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| (photo: Slimane Lalami) | |
Brian Selznick is the Caldecott Medal-winning author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Wonderstruck and The Marvels, the first two of which were adapted into movies and all of which were bestsellers. Selznick's Big Tree, which began as an idea from filmmaker Steven Spielberg, will be published by Scholastic on April 4, 2023. Here, Selznick talks with Shelf Awareness about scientific research, storytelling through art and the joy of creative collaborations.
The author's note in the book tells readers how this story began as a concept with film director Steven Spielberg and Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri. You've worked with a writing partner before; was story plotting different working with visual creators?
I think in pictures, so the process of imagining the story with Spielberg and Meledandri felt familiar in many ways. But the experience of sitting around a table with them bouncing ideas back and forth was really thrilling. As a bookmaker, I have a limited but endlessly adaptable technology at my disposal: the page turn. I remember one particularly fun moment while we were developing the movie, when Spielberg thought there might be a place in the screenplay to create a scene inspired by Busby Berkely dance sequences from old movie musicals. I immediately imagined a sequence where we learn about the history of the universe, and by the time we get to the Cretaceous era, which is when I set the story, all life on Earth would be working together in perfect harmony. It wasn't going to be "dance" exactly, but it would hopefully convey the idea of how all of nature works together. When it was time to transform the screenplay into a book, this became a drawn sequence where I tried to capture the movement and the harmony I'd pictured for the film, but now presented as an almost abstract series of images that start with the Big Bang and move us through evolution to the Cretaceous era.
Big Tree is more than 500 pages long and about 60% is illustration. How did you strike the balance between text and art?
The first thing I do is come up with the story itself, the narrative. As I'm writing down these ideas, I do often have a sense of what I'd like to draw, but I never draw anything until much later in the process. For the movie, I wasn't going to be doing any drawing. All the visuals would have been created by a team of professional animators. In my books, the visual sequences can serve many purposes: they can move the action forward; they can focus on an important aspect of the story; they can convey emotions and reveal surprises. I never use speech bubbles or descriptions on my drawings, so all the dialogue must appear on the text pages along with anything you can't see, such as thoughts and descriptions of sounds and smells. Also, I find there are some visual moments that are more exciting to imagine than to see, so I keep those as text. Therefore, the location and pacing of the pictures and picture sequences are relatively random. If I notice that there's a particularly long stretch without any drawings, I might see if I can add a drawing or two, but usually I let instinct and chance do the work.
Your use of white space surrounding some of the text blocks is striking. It's almost as if the text is breathing. What do you hope this signals for the reader?
I realized page turns could be utilized to help underscore some of the dramatic moments in the text, the same way I'd been using them to help with the drama of the drawings. One of my favorite adult novels, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, uses white space and page turns to highlight important text toward the end of the book. I believed there were places in Big Tree where giving the pages the ability to breathe, as you say, could help with some of the more otherworldly moments, especially in the moments when Louise talks to the stars at the beginning of the book and when the Earth talks to Merwin toward the end.
A seed isn't your standard protagonist. What helped you sit in Louise's and Merwin's perspectives? What was it like to personify seeds?
I was very surprised when Spielberg and Meledandri wanted me to write a story about nature from nature's point of view. The reason I chose seeds was because I realized they have many parallels to the sorts of characters I usually create. Seeds, like my characters, are often separated from their parent, are blown about by chance, and must search for a safe place to grow. I'd already made a rule for myself that everything in the narrative must be based on science. For instance, plants really can communicate with each other, so talking was allowed, but they would not be allowed to get up and walk around on their roots, since they can't do that in real life. The fluff at the end of sycamore seeds helps them move through the air, so personifying the fluff and making it move like little arms and legs fit into my rule. There were some tricky moments though. When I was writing the text, there were certain words or descriptions I discovered I couldn't use. For instance, I couldn't say the seeds cried because they have no eyes, but I could describe what was happening inside them. They could feel sadness; and they could get excited, even perhaps feel a tingle of anticipation. Hopefully the reader never notices this. It's all meant to help you believe that the thoughts, feelings and conversations are coming from two tiny seeds.
As you said (and explain in the back matter), everything in your narrative is based in science. Why was that important to you?
The point of this story, in many ways, is to bring attention to the natural world around us and [for readers] to understand that no matter how small we are and how helpless we may feel, there's always something we can do. I hope the reader finishes the book and then goes out into the world and sees real sycamore trees, ferns, cattails and other plants, and feels as though they understand these complex creatures in a new way. Connecting and falling in love with the characters in the story might help readers understand why it's important and worthwhile to care about nature. A tree isn't just a tree--it's a living being that's part of a complex ecosystem, and that's true for all living things, including us.
Is there anything else you'd like readers to know? Are you working on anything currently that you'd like to discuss?
I'm currently working on lots of projects, including a musical of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a movie of The Marvels and a stage adaptation of Wonderstruck! I've also begun my next illustrated novel, but anything else about that must remain a secret for now! --Kit Ballenger