…the end of this year’s summer cycle opens the way for other kinds of adventures…
The season is shifting. I swear there’s an olfactory closet in my brain that holds onto the smell of sharpened pencils. There’s a door that opens as the days grow shorter and the nights have a tinge of crisp apple in the air.
Everyone I have spoken to can’t believe how quickly this summer has gone. Is it the news cycle? Is it the weather patterns? Or is it, as I’d like to think, a renewed embracing of all of the good things in our lives: the long, storied evenings with friends and families; crickets and barred owls keeping you company during late night barbecues; the splashing, diving and cannonballing off docks with squealing children; the fresh, local produce (oh, the heavenly smell of Ontario peaches!); rainstorms that send you racing to the nearest couch with a juicy summer read; clear nights when the moon reflects over still waters; work emails that are ignored for days, because you know everyone else is out of the office and really, what is the point?
Mid August. Ten p.m. on a northern lake.
As with every year at this time, I look around my garden and see endless unfinished projects. My springtime optimism has been swallowed by the reality of cucumbers that didn’t grow, tomatoes that blighted early, kale gobbled by caterpillars. But then there was the garden magic –– purple beans that climbed eight feet to the sky. I swear they would have kept going up to the giant’s castle! Defeat and celebration go hand in hand in a garden.
My purple bean tree took off. Much too tall for me to reach the beans at the top.
A bountiful crop of purple beans, if nothing else.
But the end of this year’s summer cycle opens the way for other kinds of adventures. I can’t help but be excited as the earth’s orbit takes us into fall. My brain suddenly picks up speed and starts to race. Shiny new ideas jostle for attention alongside projects left percolating. Has it really been three months since I opened that file?
My desktop on Labour Day. A day to get back to work.
Somewhere in all of the riotous joy of this past summer I launched a new book, Looking at the Sky: How Janusz Korczak Fought for Children’s Rights. I loved the readings and speaking events that I did. But being summer, many people were away and I didn’t devote as much time to the book as I normally would. It felt more like a dress rehearsal than an opening night.
That’s another reason why fall feels redolent with opportunity. It can be a re-set, a re-engagement, a re-launch.
So, I’m excited to dive into a fall when I can dedicate focussed time on Looking at the Sky, as well as new projects. It’s a book that I love more with each reading. A book that tells a story of hope and respect.
The world needs the words of Janusz Korczak now, more than ever. I look forward to sharing his story with you online and in-person.
Looking at the Sky: How Dr. Janusz Korczak Fought for Children’s Rights, written by Amanda West Lewis, illustrated by Abigail Rajunov, Published by Kids Can Press
Today is the book birthday for my new book “Looking at the Sky: How Dr. Janusz Korczak Fought for Children’s Rights.” So to celebrate, I thought I would give you an extended, inside peek at how the book came about.
I work in a number of different genres and media –– theatre, calligraphic book arts, literary arts. My books for young people are in various genres –– craft books, non-fiction books, picture books, poetry, middle grade, and YA fiction. For me, the challenge isn’t necessarily what to create, but which container is best for this idea?
By exploring ideas from many perspectives, I’ve found new things and come to a richer understanding of what I was trying to say.
Every creative project is different, of course, just as the ultimate audience for each piece will be different. In fact, I’ve worked on the ideas in Looking at the Sky in different forms for over twenty years.
I first heard the story of Dr. Janusz Korczak in 2005 from the landlord for the theatre school I was running (The Ottawa School of Speech & Drama). Leon Gluzman, had been a resident at Korczak’s orphanage in Warsaw and when I met him over eighty years later, he was still emotional when he talked about “Pan Doctor” –– Janusz Korczak.
Janusz Korczak. Born Henryk Goldszmit. 1878-1942
Korczak was a Polish pediatrician, children’s right’s advocate, director of orphanages, and children’s book author. He founded the first national newspaper edited and written by children, hosted a regular national radio show for children and adults, travelled internationally to speak on how to educate and raise children with respect. In his day he was world-famous. That didn’t prevent his murder in the Holocaust. He died in 1942 along with 200 children and teachers from his orphanage.
Calligraphy by Amanda Lewis. Artwork by Tim Wynne-Jones
Korczak’s important legacy was to change the way that people thought about children. He is revered for his commitment to young people. His writings became the foundation for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. But his work and life are not well known. After learning about him, I wanted to change that.
In 2006, I decided to work with a group of young people at the theatre school to workshop a play about Korczak. The students interviewed Leon and researched Korczak. They dove deeply into war-torn Poland and, inevitably, into the Holocaust. That two-year workshop process was a moving and personal experience for all of us.
In 2009, we decided to take it to the next level and commissioned playwright Hannah Moscovitch to write a play that worked with child actors as well as adults to tell the story. I co-producedThe Children’s Republic with the Great Canadian Theatre Company (G.C.T.C) in Ottawa.
from The Children’s Republic, by Hannah Moscovitch, GCTC 2009
It was wonderful to bring Korczak’s story to life on the stage. However, as the years passed after that production, I felt that I wasn’t “done” with the story. The play, while suitable for young audiences, spoke from an adult perspective. I wanted to show young people Korczak’s ideas, to shine a light on his relationship to the children in his care, to show what it was like to live in the orphanage, and to see how that experience affected their lives.
But whose perspective should I write it from? Korczak’s or a child’s? What kind of “container” did it need?
In 2015, I went back to university to do an MFA in writing for children and young adults. The “Korczak” story was something I kept coming back to. I tried writing a middle grade biography, but it was flat and heavy. (My mentor at the time said, “I have to get you out of the Second World War!”) Then in 2017, I was studying picture book biographies and started trying to write his story as a picture book manuscript. At that point I knew I needed to tell the story from the perspective of a child. But I was having a hard time finding a way for the manuscript to be engaging.
I continued to research and explore different aspects of his life, but trying to contain everything into an 800-word picture book was a challenge to say the least! However, in 2021, I had a manuscript that I thought might work. I submitted it to my editor at Kids Can Press with whom I was working on A Planet is a Poem.
Her response was what my inner voice had been telling me, but I had been studiously ignoring. “There’s too much material here for a picture book.” But her next sentence took me totally by surprise. “Have you ever thought of writing a graphic novel?”
Truth be told, I never had. I had hardly read any graphic novels! But I leapt in and started researching how on earth to write one.
It turns out writing a graphic novel is like storyboarding a film script. Not that I’ve written a lot of film scripts. But I’ve written a lot for theatre, worked onstage as an actor, off-stage as a director, producer, and stage manager. Suddenly I was combining all of these skills but in a whole new container. I knew the story I wanted to tell. I knew the characters and the arc of the material. It didn’t take long for me to envision scenes and create “camera angles”. Close-ups, distance shots all came naturally as the “movie” began to play out in my mind. I discovered how to create tension in pacing by working with the size and frequency of the panels.
And best of all, I had more room than I would have had in a picture book. I could show more details from Korczak’s life and philosophy and give a better sense of the times in which he lived. In particular, I could find a way to contextualize the Holocaust for a young reader.
Not all publishers would go out on a limb and develop a graphic novel with a writer. Most graphic novels are written and illustrated by one person. But Kids Can decided that the story was important enough to take a chance on. They contracted the wonderfully sensitive Abigail Ranjov to take on the challenge of illustrating this complex story.
From theatre workshop to scripted play, from middle grade biography to picture book biography to graphic novel –– what I learned was that there are many different containers for stories and each container changes the nature of the story. As a writer, I, too, was changed. This process stretched me and helped me to discover what I really wanted to say and why it was important to say it. Writing the story as a graphic novel has allowed me to finally tell the story I needed to tell.
