What Medium Does Mo Willems Use for His Art

When I taught second grade, I had a student who absolutely hated reading. He'd made the determination that it was just too irksome. While his peers were busy devouring books, he'd spend his time distracting them, being silly, finding other things to occupy his time.

That changed when we started reading Mo Willems's We Are in a Volume! I voiced the part of the elephant, Gerald, and he took the role of the hog, Piggie—expert pals who come to realize that they are, in fact, in a book, and have the hilarity-provoking ability to control what the readers say.

Something about that dynamic must take been thrilling to my student, because Nosotros Are in a Book! turned him into a reader. Information technology dawned on him, I recall, that his ain desire for silliness and play could be fulfilled in a story.

My second grader's experience isn't unusual. Immature children around the earth are drawn to the distinctive voice and visual style of Willems, who spent years working for Sesame Street before going on to write and illustrate dozens of books, winning three Caldecott awards along the way—for Don't Allow the Pigeon Bulldoze the Charabanc!, Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale, and Knuffle Bunny Likewise: A Instance of Mistaken Identity.

I recently had the opportunity to talk with Willems near the inherent power of drawing, why adults should consider undergoing "shame-ectomies," and why he'due south e'er on the side of the kids. Our chat has been edited for length and clarity.

EDUTOPIA: Y'all seem to accept unique insight most what young children crave from their reading experiences.

MO WILLEMS: I don't recollect I'm more unique than anyone else. What I want to bring to the tabular array is a respect for kids by creating 49 percent of the work and leaving enough space for my readers to create the remaining 51 percent. When people are engaged and actually have a part to play in the story, the story ways more than. Then, for instance, in Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, the audience is never instructed to say "no." The fun is in having to effigy that out.

For me a expert volume is a question, not an answer. It'due south almost asking key questions: What is friendship? Why are people the manner they are? How do you talk to somebody about how you don't like what they do? Why tin can't I drive a jitney? If yous create a book with the answer, it's already ruined, because then you're just writing an pedagogy transmission.

EDUTOPIA: And what's the big question backside, say, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Jitney!?

WILLEMS: Besides the intricacies of omnibus driving? Well, the "significant" is going to be different for me than for the audience, just that doesn't mean I'm right. For example, The first two reviews of Don't Allow the Pigeon Drive the Bus! were, "It's a great book considering information technology teaches kids never to give up and to e'er struggle and try to accomplish their goals." And the next review said, "What's neat nearly this book is it teaches kids the value of the discussion 'no' and knowing when to cease." And both those reviews are right!

EDUTOPIA: You've talked about how grown-ups are a crucial ingredient to the experience of literature for immature kids. Tin you elaborate on that?

WILLEMS: I recollect with the grown-ups what I'one thousand trying to do is encourage a total shame-ectomy. Embarrassment is a learned illness that begins to manifest itself in early adolescence. By adulthood, it tin take ossified your entire spirit. A saving grace of having kids is that for the starting time time—in possibly a very long time—there's permission to be light-headed. I encourage that.

If you claim that being creative—past writing, drawing, or singing songs—is of import, then you have to do those things. Otherwise, you're lying and kids smell a lie. A lot of my piece of work over the terminal couple years has been trying to create situations that let the grown-ups in kids' lives to exist sillier by doodling, drawing, and demonstrating the joy in the creative process. If I'grand doing a drawing demonstration, it's for everyone, because drawing is a physicalized form of empathy—and who tin can't use a fleck more than of that?

EDUTOPIA: How practise you come up with a premise like a dove who wants to drive a bus? How practise y'all know information technology will piece of work?

WILLEMS: Y'all don't accept ideas. You lot abound them. Information technology'south an inordinate amount of piece of work. Information technology takes patience and perseverance; there's a lot of experimenting and a lot of declining.

I started out in stand up-up, and then in goggle box. And then, I've written many, many hours of television and created many, many films and performed on many stages.

Consequently, I take developed a sense of what doesn't piece of work. Call back of being a author or a humorist equally being an athlete—someone who practices consistently to effigy out what doesn't work and then tries to avoid doing that. Afterwards decades of doing this, I have a sense of what isn't funny. All I have to do is take out the not-funny bits and trust that any's left works.

EDUTOPIA: It seems like a lot of the bounds of your books are so ridiculous that only a child could've come with them.

WILLEMS: Not to the characters. To the characters, they are deadly real situations, and they have them very, very seriously. If you were to have The Pigeon and explain to him that people were laughing at him while he's trying to figure out how to bulldoze a bus, it would make it even worse! Autobus driving is life and expiry for him.

EDUTOPIA: You're right. When I taught writing to young children I was always so impressed and charmed by their stories. Practise you have suggestions about how teachers tin assist children cultivate that kind of imaginative sensibility in their own writing?

WILLEMS: That's a good question, but it'south hard for me to reply considering I'm not an expert. I tin tell you what I do. All of my characters are specifically designed so that a 5-year-erstwhile can reasonably copy them, and I'm existence intentional in creating that scaffolding. As a young kid, I started out drawing Charlie Dark-brown and Snoopy and using these characters that weren't mine to explore funny new gags or little bits of stories. From there I tentatively created my own characters.

And then, I beloved the idea of kids repurposing my characters as stepping stones. If they can have The Pigeon and recreate a pigeon story, that's a lot easier than starting from scratch: that kid know how The Dove looks, they know his basic personality traits.

EDUTOPIA: Your books tend to be a lot of fun, but they don't shy away from unpleasant situations and emotional extremes. Why practice y'all approach scary topics and negative emotions caput on?

WILLEMS: It is my sincere belief that childhood is an inherently difficult time. Fifty-fifty a good babyhood is difficult. You're new. The furniture is not fabricated to your size. You lot have no bureau. Every bit a grown-up, every morning time when you wake up and pull out a mug to pour your coffee in, that's your pick. You choose which mug to pull out. Imagine waking upward offset matter in the morning and someone three times every bit big as you just replaces it, forcing you lot to drinkable out of a mug that mayhap you hate and ignoring your reasonable mug preferences? That would exist incredibly frustrating, correct? And if your whole life was that over and over every single day, of form you would need frequent naps!

EDUTOPIA: [laughs] Sure. Practice you think there are ways that guild underestimates young kids?

WILLEMS: I recollect that society does non demand enough of the grown-ups in the earth to model empathetic and creative behavior. I call up that grown-ups say terrible things like, "I can't draw," and so don't understand why kids put down their crayons.

There'southward no such thing as a "wrong" cartoon. Information technology'southward an experience! Drawing is physicalized empathy.

At my home, we roll out a large block of butcher paper on the dining room table and we describe after dinner. Guests, too! Everyone does their ain affair: some draw realistically, some cartoony, some abstractly. My father-in-law creates these wildly colored spreadsheets. Awesome!

This action, it's an hr without screens. Information technology'south talking at the table. One of the best parts of life is being with other people and communicating with them and sharing with them. The idea that you lot get to exercise that and make marks on paper is incredible!

EDUTOPIA: How about equally writers? How exercise kids larn to use words in the same way that they use drawing utensils?

courtesy of Disney

Mo Willems

WILLEMS: I retrieve information technology'southward a mistake to assume that drawing or doodling isn't a form of writing—I think drawing is a very accessible course of writing. Many writers use storyboards or make maps or sketches, fifty-fifty if they're only writing prose. There's an inherent value in cartoon that's actually powerful.

Children tend to draw chronologically, which is to say narratively. They'll start with, "Oh, I'm going to describe a character. Now, is it a hero or a villain? It'southward a villain. Well, if it's a villain, it has a cape. And if information technology has a cape, information technology can fly. Let me draw the heaven." And all of that story comes out of having a drawing utensil in your hand. It's magic.

And annihilation tin can exist a story. It is intentional that nil "big" happens in the Knuffle Bunny books. Going and doing your laundry, which seems like it'due south not special, is in fact worthy of a volume, it is in fact a dramatic story. Because in those moments where aught happens, everything happens.

And so, that'south a framework to endeavour. Start out with a simple something like: "I'm gonna tell the story of the twenty-four hours I walked my dog," and let that be a spark for something that really has value.

EDUTOPIA: Of course, I told all the fans of yours in my life that I was going to exist talking to you lot and asked them to enquire some questions. Is it OK if I pass on a few of them?

WILLEMS: Sure.

EDUTOPIA: Practise you relate more to Elephant or to Piggie?

WILLEMS: I aspire to Piggie-ness and am regretfully more Elephant-ine than I want to be—and thankfully less Pigeon-y than I once was.

EDUTOPIA: One more than: Who was your favorite writer when you were growing up?

WILLEMS: The large influence on me was "Peanuts," by Charles Schulz.

If I can talk to the teachers right now, I get great joy when I run into teachers all over the country teaching kids how to brand word bubbles and how to be expressive with dialogue and type size and fonts because when I was a child in school many, many years ago, my art teacher would throw away my cartoons and say they didn't have value. I am so glad those days are over. I like to call up that my piece of work has been a minor part of that change. If I could exist proud of one thing in my career, it would exist that.

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Source: https://www.edutopia.org/article/mo-willems-lost-art-being-silly

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