Traveling. We travel a lot – I like to joke that, for me, it isn’t a vacation unless you need a passport – and I especially love traveling with my children. It’s amazing to view things through their eyes, whether it is the first time for me or whether I’ve been there before.

But on a more daily basis, when I’m not writing, I enjoy cooking elaborate gourmet meals, playing competitive Uno with the whole family, and guiltily reading those pulpy novels you usually read at the beach while imagining that I am actually at the beach.

Maybe with the time change, I’ll be five hours ahead instead of perpetually behind? Actually, most things won’t change because of the geography. I’ll still write mostly when the kids are in school, take the afternoons off to be with them, and then pick up again after they go to bed. As an American, the UK is interesting – it’s an English speaking country, economically/socially/politically similar to the US, but honestly, it is very foreign! It’s teaching me how difficult it is for people, including my parents, to try to make a life in a new country. It isn’t easy to leave the things that are familiar to you and start again from the beginning. Maybe there’s a novel in there somewhere…

Since my children are young, I’m drawn to picture books, probably because I dream about reading my books to my kids. Of course, it takes so long for a picture book to go from approved manuscript text to hardcover reality (I believe the average is 2 or 3 years) that I’m not sure my children will still want to read them. Maybe Sawyer, my baby, will still be interested. (Of course, the older kids won’t be able to get out of the bedtime readings, even if they’re 12 and 13 when the books come out! That’s the nice thing about being the parent.)

 

I really enjoy trying to create stories that will stand the test of time. Every parent and every child has had a sharing crisis, and so I hope that many parents and many children will find The Mine-o-saur a valuable tool in negotiating those crises!

 

The most difficult challenge, of course, is trying to tell the whole story in very few words. The Mine-o-saur is just over 500 words long – and it isn’t easy to introduce a world and characters, develop those characters, give them a compelling problem to tackle and unfold their journey in only a few hundred words. Inevitably, even when I think a story is as short as it can be, my editor thinks I can take another 50 words out!

Q & A With Sudipta

David Clark’s art brings the text to a whole new, incredible, goofy, hilarious, fantastic level. Truly, the book was not even a tenth as charming before the art as it is now that David is done.  I couldn’t be more pleased.

Your new picture book, The Mine-o-saur (Putnam, September 2007, Ages 3-8), deals with sharing, what inspired you to write a book about this subject? And how did you come up with the idea of using dinosaurs to convey your message?

Your last book—Tightrope Poppy, the High-Wire Pig—was also a picture book; what do you enjoy most and what challenges you about writing picture books?

You recently relocated from New Jersey to London (temporarily), how do you think will that affect your writing schedule/process?

What do you enjoy doing when you’re not writing?

The next book in the line up is a picture book called Flying Eagle. It’s different from Tightrope Poppy and The Mine-o-saur in that it is nonfiction, but it is still a great story. The book begins with a devoted father eagle hunting over the Serengeti for his baby’s dinner. With all the dangers found in wild Africa, will Flying Eagle succeed? Deborah Kogan Ray is illustrating this book, and from what I’ve seen so far, the art will be breathtaking.

 

Right now, I’m working on a few new picture book ideas, ranging from a new bedtime monster to a pirate story. Other genres? Not any time soon – I need the baby to start going to school before I can handle learning something new!

What can your fans look forward to next? And what are you working on now? Do you have any other genres you’d like to try in the near future?

To contact me:

Phone: 973-387-0121

E-mail: sudipta@sudipta.com

My children are very loyal, so they love everything I write always – so they’re not the best critics. I do read works-in-progress to children when I visit school or library groups. I usually talk about the revision process, and how after I’ve worked on something for a very long time, my editor can still find things that are wrong and make me “correct” them. Then, I read something I’m working on and ask the kids how they would “fix” it. That gives me a lot of insight about what parts of the story resonate with the audience – although the suggestions themselves are often too wacky to actually use!

 

I do have one foolproof way to tell if a story is ready for a publisher or not – I ask my husband Jim to read it. The more he hates it, the quicker I know it will sell!

Do you try out your writing on your children before you submit it? Or do you have some sort of review process w/kids?

It took about two years to get my first picture book under contract. In that time, I sold a lot of stuff to magazines and had written some nonfiction books, but the picture book side of it was difficult and often frustrating. Actually, I’ve been very lucky, in that I connected with many great editors early on in my career who have helped me develop as a writer and create great books. In addition to Tightrope Poppy and The Mine-o-saur, I have six more picture books in the works, and I can’t wait to see them!

How did you make the transition from writing to being published? Was it a long, difficult journey? h

MI love everything I write, and the nonfiction has been a particular bonus. I view it like being back in college – I have my major (picture books) that I focus most of my energy on, but then there are electives that I can take when something interests me. Each nonfiction book I’ve written, from The Eiffel Tower to Iran to my most recent biography, Jane Goodall, has given me the opportunity to learn about something I was curious about, but never really had the chance to investigate. And, I got paid!

 

You’d think that it would be a very different process for each type of book, but in reality, it is not. Every book I write, whether it is fictional or fact-based, unfolds in the same way, with a main character who struggles with something and emerges on the other side of the struggle having changed in some way. The narrative structure is incredibly important in creating books that kids will want to read.

 

I write every day, even on the weekends, but I try to limit my writing time to when my children are occupied doing other things. So the bulk of my writing is done during the school day and in the evenings after bedtime. I work on a laptop, so the location can change every day, but I have some favorite places: the left-most seat of my living room sofa (the cushion is indented as proof), the dining room table with my back to the window (the view outside is too much of a distraction!), and, occasionally, my office!

You’ve also written 16 nonfiction books; do you prefer writing in one style or for one particular age level? How does your process differ for each? And do you write at a certain time of day? ..every day? ..in a specific location?

For the first decade of my life, my family (my Mom, Dad, and sister) lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Jersey City. My parents were fairly typical immigrants in that they considered India home, and New Jersey as just the place they lived in between trips home. We always had a group of guests staying with us, uncles, cousins, or even just other Indians who wanted a place to stay that felt like home instead of a foreign country. When I think about the themes that I write about – finding your place in the world, finding acceptance, celebrating your uniqueness – I can trace the origins of those lines of thought to my childhood.

 

I’m afraid I had rather boring favorite books!  As a young child, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are was beloved; later, I enjoyed A Little Princess and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. In high school, I was a huge fan of Virginia Woolf, especially A Room of One’s Own (still on my bookshelf, and I plan to read it with my daughters when they are old enough), and loved T.H. White’s The Once and Future King.

 

I actually didn’t realize that I wanted to be a writer until after I had finished a Master’s degree in Biology and had had two children. It was only then that I realized that I had stories to tell, and my children were my original audience.

Tell us a little about your childhood, as it relates to your writing. What were your favorite books, and at what point did you realize you wanted to become a writer yourself?

I’ve got three children, so it isn’t uncommon to have a sharing crisis occurring at any given time in my house. In fact, I’ve definitely heard the older two screaming, “MINE!  MINE!  MINE!” on several occasions. I think it is important for picture books to deal with universal themes, and learning to share, finding a way to fit in with your classmates, and admitting it when you’re wrong – all things that the Mine-o-saur has to do through the course of the book – are issues that all children can relate to.

 

As for using dinosaurs as the characters, that has to do with my love of word play. Fiddling with the word “dinosaur” to create a new character, a “mine-o-saur,” seemed natural to me!

What did David Clark’s art bring to your text? Were you pleased with the combined results?