James Yang – A Universe, Big & Small: A Story About Carl Sagan

Steve Thomas: James, welcome to the podcast.

James Yang: Oh, well, thank you for having me, Steve. It’s a pleasure.

Steve Thomas: So before we get into your writing, your art, things like that, what have your been your experiences with libraries throughout your life and as a published author, if you’ve have a different experience with libraries?

James Yang: Well, actually libraries have been very important to me, especially as a kid in my formative years ’cause the library class I still remember in my grade school was really my favorite class to take because I remember all the great books for kids that were very easily accessible. We had all the volumes of Dr. Seuss, all the Caldecott and Newbery books just there for the taking. It was so much fun to have readings and then we get free time to go look at the books that we wanted to look. So I have a very positive experience with libraries.

And in the summers it was very convenient, of course, and I grew up in the sixties, so as a grade school kid, it was very convenient for mom to drop us off at the local library. This is in a small town called Ponca City, Oklahoma, and they had a great children’s library even looking back on it, nicely curated. My sister and I did not have problems ’cause it was too hot in the summer anyway, so we would go there on the hot afternoons after lunch, go to the library, then afterwards when it was cool enough, we’d come home and play with our friends. That seemed like a pretty good summer to me.

I’m very happy that somehow my world ended up back with libraries, especially children in libraries, and it’s been a nice full circle moment.

Steve Thomas: What do you feel like first sparked your interest in creating stories for kids?

James Yang: Well, I think I’ve always loved picture books when I was a kid. My North Star is The Snowy Day, like I’m sure for many children, Maurice Sendak was one of our heroes, so visually there was a lot of great storybooks. And I like that style of storytelling too, that was fairly minimal. So I think it’s always been in the back of my head.

Most of my career was spent as an illustrator for a lot of places like all the major magazines and newspapers, which I love because it’s all about concept and it’s really about telling a story in one image. And I think children’s books was always there because of my love for children’s books. That’s kind of what sparked it.

I was actually asked to illustrate somebody else’s children’s book, which kind of got me interested, like, once I saw how authors did it, it kind of taught me the template and then I was sort of on my way.

Steve Thomas: And you still continue to collaborate with some people. Like you’ve got a little series with Lola Schaefer of Spark, Shine and Glow and Lift, Mix, and Fling, and those are fun as well. Is that a different experience working with a writer and kind of interpreting their work?

James Yang: Oh, it’s a very different experience and part of it is like, and this is where I think editors get paid the big bucks for children’s books, is matching an artist with the material. Because sometimes, depending on the author, sometimes I cannot imagine how images would be created with my voice. You wanna be paired with someone where the way that you see things and the way they write are compatible.

And then Greenwillow came up with this, so it was a wonderful experience. It was a really good match. With my stories, I love working with Viking ’cause my art director Jim Hoover and Tamar Brazis and my first editor Tracy Gates from my earlier books, we were all very compatible and they were really good at guiding me, teaching me about writing ’cause I still feel like I’m an artist learning how to write in a lot of ways. I’m just now starting to feel like a writer, and then I’m lucky to have Tamar who’s sort of helped me to get to another level. It’s almost like going to writing school and getting paid for it.

So with my books I tend to have a lot more creative freedom with how to do things ’cause I’m interpreting my story and it’s easy for me to see. But with writing somebody else’s book, of course we have to find a way that my vision fits with what they’re saying too. So it’s a very different thing for sure doing somebody else’s work.

Steve Thomas: Yeah and I love in your books Stop! Bot! and Bus! Stop!. Those are great, I think, because not only they’re fun stories to read to kids and fun, engaging art, but then you’re playing kind of with the structure of the book itself. Like Stop! Bot! is very horizontal and Bus! Stop! is very vertical. So you kind of play with the shape of the book itself.

James Yang: I’m gonna have to give my first editor, Tracy Gates, a lot of credit for that ’cause she suggested like, well, why don’t we make an almost like an extremely horizontal book. And of course I was a little bit, even I was surprised, like, are we allowed to do that? And then she was like, yes. And then I was like, okay. So in a weird way, she was almost more experimental than I was. But then we loved that.

And then ironically for the second book idea, we had spent a year on a project and then we had gotten to the point where kind of just before we get to the final art, we all just didn’t feel like it was a good enough book to go to the second book. And then Tracy and my art director Jim Hoover were so scared to tell me that maybe this isn’t good enough. And then when they told me, it’s like, well, you don’t think that this book is Viking Children’s level? It’s a good story. It’s just not “Viking Children’s Good,” and then I was like, oh, thank God. And they were like, really? It was like a group hug. So we literally sat there in the meeting, all three of us and just brainstormed right away, and Tracy came up with the idea like, well, why don’t we take Bus! Stop! and then she turned a vertical and she goes, why don’t we do a vertical version of that? And then that’s how that book got started in a way. So it’s interesting how ideas get started and then we kind of sat there and brainstormed, and I was like, you know, I’ve always been a nosy person about how people live in apartments, and that’s how it happened.

Steve Thomas: And that’s the book that ended up winning the Geisel Award!

James Yang: Isn’t that nuts? And it was sort of a like, what are we gonna do now? Once we even got the idea, I still remember that I was trying to figure out visually how to tell that story, and then this doesn’t happen to me often, but then I shot up in the middle of the night and I was like Hitchcock’s Rear Window, but a not scary version just for how he pans and everything. And then I fell back to sleep and then was able to sketch it out pretty quickly.

Steve Thomas: It’s a good thing that wasn’t one of those ideas that disappeared in sleep. Like, you wake up in the middle of the night and go, I’ll remember that, and then go back to sleep and then you forget it.

James Yang: One time did wake up in the middle of the night with what I thought was a brilliant book idea, and then when I looked at it in the morning, it was horrible. It was such an unreadable idea, so I don’t really take notes for that reason.

Steve Thomas: I guess our sleepy brains are not very creative!

James Yang: But they think they’re creative!

Steve Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of your other books recently, including the new one we’ll talk a little bit more about have been, not biographies, but about real people. How did you decide that you wanted to start doing those types of books?

James Yang: You know, I think it happened because of A Boy Named Isamu, Isamu Noguchi. And someone had even once suggested like, have you ever thought about doing a Noguchi book? And it was just one of those things, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, he’s a perfect vehicle to talk about a lot of things. I’ve always wanted to do, like my homage to The Snowy Day, and I was never able to find a vehicle and I’m gonna get kind of heady here, much like how Tony Gilmore found Star Wars would be a good vehicle to talk about what he wanted to talk about, Noguchi was sort of a perfect vehicle. So that’s kind of how I came up with the imagined childhood thing. I knew enough a lot about him. I’m a big mid-century guy. Clearly, if you see my books, you can see that influence in my work, but then he was also one of the first Asian American artists I knew about even as a kid. So it all kind of lined up together. When I read about his childhood, there was a lot of things that echo with the Asian American experience, just not quite fitting in. So I was like, “Oh, wait a minute. I can kind of merge some personal things with his story in a way and imagine how his childhood went that seems kind of truthful.”

So that’s kind of how I came up with it. And I didn’t even realize that this was not a thing that hasn’t really been done very often. I won’t be arrogant enough and say it hasn’t been done ’cause frankly, I don’t know. But it was sort of a happy convergence of things together. So then A Boy Named Isamu, along with Stop! Bot!, is the book that probably kind of helped bring me to attention to a lot of parents and librarians, which I’m very grateful for.

And afterwards, my editor Tracy was like, “Hey, is there any other mid-century people you wanna do?” which is how the Eames book came up. And then afterwards I realized, “You know what? I’m pretty interested in doing stories about kind of people that affected me when I was growing up, but I almost wanna tell it from a different perspective, like even the Eames book, I’m trying to tell you almost like if another kid was explaining to a kid like, “Oh my God, let me tell you why the Eames are so cool. They’re really not proper biographies, I’m sure you would agree with this, but I’m hoping that they’re sort of like, “Oh my gosh, they’re cool, maybe I should go check out more about them!” I’m trying to be the gateway, and also, in a weird way, all these biographies are kind of like a little bit of a biography about my experience or probably a lot of kids’ experience too, about like, “Hey, these are people that help me think about what I think that I think whom I think you would like.” I’m ironically not that interested in doing biographies of people who are hot in the news right now or in culture. I don’t feel like that’s the space that I’m really interested in telling. So that’s kind of how I got into this, if that makes sense.

So then with Sagan, I know a lot of parents when I say like, well, I’m thinking about doing a Sagan, but they were all like, “OMG. Yes, please.” I grew up with Sagan, such happy memories, and I’m from a science family. My father was like one of the top people working where he worked at Conoco in Oklahoma back in the day. And my sister’s a scientist also. I thought I was gonna be a scientist, but I’m bad at math, so thank God I do art instead. And I’m a science fiction nerd. There’s some subtle Easter eggs in there that we could talk about as we go on, and clearly, I’m a kid that grew up with science fiction and science. I love the space race, and I feel like all kids love all that stuff.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and he was so good at explaining science to people. He had many gifts, but that was maybe his best gift was explaining it to the lay person of what it is. I read something that when people would do impressions of him, they’d go, ” the billions and billions” but that’s because back then nobody talked about things in terms of billion. Like million was the highest people were thinking about it. He’s like, “I wanted to make sure you understood what the word I was saying was. So I would say. Billions. Make sure it’s B!”

James Yang: Oh, I had the killer “billions and billions” routine when I was in junior high. I would do Carl Sagan impersonations. My sister would do it too. You know, that was a thing but think about how big he is back then that like doing a Carl Sagan impersonation was a thing. It’s amazing for school kids.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. Well, I mean just for like a science educator, to be somebody who’s so known that just kids can go, ” billions and billions,” and everybody knows what they’re talking about, and Johnny Carson can do it on The Tonight Show. It’s amazing, yeah.

James Yang: You know, actually my impersonation was probably the Johnny Carson impersonation of Carl Sagan, now that you mention it, but yeah, back when I was 12 or so, I crushed it. Yeah. That was a good impersonation.

Steve Thomas: What was it about Sagan’s story in particular of all the people who inspired you as a kid that you wanted to move into as your next book?

James Yang: Well, you know, part of it was I felt like I probably have mined the mid-century space, you know, I’m like, “Okay, after Noguchi and Eames, I could probably try something,” but then it was like, “Hey, who are some of my other heroes?” And I’m a science geek. Sagan is a hero of mine. He connected with kids. And then also, I knew vaguely that he was a fan of the space program. Loved Cosmos. My sister was the one, ’cause she was probably in grade school then, she’s four years younger than me, but she dragged all of us to watch Cosmos, and I love the ship of imagination and mind blowing stuff. Also, our family loved that show The Wild Kingdom. I don’t know if you remember that, but that was a great documentary, so it just slotted right in there. It was like, “Oh, we get to learn the animal world here and then we can learn the science world.”

And then I thought like, when I do these biographies, there needs to be a hook, if you know what I mean, for me to connect with it somehow emotionally. And I was like, well what if I do like Sagan as a kid this time, but he’s asking all the questions as an adult? And then my editor said we all high fived each other ’cause we’re so clever. And also when I did some research about Sagan, it seemed like he was that kid. He did ask a lot of questions, almost to exhaustion, but his parents were great about it, let him ask all those questions. So that was a huge hook.

And then I also felt, of course, now we have Neil deGrasse Tyson, all these three named people, but of course he’s very popular. I enjoy listening to him and it’s like, “Well, this is the original guy, really. And then of course, Bill Nye’s the other science guy too. You see the thread to these guys now. And I’m so glad that we have those guys for children ’cause I don’t know how most parent’s kids are, but I think a lot of kids find science very interesting once they’re exposed to it.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and you get into that in the book of like, imagination is really behind a lot of science. You’re just trying to imagine what the world is like, and then science is kind of answering those questions.

James Yang: Sure, and I remember like even Dad helping me with my science experiments in second or third grade or whatever, and I still even remember, like when I was four, Dad took me out to fly a kite the first time. Mind blown. I didn’t know how he got the kite up there. It was like, “Oh my gosh, he is a genius!”

I try to think about what I thought was very exciting as a kid, and of course the secret is you’re trying to make stories that you find connect with you, but those things that also connect with others, and hopefully you’re not telling a story that only connects with you ’cause those are stories that people don’t read.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and in the book, it’s kind of in the title, you go from big to small, there’s atoms to galaxies. Was that an important way to help you wrap around how you were going to structure the book?

James Yang: Oh, very important. It was very important, and it really helped narratively in the things I wanted to describe. I didn’t realize until I did a deeper dive he was interested in atomic things and cellular things and then of course you find out later this is what created his interest in how we treat other animals and creatures ’cause like, “Oh, we’re all made of the same stuff.” And he’s one of the first guys to think about that. Now, I was surprised how many things Sagan was the first to think about or one of the first ones to think about, like how we treat animals. Even the situation on Venus, how does that relate to climate change?

I didn’t realize that he was that guy and it was like, oh my gosh, there’s almost too much stuff for me to talk about with Sagan. Who’s the guy that gave a brief to the Apollo 11 astronauts to let them know what to expect? Sagan. And that was amazing.

So then of course we all know him for the bigger stuff, like the galaxies and whatever, and I was very excited. What children’s book illustrators don’t wanna draw outer space. If you don’t wanna do it, turn in your children’s Illustrator card or whatever that thing is, you know, so of course there’s that, but then to find out this other part, oh, that’s a way to expand it beyond what you typically think about Sagan.

Steve Thomas: I think it’s because of Cosmos that we all think of him as exploring the universe and space and things like that and interesting too, of making that connection that we’re all connected and that’s what makes it important because he was not a religious person, so he didn’t have that kind of thinking of connection, but he still thought of us as all connected together because we’re all made of the same stuff.

James Yang: Well, he thought universally and actually finding out that he was interested in atomic and cellular stuff, it almost made the book write itself, if you think about it. Like, let’s start from this end and move to here and all the connections he made. So in a lot of ways Sagan already wrote this book, even though I do not credit him. But the architecture of the book was right there to be had. So that was the very exciting part.

And then the other challenge when you write a book like this is like, how do you condense this down and make it, because I like things to read sort of melodically, for lack of better word. And I even think my other earlier books, like the funnier ones, there’s a rhythm to them. There’s a pattern and rhythm to it that’s very catchy. So I don’t like books that kind of, you get garbled and tangled up verbally. All my editor editors have done a great job with that, especially like Tamar on the second one, she really helped me find the way through that to make it very sort of musical.

Steve Thomas: A lot of picture books, they’re very, very often being read aloud to a child. The children do sometimes read them, but a lot of times picture books are being read and you want to be able to read something that’s easy to read and is in a good rhythm and that’s fun to read. Not even just for being silly or whatever, but just that the way the words are put together, like you said, melodically, it reads really well aloud.

James Yang: And I’m not saying that I’m like this super brilliant lyrical person. Yeah, I like to think of myself as the cool children’s book version of Hemingway. I’m not saying that, you know. Please don’t tell anybody I’m saying that, but that’s the template I’m thinking about. It would be nice if I have that kind of sense. You know, I can’t be Dr. Seuss with his great poetic reading and whatever, it’s like, all right that I can’t do, but there’s another way to do that sort of thing. And even visually and with the text, with whoever I work with, we all say like, it seems to be missing a beat here, or maybe we need a quieter beat here for the eyes. It’s just a language that you think about if you want successful books, and one of my pet peeves are books that you kind of get garbled up. I’m sure as a parent you understand this too.

Steve Thomas: Yes.

James Yang: It’s just one of my experienced peeves, and part of it is I do readings in part public too so I wanna read something that doesn’t trip me up in front of kids because they’re a vicious audience. They will mock you for, if you show weaknesses.

Steve Thomas: And it’s great too because since you’re the artist and the writer, you can pair them together and you can figure out, “Well, this page needs a pause in the text but look at this picture.” You’re sort of letting yourself get absorbed in the art as well. So it matches up really well.

James Yang: Oh, thanks. And one note I wanted to give about Sagan great too is that Tamar came up with a great idea, which is that scene where Carl’s on the different planets, and that was sort of her idea. OMG, that’s why you’re such a great editor. You know, like such a great way to sort of break up the pattern visually in the book and add this sort of wonderful kind of addition, just little things like that. I’m a very collaborative person and I have zero pride. If somebody has a better idea on my stuff, I’m more than happy to take it ’cause it saves me effort to have to get there. So if you get there first, why not?

Steve Thomas: Yeah, I mean, ’cause you don’t want it just to be little Carl looking around at things the whole time but like you said, being on the planets, you can imagine him jumping from planet to planet but almost swimming between the atoms and being between them. There’s a sense of movement in there.

James Yang: Oh yeah, and in a lot of ways I feel like this book is almost like inspired, but now that you mentioned this, thank God I’m on this podcast, but in some ways it’s influenced by the Little Prince actually, and that’s one of my other books that just kind of rocked my world. But that whole going to different worlds, this little guy. So that’s a very subtle influence now that I think about it through this book.

Even when I drew Sagan as a little boy, when I saw a picture of him, it’s very interesting ’cause he just had the very distinct Sagan eyes that he’s always had. Sagan even wore a turtleneck, he was styling already as a little boy, and then he had this shock of hair in a certain way. I was like, “Oh my gosh. It sort of looks like Davey Jones from the Monkees also. He kind of had that energy, so I was like, I’m gonna kind of like combine those two energies hopefully for my Sagan, and that’s kind of how I came up with even him in a way.

Steve Thomas: I think that’s part of what his appeal was in the sixties and seventies as being like a pop culture figure, that he looked cool, but also nerdy, it was kind of both, but he had a vibe about him that, like you said, Davey Jones from the Monkees but then also “I’m talking about science!”

James Yang: Yeah. And like who doesn’t look good in a turtleneck, right? So, come on. One of my big regrets is that I look great in a turtleneck, but my head gets too hot. That’s part of the reason why maybe I did Sagan too. I admire a guy who can wear a turtleneck 24/7.

Steve Thomas: And I think he kind of kept that his whole life. It seems like every time I imagined him, even as an older person, that’s what he’s wearing. Mostly what he did was nonfiction, but Contact, the fiction book that he wrote raised so many interesting issues ’cause I know, and you mentioned in your book too, that he didn’t actually think, I mean, there probably are life somewhere in the galaxy, but they’re never gonna come here and tackling belief and I love that story too. So it is just explored all the things that he explored in a different way.

James Yang: And it also tells you a lot about how Sagan thinks, which I admire so much ’cause he is like, I definitely doubt that there’s life out there, but just in case, let me work on this project. And that’s such a great attitude to have. I don’t believe this, but let me not dismiss it outta hand completely ’cause you never know .

Steve Thomas: He did try to simplify things for the lay person, but what challenges did you face trying to simplify his ideas down to a picture book level?

James Yang: Well strangely enough, in this case, it wasn’t that hard since I’m from a science family and I absorb a lot of science. My dad was actually a very good communicator of science too. Like he admired Einstein and Sagan specifically for that reason. And he explained to us, that’s why they’re popular is because a lot of scientists are more brilliant than them, but they’re horrible at communicating and it’s very important to communicate.

It’s always finding the very essence of every single concept, especially for a picture book ’cause I don’t know who described this to me, maybe even Viking had explained it, that like, picture books are basically poetry. They’re haiku at their essence. So part of it was just connecting all the achievements that I wanted to talk about that could tell a story, but you don’t need to talk about every achievement. You don’t need to talk about every conflict or every issue. This is him asking questions and then being sort of immersed. So I kind of need, and this is sort of where that Little Prince metaphor helped. We want him experiencing things with the questions he’s gonna ask.

The couple difficult ones was actually at the beginning where sort of like, okay, atoms morph into cells. How do I solve that problem in a visual way? Because when I first did the cells, my wife she’s a choreographer, and movement director for theater so she conceptually actually knows more about narrative and storytelling and clarity. So when she saw the way I drew cells, she goes, how come these look like toilets you see in China? And I was like, “Noooooooo!” So then I had to figure out how to draw those things to not look like that, but it was a brilliant idea about like, how do I convert atoms into cells and show that visually where a child can understand because we don’t want a lot of overexplaining, we don’t want an overly big picture. That was a very tough challenge, to be honest with you.

Steve Thomas: You also don’t wanna oversimplify either because you want them to understand what you’re saying.

James Yang: Yeah, and then the other challenge was the cells with, like, how do we show all these animals and everything’s connected by cells? And that was pretty stressful because what was actually the previous page was I saw the cells built out in my sketches. I was like, oh, wait a minute, maybe if I mute that, that could be a nice background to suggest that this is the foundation. And then it was like, well, all right, how am I gonna arrange all these animals? And then we thought like, it might be kind of cool to sort of put Sagan’s parents in there running also. I was like, well, how can I put them in there? And then all of a sudden I thought about all these great science posters in grade school where it was like the fastest land animals. I used to stare at those all the time and I was like, that’s what I’ll do. I’m going to use that as a template for that.

And it was sort of outta sheer panic. I was like, how am I gonna show that? And it might’ve been that even my editor and Tamar and Jim are like, “No pressure, but that’s a very important page!”

Because space, I already had sort of an idea like, okay, I kind of know how I’m gonna do that, but the early part was really difficult ’cause it was like, it has to explain things. Hopefully it’s visually interesting without trying, you want beautiful images, but you don’t wanna be showing off. And as I get older, I’m starting to be more concerned, how do the images tell a story to a kid?

Steve Thomas: And when you’re sketching out the art for the first time deciding how you’re gonna do it, are you always thinking of the color as an important part of that as well?

James Yang: Not at that stage, and I’m not even sure how I’m gonna draw objects. I almost draw abstract shapes at the beginning, almost like a schematic, and what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to figure out compositionally if an image is gonna work ’cause actually I’m a big believer that composition’s more important, almost in drawing, than actually rendering ability or anything else. And if it doesn’t work compositionally, it’s not gonna work. And I’m sort of a designer head as an illustrator by nature, which on the bright side, it makes my art director just love me because I’m very open to visually how everything integrates together.

You especially see that in my earlier books, like Stop! Bot! and Bus! Stop! and Go, Sled! Go!. I let Jim go nuts with the design ’cause I’m pretty open to that. And then sometimes when I see us design, we adjust things to make it more unified. So that’s what I think of first. And then once I get compositions I like, I start drawing more detail, almost like focusing in a blurry picture and then colors kind of roughly, by the time I finish the sketches for the book, I do have a vibe for what colors, so I know that Sagan’s gonna be looking at a night sky. I know that blue is gonna be the predominant color scheme for this book, so I do think of those things. They’re almost suggested as the sketches get developed as far as the colors.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. And I like the deep blues ’cause I mean, you could obviously go with black because those space is black, but the blues really, I think are more evocative on the page.

James Yang: I was a big fan of The Jetsons. One thing I love how they depict space was it was like these purples, this more cyan blue and I had done an earlier book at the beginning of my career that maybe like 12 people read, called Joey and Jet in Space. So then like I did a lot of that. So I was very aware that I didn’t want to make space black, just dynamically speaking.

Steve Thomas: Well, is there anything in particular, that one message or anything that you want kids to get out of your book when they read it, or have it read to them?

James Yang: It’s good to ask questions, and it’s good to be observant and it’s also good to, like, you see things around you all the time and then sometimes there’s a bigger question between the things you see, and that’s kind of what makes the world more cool. That’s the message I want, that sometimes bigger things can happen from just noticing a small thing.

Steve Thomas: That’s great. And the last thing I wanted to ask is, were there some books when you were young that were particularly inspirational to you that made you want to make your own books or be an artist?

James Yang: Oh sure, like Frederick the mouse, you know, Frederick by Leo Lionni. I used to read that book over and over and visually, as a kid, I was just blown away by it, loved that book so much. And then as far as the funny stuff, of course I thought Dr. Seuss was hilarious, just killed me. So of course it’s very ironic that the award that helped me is the Dr. Seuss Award. I got a little bit tearful. I was verklmept, I’m not gonna lie. And then we’ve mentioned The Snowy Day, and visually, if you look at Leo Lionni, you sort of see my stuff.

You may not remember a book, there was a great book in the sixties that won a Caldecott, Drummer Hoff. And it’s a very British themed book, but it’s done artistically, very much like Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The story is a buildup and it actually, that book sort of informed a lot of my storytelling ’cause it starts with something very small, very linear, and it’s almost like a Wes Anderson book in a way. Like another character comes in to help bring a cannon ball, another one brings the cannon, another one brings a plunger thing. You need someone to like set it off, so then that kind of buildup thing. So like a lot of my books, especially my funnier books, sort of follow that template. So that book, when I saw that book as a kid, I was like, that’s just now that’s storytelling, when I was a little kid.

A lot of the Caldecott books, they always inspired me as a kid growing up, so I could not wait to find out who the Caldecott winner was that year. They all informed me as a kid, and of course when you’re an artist you dream about things, but I’m still blown away that I was given two ALA awards. I know some people may feel like, of course I want to build on that, but. I’m totally happy resting on laurels. I’m totally happy with that too. I feel like it’s given me a free pass to do books that I like to do, and hopefully people like these books too, if that makes sense.

Steve Thomas: It’s sort of like when an actor wins an Academy Award, they’re like, “Now I can do whatever I want!”

James Yang: Yeah. And of course the goal is not that, of course you want to win another one, but that’s not the goal for a book. It’s like, it’s given me the chance to do a book and at least it’ll get a fair shot where librarians will notice it ’cause fortunately for me, I feel like librarians have been very supportive of what I’ve done, so I’m very excited about that. And that’s the thing you’re asking for, is you’re just asking for a chance to have people see your work and react to it. What work can you ask for actually?

Steve Thomas: Yeah. You’re just putting together the best work you can put out there and hopefully people jive with it.

James Yang: Yeah. I’m working on a couple other books now too. Like, my next one is sort of like an imagined biography, but from a different point of view. It’s a little girl who’s Korean and she’s a big tennis fan and her hero is Arthur Ashe, but it’s gonna be seen through her eyes, and she’s a little bit of a hothead, which is the opposite of Arthur Ashe. So a different way to tell a story, but that’ll be my next little challenge here.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, that would be John McEnroe.

James Yang: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ironically, I did play college tennis, and I was like the John McEnroe of my team without the talent.

Steve Thomas: All right. Well James, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it. The book again, is A Universe, Big and Small: a Story About Carl Sagan, and it’s wonderful, the art is delightful. The story is, I think melodic is a good term that you came up with. It flows along really well, and even if you don’t have kids, go read the book anyway. Picture books are still fun to read for adults. I do it all the time still. So thank you for coming on and telling listeners about your book.

James Yang: Well, thank you very much for having me. I really appreciated it.

***

April Mazza: Hello, and welcome to the Circ Desk. I am April Mazza. I work at NoveList where I do product trainings and continuing education through our Learn with NoveList platform.

Zach Moore: And hi there. I’m Zach Moore. I’m a librarian here at Novelist. My main job is to train NoveList users throughout library land.

And we’re here today to offer you some read alikes for A Universe, Big and Small, and my first book, I wanted to find a nonfiction read alike. Since this book wasn’t nonfiction which I didn’t know going into it. Going into it, I thought it was actually a biography.

And then I saw, I was like, “Oh, okay, this this is not that at all!” So I did wanna do a actual nonfiction book, and I wanted it to be about the cosmos. So I recommend Your Place In The Universe by Jason Chin, and a quick annotation of that is, “Using a group of awestruck kids for perspective. This book from Caldecott Medalist Jason Chin introduces astronomy facts while guiding reader through the concept of comparative scale. From the height of the book itself to the vastness of the galaxy. Just like Carl Sagan’s imagined explorations in A Universe, Big and Small, Your Place in the Universe offers kid friendly thought exercises for budding cosmologists, not cosmetologists, cosmologists.” And so that stellar, yes, I said stellar, annotation is written by my friend and colleague here at NoveList Rebecca Honeycutt.

And for my second book, I wanted to focus on the imagination aspect of A Universe, Big and Small. So I recommend the book, Another by Christian Robinson. And here’s another annotation, and this one was also written by Rebecca, who does a lot of our children’s books for NoveList, so if you read some of the NoveList annotations there, probably written by her. ” After a little girl discovers that a cat who’s nearly identical to her own cat, has stolen her cat’s toy and escaped through a portal, the girl gives chase, which kicks off a playful exploration of parallel worlds. While A Universe, Big and Small emphasizes Carl Sagan’s use of imagination, Another is a wordless story that prompts kids to use their own imagination about what’s going on in the pictures. And similar to James Yang, Christian Robinson’s art pairs bright colors with minimalist retro modern style.” I don’t know about you, April, but I just love a good wordless picture book. They’re the best! They’re so much fun!

April Mazza: They’re actually one of my favorites.

Zach Moore: I would do them in story times with kids and it was always fun.

April Mazza: Me too! I have like a list in my head, a running list of wordless picture books I love, and I’m always sort of seeking them out when I hear of new ones.

Zach Moore: Yeah, and Christian Robinson’s one of the best illustrators out there today.

April Mazza: He is one of my favorites, and I also really love Jason Chin’s work, so when you mentioned both those creators, I got really excited because they’re just two of my favorites. So I love that you have real likes with them.

Zach Moore: So what do you bring for us?

April Mazza: Well, first I wanted to say thanks to you because you found us the e-galley of A Universe, Big and Small because like you, I assumed from the title that it was going to be a picture book biography, which I also have a soft spot for, just sort of always been drawn to them, probably because I have a short attention span, but I love to learn. So they’re perfect for that. So it was great though to see that ahead of time because it really did influence what I wanted to share in sort of a different way, because like you said, A Universe, Big and Small is not a straightforward biography. It’s really, I thought like a bit more dreamy, and I would say inspirational. So really encouraging readers to be curious and imaginative.

So in that vein, I would also recommend Mae Among the Stars by Roda Ahmed and illustrated by Stasia Burrington. It’s for children around the same age, so like kindergarten and first grade or so, and it’s also about a real person, doctor and astronaut Mae Jemison, who was the first African American woman to go to space. But it’s also not a biography in like that strict sense. It’s more fictional and it’s meant to be an inspiring story. It’s really about how her childhood shaped her into pursuing her dreams.

So she faced racism and sexism from quite an early age, and many people just believed she could not become an astronaut, but her parents always supported and encouraged her. The illustrations are colorful and soft, they’re very appealing. And I did wanna point out, I loved the illustrations of A Universe, Big and Small too. I thought they like had this retro vibe, sort of blocky and colorful that really fit in with the time period. And both books also have an author’s note. So with Mae Among the Stars, just an author’s note explaining more about her life and her accomplishments. And I just love an author’s note, especially for nonfiction or books like these, books inspired by a real person because I think the readers, no matter what age, are naturally gonna want to learn more. So I think these two would pair really nicely together for any young person interested in space and exploration and again, just being curious.

And then if your young reader wanted like a little bit more of a biography and they wanted to take their fascination with astronomy a little further, then I would try What Miss Mitchell Saw by Hayley Barrett and illustrated by Diana Sudyka. This one is still for young readers, but maybe could go a little older, so second and third grade. It’s about Maria Mitchell, spelled like “Maria,” but pronounced “Mariah,” which is helpfully spelled out on the first page. Maria Mitchell was born in 1818 on Nantucket, which is an island off Massachusetts made famous by limericks and celebrity vacation homes. But at that time, when Maria was young, it was a big whaling harbor and a lot of people in her family were in the whaling business. And sailing ships at that time relied on the stars for navigation. So she learned from a young age, you know, she was just a girl, she learned from her father how to study the night sky and used tools like telescopes and chronometers. I think it’s pronounced “chronometers,” but I’ve never used one! She became a teacher and then a librarian so that endeared her to me even more. And she just kept studying astronomy her whole life, no matter what her career path was.

She became the first woman astronomer employed by the US government. She taught astronomy at Vassar College. I think she was one of their first professors, but she is best known for discovering a new comet and winning an international medal for it, and it is still known as Miss Mitchell’s Comet. That’s just amazing to me to find something like that in the sky. I can barely find like the Big Dipper, so I’m always so impressed by these early scientists. It’s amazing. So I found her story to be very inspiring and it’s just a beautiful book. The text is lyrical. It’s just quite a joy to read, and the illustrations are stunning. There’s lots of dark backgrounds filled with stars, other sort of celestial bodies, I’m gonna show my ignorance here. I don’t even know what some of the things on the page were, but it’s just beautiful, and then you would see that sort of same illustration in the ocean and on like fabric so it just goes throughout the whole book, giving it this ethereal quality, just fit perfectly with the stories, and like the other books has an author’s note. So, yay. So you can learn more about Maria Mitchell. And again, it just like overall is inspiring the reader to dream and imagine and not to let any obstacles get in the way of those dreams ’cause certainly Miss Mitchell faced some obstacles but she really was able to pursue whatever she wanted to do.

Zach Moore: Oh, those are excellent. I’m not familiar with either of them, so I’m gonna go check them out this weekend, I think.

April Mazza: Yeah, we’re total nerds. But yeah, this was a really fun one to think about because there are just so many great books out there for this age that are about people who are in the field of astronomy or even just further, just scientists but also so many great space books ’cause I looked at a lot of different things and it was really hard to narrow it down but I think our choices are really gonna resonate with the listeners.

Zach Moore: I hope so.

April Mazza: Yeah. Thank you for stopping by The Circ Desk, and we’ll check you all out next time.