{"id":4110,"date":"2017-04-18T16:47:38","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T20:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/?p=4110"},"modified":"2017-04-18T17:55:58","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T21:55:58","slug":"hannah-barnaby-jumping-into-picture-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/?p=4110","title":{"rendered":"Hannah Barnaby: Jumping into Picture Books"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It’s a small world, and if you’re in kidlit, it’s even smaller.\u00a0 This is a good thing, especially in Virginia, because it means that you get to bump into Hannah Barnaby on a pretty regular basis. I first met Hannah at one of the world’s best author events, YAVA, formerly known as Teen 13 (and then Teen 14 and Teen 15). I met her again a few months later at a Highlights<\/a> retreat, where she graciously sang to cover up my rudimentary guitar playing.<\/div>\n
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\"View<\/a> Anyway, I’ve mostly known Hannah as a YA author, but this spring, she’s coming out with two (2!) picture books, which means I get to subject her to my usual questions about genre jumping.<\/div>\n
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Me: What’s the first thing you ever published?
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Hannah: A short story in Tenth Muse, my high school literary magazine. It was about a girl’s experience during orientation in heaven, and it was truly terrible. (But given the recent success of “The Good Place,” maybe I was ahead of my time?)<\/div>\n
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Me: <\/strong>As a professional writer, which came first for you: Chicken or egg, picture book or novel, fiction or nonfiction? <\/strong><\/div>\n
Hannah: Technically, the first book I was paid to write was Curious George and the Firefighters,<\/i>\u00a0when I was an editor at Houghton Mifflin. But the first book with my name on it was Wonder Show,<\/i>\u00a0an historical novel about a traveling sideshow.<\/div>\n
ed. note: Wonder Show was also a nominee for the William C. Morris award. <\/a><\/em><\/div>\n
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\"51ctlBdWl4L._SY346_\"<\/a> \"51x66+1Cm0L._SY346_\"<\/a>Me: When did you publish something in a different form?<\/strong><\/div>\n
Hannah: I’ve got two picture books coming out this year: Bad Guy<\/i>\u00a0and Garcia & Colette Go Exploring<\/i>. And another one, There’s Something About Sam,<\/i>\u00a0slated for 2019! I’ve also got an early chapter book on submission. Once I opened up to thinking about writing stories in non-novel forms, once those boundaries were loosened up in my mind, it became more and more fun to experiment.<\/div>\n
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Are you a one-project-at-a-time person, or do you mix it up? How easy to you find it to go back and forth between different forms?<\/strong>
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I always have multiple projects going — it’s the best way to avoid getting stuck or spinning my wheels on one particular story. But I find it difficult to work on more than one novel at a time, because of the large scale of the story and all the different characters and details involved. Picture books and chapter books are a great way to shift my focus for a little while, and because I’m a slow writer when it comes to novels, those shorter forms give me a sense of accomplishment when I actually finish something!<\/div>\n
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\"513pZejbB-L._SX260_\"<\/a>Are there themes or places that you tend to explore, both in your writing for young readers and your writing for older ones?<\/strong><\/div>\n
Almost every story I’ve ever written has been launched with a “what if” question. What if a regular girl found herself living among a cast of sideshow performers? What if a little boy who loved to play the villain with his little sister unwittingly taught her some of his tricks? So I think that sense of curiosity is what drives most of the stories I write.<\/div>\n
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What has writing in one format taught you about the other?\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n
I learned so much about story structure from working on picture books, and I’ve found it really helpful to apply that on a larger scale to my novels. I’m not a natural plotter, so any practice I can get is a good thing!\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n
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\"61vd4anQp7L._SX260_\"<\/a>Is there anything that surprised you when you switched forms?<\/strong><\/div>\n
Because I had worked on picture books as an editor, I thought I was prepared for the experience of seeing someone else interpret my words in their illustrations. I knew there would be changes, and that I had to be flexible. But the absolute thrill of seeing the finished artwork by Mike Yamada for Bad Guy<\/i>\u00a0and Andrew Joyner for Garcia & Colette <\/i>actually caught me off guard! (It’s kind of addictive. And it’ll definitely keep me writing picture books.)<\/div>\n
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Is there a genre you\u2019d like to try that you haven\u2019t tried yet?<\/strong><\/div>\n
I’ve been working on a middle grade for what feels like forever! And with two kids in elementary school, I’ve been reading a lot of graphic novels lately, which are super fun. Young adult is my first love, but I’m definitely drawn to books for younger readers these days.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Thanks, Hannah! For more information about Hannah, visit www.hannahbarnaby.com<\/a><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n
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or follow her on twitter at @hannahrbarnaby<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
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Girls of Summer is a literary event\u00a0 that features books with strong female protagonists. Go see Hannah at the Charlottesville stop<\/a> on May 13th.<\/div>\n
The launch for Bad Guys will be at Barnes and Noble in Charlottesvill<\/a>e on May 20.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It’s a small world, and if you’re in kidlit, it’s even smaller.\u00a0 This is a good thing, especially in Virginia, because it means that you get to bump into Hannah Barnaby on a pretty regular basis. I first met Hannah … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,128,150,123,124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-interview","category-genre-jumpers","category-picture-books","category-ya","category-young-adult"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4110"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4129,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4110\/revisions\/4129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.squealermusic.com\/madclips\/wordpress2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}