When Joanna Ho, the New York Times bestselling author of Eyes That Kiss in the Corners, needed feedback on a new picture book manuscript, she turned to her good friend and trusted advisor, Caroline Kusin Pritchard, author of The Keeper of Stories and Gitty and Kvetch, among others. Kusin Pritchard was generous in her critique. And thus began the wonderful collaboration that produced The Day the Books Disappeared (Disney), a children's book intent on delivering a big message to the littlest of readers. Of course, a picture book isn't a picture book without pictures. Luckily, both authors had the same illustrator in mind for their book: the one and only Dan Santat, Caldecott Medalist and National Book Award winner. Luckily, he agreed. Now, come July 15, readers will be lucky to have a book about books that underscores the value of diverse perspectives and the significance of the freedom to read.
Given the book’s message celebrating the freedom to read and the current political climate, did you decide to write this book in response to the spate of book banning around the country, or was the book already in the works?
Joanna: The rise of book banning and censorship in recent years has been alarming and harmful for students, educators, librarians, and creatives, not to mention society at large. As creatives and educators, we have seen the powerful impact of stories and books, as well as the devastating consequences of efforts to remove and restrict access to books. We wanted to write a story that humanized these impacts for young readers to understand. It was important for us to be honest about these big ideas while staying true to the joy, humor, and heart of this specific story.
This book is for the youngest of readers. As educators, why did you select this age group for such an important message?
Caroline: Young people are insightful and empathetic. They naturally believe in and want to advocate for humanity and justice and kindness, and they’re able to process even the most challenging issues from the heart. They are also the most impacted and harmed by the rise of book banning and censorship around the country. Picture books are the perfect tool for exploring complex issues because they offer layers and nuance through images and text. We wanted to create something that would allow these young readers to more deeply understand the causes and consequences of censorship—and ultimately to understand their own power in fighting for the freedom to read.
Dan, having won both the National Book Award (A First Time for Everything) and the Caldecott Medal (Beekle), do you find that recognition has had an influence on your work or approach to storytelling?
After winning the Caldecott, I’d say the impostor syndrome hit hard. I was depressed for about a year thinking it was an award I had to live up to, and so I put a lot of pressure on myself to make another book that was worthy of high praise. If it wasn’t for the great working relationship I have with my editor, Connie Hsu, I wouldn’t have made a book like After the Fall, which to this day I feel is the best book I’ve made in my career. It didn’t win any major awards, but it really quieted the voice in my head, and I thought maybe I really do belong in this business. The National Book Award was a complete surprise to me. I was thrilled I was nominated for the longlist and told myself I would be completely satisfied if I just made the shortlist. The real joy was thinking I’d be able to dress up in a tux and bring my wife to an extravagant event like she had always dreamed of attending. In the months after I won, I suddenly felt no burden to prove anything to myself. As a result, I now find myself actually willing to take more risks and experiment and play more with my work. There’s a freshness in my work that I feel I haven’t experienced since I first started in this business. It’s liberating to find that kind of joy in my work again and to not be afraid to take risks.
What do you hope young readers, and their parents or teachers, take away from The Day the Books Disappeared?
Joanna: We hope that this book inspires young people and adults alike to be curious - to open themselves to perspectives, beliefs and experiences that initially seem to differ from their own. This is the power of story. Most Americans are against book banning; we hope this book inspires readers to learn more and join in the fight for our freedom to read and our freedom to write.
How did this project come about? How did the three of you decide to collaborate and create a book together?
Joanna: I wrote a draft of a picture book about book banning, but it was very didactic and on the nose, which is what my dear friend Caroline told me when I showed her the manuscript—this is why all creators need trusted critique partners! We brainstormed possible ways to revise the story, and she kept texting me more ideas, including one about the main character “poofing” away books he didn’t like. I loved it so much and wanted to work out the story together. We’re very close friends, so we immediately jumped into a doc and started to rewrite the story. It was a fun, creative process. We worked on it often on the phone after our kids were in bed and even when I was on a plane to South Africa! There is something incredibly energizing about watching someone you love and trust hack up a story with you in real time on a shared doc.
When the book was acquired, we each made a list of our top three illustrators for this book, and when we shared our lists with each other, Dan Santat was on the top of both. We may or may not have screamed ourselves hoarse when we learned he had taken on our book!
Caroline: Normally when I give feedback on a manuscript, I can close my computer and leave my thinking in the comments and tracked changes. But Joanna’s story would not leave me alone! One night, I sprung up from a deep sleep with an idea for a possible new direction and frantically texted her stanza after stanza. I like to think I’m pretty boundaried when it comes to giving critiques, so this sort of overstepping was all kinds of out of character for me. Thankfully, Joanna received it with love and even giddiness! That was around when it clicked for both of us that there was something magical happening in our collaboration, and thankfully she asked me to cowrite it alongside. Now whenever she sends me a new story for feedback, I feel compelled to first promise that I won’t worm my way into cowriting it with her!
And, yes, Joanna hit the nail on the head about our utter shock and delight when our dream illustrator signed on. Dan knocked it out of the park, to the surprise of exactly no one. I can't wait to see kids’ faces light up when they meet Arnold and his classmates, and that’s a testament to the expressive, loving world that Dan created for this story!
At a young age, Dan, you didn’t believe you could become a storyteller given you didn't see representation in the field. How has that early experience shaped you and your work on this picture book?
Dan: At a very young age, I dreamed of being an actor or a film director but quickly noticed that the only roles that Asians had in cinema were either the comic relief or being beaten up by a martial arts action hero. I realized even before the age of 10 that Hollywood wasn’t a place where I would be able to have any sort of opportunities for storytelling. That led me to animation and the idea that I could be behind the camera, which then led me to children’s publishing. It was the path of least resistance. Seeing yourself in artistic mediums depicted in non-stereotypical ways is important. I still struggle with it, because you try to do it without being too heavy-handed. It’s still about the story. You don’t want to say, “Hey, here’s an Asian kid in this story, and he’s so Asian being Asian.” It’s more like, “Here’s this story, and the main character happens to be Asian.” There’s a fine balance.
Caroline, you’ve said, “Stories are the work of a community, not a creator in isolation.” Can you explain this further and how this viewpoint influences the types of stories you tell and, specifically, how it showed up in this picture book?
Yes! I said that right when my debut book, Gitty and Kvetch, launched back in 2021. I remember feeling suddenly self-conscious about there being only my name on the cover to receive the writing credit. There’s not a universe in which I could’ve created that story on my own! It had the fingerprints of my extended family who infused Yiddish into my being, my creative writing students who were with me when I first dreamed up the characters, all my critique partners in grad school, my mentors, my editor, my brother who is Kvetch, and on and on. This truth carries over to each story I write but especially this collaboration! Joanna and I pushed and pulled and tugged on this manuscript for months. This happened everywhere from physically sitting together on my couch to arguing with each other on speaker phone and cackling while we built on each other’s sentences in Google docs. Thanks to feedback from our incredible agents, Ginger Knowlton and Caryn Wiseman, and all the editors who turned it down when we first went on submission, we revised it roughly one billion times. And where we finally landed is an amalgamation of not just our own partnership in responding to these critiques but all we’ve noticed from raising our children, our lived experiences, and our advocacy, which is informed by the educators and librarians fighting on the frontlines against censorship. Storytelling is my way of puzzling together the forces that have done such powerful work in my heart and mind, and my attempt at doing my best to honor them on the page.
Growing up, Joanna, your family moved around a lot. You’ve lived everywhere from Ghana to Minnesota. How has that experience shaped you and the type of stories you want to tell?
Living in many different places, from Minnesota to Maryland to Pennsylvania to California to Taiwan to Ghana, has given me opportunities to experience and appreciate just a fraction of the diversity of language and culture in the world. It has also allowed me to see ways we are all connected in our humanity, despite our different perspectives. As a storyteller, I try to tell stories that honor many different experiences and truths, particularly those that challenge the pervasive dominant narratives. I hope my books give readers the opportunity to feel seen and valued and reflected and/or allow them to experience and honor realities that may be different from their own. Stories are one way we can find connection in our common humanity.
Dan, you mentioned once that you are a kid at heart, so what mental age would you say you are?
I’d say I’m about 15. I still don’t know how to do adult stuff like taxes or fix things around the house, but I somehow find myself where I get to have this career where I just draw and paint all day and then occasionally go out to events and perform on a stage or a bookstore and make people happy. My agent handles the business side of things, my publisher helps sell the books, and I hop on a plane a few times a year to be greeted somewhere else by a lovely librarian or teacher handing me a juice box and saying, “This way, Mr. Santat. Sit here. Eat this. Sign this. OK, time to get back on your plane. Bye! Thank you!” I often find myself at airports listening to people on work calls talking about Excel spreadsheets, hiring subcontractors, and taking meeting after meeting, and I sit there and appreciate every second of what life has given me. I don’t take any of it for granted, and I thank everyone in my life for helping me on this journey.
If you could choose one book that you would never want to disappear, what would it be and why?
Joanna: This is such a hard question for me because it feels impossible to pick just one! There are so many books that have had a lasting impact on me. From comics like Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson that always make me laugh and nonfiction like Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain that help me better understand myself to everything by Jacqueline Woodson that teaches me the kind of writer and human I want to be one day, there are too many to name. Which is why we wrote The Day the Books Disappeared! Books are treasures, and we must fight for the freedom to read.
Caroline: Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins by Eric Kimmel and Trina Schart Hyman, no question. That story still haunts and delights me decades after I first read it as a little Jewish kid in Texas who never saw Jewish humor and mythology captured with such wonder on the page. We must protect Hershel at all costs!!!
Dan, your original family name is Santatevongchai, granted to your great-grandfather by the king of Thailand. Does that make you royalty? If not, was this a special process or common practice?
HAHA! Right now, I’m working on a memoir about my parents, and the story is a little bit more scandalous than that. I won’t go into full details now, but it involves an affair with the prince of Thailand and a plot of land given to my great-great-aunt and my great-grandfather becoming the town crier of that little piece of land. Quite sad, really. Not royalty, but sort of cast aside and forgotten. You’ll just have to read the book!