How much do I love this video? Thiiiiiiiiiiisssssss much. Thanks again to my fabulous film crew and frog wranglers. (The behind-the-scenes story is here.)
A couple of years ago, I watched that Joan Rivers documentary when it was streaming on Netflix. Near the beginning, there’s a scene where she stands in front of her card catalogue, which is packed full of her jokes and one-liners. Thousands upon thousands of jokes and one-liners. For me, that was the lightbulb she’s-a-writer moment. And it applied not just to Joan, who had, of course, written books, too, but to comedians in general. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of comedians as writers before that point. I’d always appreciated comedy as an art form; I’d just never appreciated it as having so much in common with my own. But jokes and humor and timing are integral parts of storytelling. Jokes are stories themselves, told out loud in front of a live audience, fast and furious.
After that documentary, Joan went on my “people to see before they die” list. I missed my chance.
Other reasons to appreciate Joan, besides the glass-ceiling busting, which is better described by people like Kathy Griffin:
– I have a slight obsession with the red carpet. I used to watch with my friends when we were all in one place. I watch with them via twitter now that we’re not. We have Joan Rivers to thank for bringing us together. I admit I harbored a fantasy of one day writing an original screen play and of having Joan ask who I was wearing (after which I would probably say “Target,” pronouncing it “Tar-jay,” as if no one had ever made that joke before). I suppose now that fantasy will have to include Kelly Osbourne.
– I have a slight obsession with Sarah Silverman, who wouldn’t be where she is if Joan Rivers hadn’t been where she was.
-And my final note of appreciation for Joan comes because she told me stories when I was a kid via The Electric Company, even thought I didn’t know it was Joan Rivers at the time. She was the narrator for The Adventures of Letterman segment. My brother discovered this (or more likely always knew this and rediscovered it) a couple of years ago when he was watching old episodes with his son. Gene Wilder was the voice of Letterman, by the way. But it was Joan, letting us know what that evil spellbinder was up to.
The story, about her hearing loss from meningitis, her gain of a new superpower and her search for a true friend, is my personal pick for a Newbery/ Caldecott/Schneider Family triple crown. Cece’s also written and illustrated picture books and an easy reader. And (insert Troy McClure voice here) you may know her from the cover art for one of her husband’s Origami Yoda books or the logo she designed for the Eastmont Tomato Festival in Elliston, Va. Rumor has it that she’s working on a short for the next Comic Squad, along with more picture books, and illustrations for a new series with the aforementioned husband. She is at once wise and pee-in-your-pants funny, and I am thrilled to have her here to talk about genre jumping and the painstaking work she did on El Deafo. I am glad she’s finished for two reasons: First, because readers can now check out this glorious book, and second because she has finally unlocked the door of her studio and I get to SEE her again!
Cece Bell
Me: Are there themes you tend to explore repeatedly in writing and illustrating for different age groups?
A page from the sampler for El Deafo, where the bubbles make all of the difference.
As some of you may know, I’ve spent the last few weeks searching for a frog to use in a trailer for How to Behave at a Tea Party, my book with illustrator Heather Ross that comes out this September.
Frogs (well, one frog in particular) play a role in our book — a role that Heather amplified even more when she did the illustrations.
I spent a lot of my childhood catching frogs, toads, and other wildlife in Blacksburg, Va., where a creek near our house served as our rec room.
We live outside of D.C. now, and my own kids haven’t had as many opportunities to troll creeks for wildlife, to learn how to pluck a crayfish out of the water by grabbing him just behind the claws. But they did grow up knowing the low, did-someone-just-start-a-lawnmower sound of the bullfrog. That’s because we have a backyard pond, installed by the obsessive gardeners who owned our house before we moved in. When you turn on the waterfall, it drowns out the sound of nearby 66.
A quiet waterlily.
There had never been a huge number of frogs in the pond, only a few. And they turned out to be a great delicacy for the raccoons who visited our neighborhood. Over our years in this house, our frog population diminished, then disappeared. Last summer and this summer, the pond has been quiet, populated only by waterlilies, snails and dragonflies, none of whom say very much.
Heather has tons of Frog Experience — more than I do. Her book How to Catch a Frog, a compilation of essays on DIY, growing up and being a grown-up, takes its title from a story about her heroic attempt to save frogs — her frogs — from Vermont dinner plates. The fabrics that she’s created over the years have featured frogs as well, as in the accompanying swatch.
This is probably a long way of saying that we really needed a frog for our book trailer. A live frog. Only I couldn’t drive north to get one from Heather. And I didn’t want to buy one from a pet store; that seemed wrong for what would amount to a cameo appearance. I put out a Facebook call to try to borrow one. I got a few offers of snakes, but that was about it. So I set out to do what I would have done when I was 9: I set out to catch a frog.
I started at a local spot along the Potomac where I’d seen frogs on every excursion — every excursion but the one I made myself, without my family, with the soul purpose of borrowing a frog for 4 seconds of internet glory. I tried a second spot where I’d seen frogs while hiking, but no dice there, either. I sat outside of our own pond again, just in case the raccoons had missed somebody. A friend suggested I contact the local nature center, but I didn’t think they were in the habit of loaning out amphibians, even if I promised no frogs would be harmed during the making of our video. I found tadpoles on Craigslist, but they wouldn’t grow arms and legs or lose their tails by our book’s release date. And I checked an exotic grocery store in case I could, like Heather, save a frog from a dinner plate. All I found was abalone.
Then Wendy Shang told me that a member of her son’s Boy Scout troop had a pond near his family’s house in more-rural McLean. The pond was full of frogs and Chrissy Brownson (the mom of said scout) was an elementary school teacher. As such, she was willing to do pretty much anything to support someone who worked on books that her students might someday read. Her boys would be glad to help us find a frog.
My definition of friendship changes each month. Right now it goes as follows: A true friend is someone who helps you find a frog, even after you’ve given up looking.
On Thursday, the kids and I drove out to McLean where we met up with Wendy and her kids and Chrissy and her kids. Right away, we could hear the frogs. The water rippled with them. But they proved tricky to catch, even with a small kayak and a net.
The kids on the hunt.
No one was ready to quit (the fun is in the search, after all), but as the light began to change, we sent the kids back up the hill to check on a family of toads hiding out in a window well. A toad, we thought, could be the emergency stunt double; the understudy. When the kids came running back through the tall grass, they had not just one toad, but four of them, along with a spotted salamander and the most patient, photogenic frog we will ever meet.
Part of our cast...
We shot the video with a toad, first, because he was dry and easier to hold onto.
Me with Toad, and pretty much every wrinkle showing...
It was trickier with the frog, who slid through my fingers three times before resting quietly in a tea cup for his close-up.
Me with Frog.
Cup of tea?
When we were done, we let him go near the water’s edge.
Free again.
We set the toads free along the hillside. They seemed happy there. My kids were happy, too. They claimed it was one of the best days of summer.
When we got home my son went into the backyard. He came running into the house a minute later with an announcement: A small creature, startled by his bare footsteps, had just leapt off a rock and plunked into the pond. Our own frogs were back.
So my mother-in-law just won the Mother-in-Law of the Year award, at least in my book, for patiently submitting to the direction of a very particular director (Kid No. 1), not to mention wearing a leather jacket in July. The result was a new book trailer for Nanny X. I’m thrilled to bits over it and am posting it below!
Because the clips are quick (the director wanted a montage effect) and because we wanted to leave an air of mystery, you don’t get to see a lot of MIL in her Nanny X glory. But I thought I’d post a couple of behind-the-scenes photos here. (When I asked MIL if I could post them, she didn’t even ask to see them first. “Anything to promote your book,” she said.)
Mother-in-law, standing tall.
Close-up
The Hat
