud Handbook is one of the best parenting books I’ve ever read.
I want my books to flow, to feel playful, to be fun and musical, so I read the words aloud constantly while I’m writing at my desk. While writing JFL this made for some conflict with my dog, though. He’s a shepherd that is always, always by my side, but he gets concerned when I suddenly shout things or drum on the desk. To him, these things are not allowed. “Too silly!” as Monty Python would say. He sort of groans, upbraids me for my behavior, and boops me on the leg with his considerable nose. So, he didn’t appreciate it when I’d suddenly exclaim “Splash cymbal guacamole!” and the like. `
Jazz for Lunch must have involved a lot of research. What was that process like for you?
I did a lot of scouring my own vinyl and CD jazz collections for song titles that suggested food and eating and freedom and joy. I read as many liner notes as I could to learn who were the players on the recordings in order to learn names of musicians unknown to me. And I spent a lot of time with Richard Cooke’s Jazz Encyclopedia reading biographies of jazz musicians I did and didn’t know. I asked friends to suggest their favorite jazz tunes that had food in the titles or in the lyrics. I scoured cookbooks for jazzy names to dishes. I researched terminology, as well as descriptors for different kinds of drumming and styles of jazz.
Always, always I was looking for the words and names that lent themselves to rhymes and a general sense of jazz and cooking language that would suggest improvisatory playfulness and joy. Oh, I also listened to the Rebirth Brass Band constantly, as well as Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Ella Fitzgerald among countless others.
I also made long lists of dishes featuring musician names in my notebook. Some of my favorites that didn’t make it into the book include Jaco’s Tacos (after Jaco Pastorius), Ornette Okra (after Ornette Coleman), and Grant-and-Freddy-Green-Greens. I love the idea that the book might keep alive the names of lesser known jazz cats like Junior Cook, usually not included in children’s books
The books are about two seemingly different topics, but when I read them I see elements connecting them. Not only the aforementioned dynamic use of language, but they are both about family. What other connections do you see between the two works?
I’m glad you noticed those connections. Music and the way it brings people together and the ways it transports people and leads people to share their love of music with others are all big themes close to my heart. Not just in writing, but in life. I don’t know what my life would have been like without the drums, without my drummer brothers, my parents’ love of music, the friends I’ve made through playing and consuming music, and just the deep feelings music always elicits in me. Auntie Nina shares the wonders and genius of jazz with her nephew while Aunt Agnes the hen can’t help but belt her song to the world every chance she gets (much to Mr. Nelson’s irritation). My third book - Skeleton Stomp: A Haunted Tour of the White House - is driven by these themes also. There’s also a lot going on on the pages of both books visually and I love books just bursting with imagery, color, detail, and life.
Both books are also funny (and in the case of Mr. Watson’s Chickens, side-splittingly so). Why do you think humor is important?
Humor has always been something I gravitated towards. Not exclusively by any means - I think the tragic is too overlooked and appreciated in our culture - but as a kid, I loved Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts, Roald Dahl and Betsy Byars books; Bobcat Goldthwaite, Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder movies, and as a teen I committed Jim Carrey’s movie The Cable Guy to memory I watched it so often. The list is endless.
Humor is an incredible release from pain and anxiety (and tragedy), and it’s a reminder that so much of life is absurd. Children inherently understand this and love to laugh. And there are endless ways to find humor in things, so many types! My family and I laugh all the time over whole scenarios we’ve invented featuring our death-metal and bloodlusting cat, Crookshanks - traits all completely made up just because she’s incredibly crabby and hissy - while to this day my buddy Jacob Givens and I still laugh about a character we created in college named Sprouthead who was a needy and slightly judgmental coat rack.
Being ridiculous and goofy and silly is fun. And it brings people together. Laughing with others, along with music, has helped me make some of the best friends in life and it brought my wife and me together as soon as we discovered we shared a similar sense of humor. I hope hope hope these books bring kids and their grown-ups smiles and laughter.
What other picture books have made you laugh? New ones? Old ones?
ABH note: all of these titles can be found on Bookshop.org or at your local independent bookstore.
Deep breath! Here I go:
Peeny Butter Fudge by Toni Morrison and Slade Morrison
The Rooster Who Would Not Be Quiet by Carmen Agra Deedy
Big Mean Mike by Michelle Knudsen
Me Hungry! by Jeremy Tankard
Bark, George! By Jules Feiffer
Millions of Cats by Wanda Gág
Thumpy Feet by Betsy Lewin
Tuesday and Mr. Wuffles by David Wiesner
Bread and Jam For Frances by Russell and Lillian Hoban
Spinky Sulks and Doctor De Soto by William Steig
In The Night Kitchen and The Sign On Rosie’s Door by Maurice Sendak
The Monster’s Monster and Hug Time by Patrick McDonnell
There’s a Wocket In My Pocket! By Dr. Seuss
Sam and Dave Dig A Hole by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen
Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds
Too Many Tamales by Gary Soto
Bob. Not Bob! By Audrey Vernick and Liz Garton Scanlon
You Don’t Want a Unicorn! By Amy Dyckman
Shark vs. Train by Chris Barton
Quiet Down, Loud Town! By Alastair Heim
Duck! Rabbit! By Amy Rosenthal
Oh No! By Candace Fleming
Who are some of your favorite writers or illustrators for young people working today?
So many! The field of children’s literature is teeming with incredible talent.
Isabelle Arsenault
Cozbi A. Cabrera
LeUyen Pham
Rita Williams-Garcia
Shaun Tan
Melissa Sweet
Margarita Engle
Jonathan Stutzman
Taeeun Yoo
The Fan Brothers
Kadir Nelson
Jessie Ann Foley
Jasmine Warga
Nicole Melleby
Guojing
Renee Watson
Gary D. Schmidt
Brian Selznick
Lisa Bigelow
Javaka Steptoe…
And so many more.
Are there any upcoming projects you can tell us about?
Yes! I have just completed the manuscript for a YA graphic novel set in Chicago that’s based loosely on a real life censorship incident that occurred in Chicago Public Schools in 2013. That’s slated to be published by Chronicle Books in 2023. I’ve also completed a manuscript for an interactive kind of meditative picture book that I hope will find a home soon. And I’m currently at work on a picture book inspired by The Polar Express that has nothing to do with Christmas, trains, or Santa.
Thanks, Brian!
Thanks Jarrett! This was an absolute thrill talking with you! And congratulations again!
Be sure to visit Evanston’s independent bookstores Booked and Bookends & Beginnings.
ABH note: Our friends over at Evanston Public Library will host a virtual author visit with Jarrett and Andrea on Sunday, November 7 at 4pm. Registration begins October 11.
On Wednesday, September 22nd from 5-7p, Mr. Dapier will read from Jazz For Lunch! and sign books outdoors at La Principal, 700 Main St, Evanston, IL. Squeezebox Books and Music will spin jazz records and sell copies of the book. All ages welcome! Weather permitting.
On Tuesday, October 5th, Mr. Dapier will celebrate the release of Mr. Watson's Chickens at an outdoor Evanston event hosted by Booked. Visit Booked's website for details: https://www.bookedevanston.com/
About Jarrett Dapier
Jarrett Dapier is an author, librarian, and lifelong drummer. His picture books include Jazz for Lunch!, illustrated by Eugenia Mello, Mr. Watson's Chickens, illustrated by Andrew Tsurumi, and next year’s Skeleton Stomp: A Haunted Tour of the White House, illustrated by Lee Gatlin. He is the recipient of the John Phillip Immroth Memorial Award for Intellectual Freedom from the American Library Association for his research into censorship in Chicago Public Schools. Many families around the area have met Jarrett during his stints working in teen services at both the Evanston Public Library, where he worked for 5.5 years and the Skokie Public Library, where he worked for 4.5 years. When he’s not writing, drumming, or reading lots of books, he loves to skateboard with his son, watch birds with his wife, and talk about music with his daughter.
He lives in Evanston, IL with his family and their many pets (including chickens!)
About Brian Wilson
Brian, a Children’s Librarian, will be celebrating his 20th anniversary at the Evanston Public Library in October 2021. He has served on the Monarch, Bluestem, 2015 Odyssey, and 2017 Caldecott committees. In addition to admiring Jarrett’s books, Brian loves a LOT of picture books. Please check out what he likes on his blog Mr. Brian’s Picture Book Picks.