An Interview with Whitney Stewart

We’re thrilled to have Whitney Stewart with us today talking about her new picture book, A Catfish Tale, which Kirkus calls a saucy, fresh Cajun twist on the traditional tale of the fisherman and his wife, set in the Louisiana bayou.

KTE: Welcome Whitney!

WS: Hi all. Thanks for having me on your blog.

KTE: The rich and vivid landscape of the Louisiana bayou is such a fun and evocative setting for your imaginative retelling of this folk tale. And you seem to know it very well. Can you tell us a little bit about why you chose to tell your story here?

WS: I’ve lived in New Orleans for twenty-four years. Only in this spunky city do you see street musicians wrangling with horse-drawn carriages, Mardi Gras queens tossing out doubloons, and giant catfish swishing dangerously close to the riverbank. I walk along the Mississippi River almost every day, and it sings to me through its morning gray light. I've set three books here, and my newest picture book, A Catfish Tale, truly captures the color and melody of New Orleans.

KTE: Lucky you! A daily walk along the Mississippi sounds wonderful! Could you describe some of the sights and sounds you encounter on your walk for us?

WS:  Picture this: pale light falling across a rose-colored stucco façade; intricate iron railings hiding Creole ghosts; riverboats sounding their off-pitch calliope against the tapping of thumbtack shoes. And don't forget Mr. Okra's raspy tenor tempting you with fresh watermelon before the cicadas drown out his call.

KTE: Wow. You really bring the scene to life—I can see and hear it almost as if I were there myself. With such a rich landscape to draw from, can you tell us how you wove some of the details into your story?

WS: Alligators, catfish, crawfish, and cicadas come alive as characters in A Catfish Tale and befriend our protagonist Jacques. But Jacques' wife wants more than gumbo and cypress knees, so she ventures out of the swamp and into the glam and bang of Mardi Gras. Readers see it all—from alligator snout to raining Mardi Gras beads.

KTE: I love your writing and how you bring the story vividly to life with rich, sensual details, your light touch with dialect and the sprinkling of Cajun French. I also love the beautifully colorful illustrations; they add so much to the magical feeling your story invokes.

WS: Kind of you to say! I owe a big thanks to my French illustrator Gerald Guerlais. He paid attention to the details of our landscape.

KTE: It seems that the culture and landscape of Louisiana is particularly and personally important to you?

WS: Yes, it is. I'm from Boston—I grew up swimming in Walden Pond and hiking in Vermont and New Hampshire. I love my childhood landscape, but it isn't peppered with Tabasco or draped with Spanish moss. There's something about New Orleans that sinks into the heart of a writer and sweats out through the skin onto the page.

You know what I mean?

KTE: Yes, after talking to you, I think I do. Thank you so much Whitney for being with us today and for sharing insights into some of the inspiration and setting of A Catfish Tale!

WS: Oh, and one more thing—try out my husband’s gumbo recipe in the back of the book. I’m vegetarian, so I can’t eat it. But all our friends love it. And you might too.

KTE: Yum!

Whitney Stewart once caught a magic catfish and threw it back. He granted her so many wishes that she traveled around the world more than once. Now she lives in New Orleans, home of catfish, crawdads, and crabs. And don't forget Mardi Gras. She's wanted to tell the Brothers Grimm story of “The Fisherman and His Wife” ever since, at age twelve, she played the wife is a staged musical version. Find out more about Whitney on her website: http://www.whitneystewart.com/ or follow her on Twitter @whitneystewart2

Gerald Guerlais was born in France and grew up in many different cities throughout the land of cheese. He adapted to the new schools in each place by developing drawing skills to make new friends. In addition to illustration, he has worked in video games and animation. He lives in Paris. You can see more of his art on his website: http://www.geraldguerlais.com/

Whitney Stewart

Children's Book Author

www.whitneystewart.com

SELECTED BOOKS:

A Catfish Tale (Albert Whitman, Spring 2014)

Big Sky Mind: Mindfulness for Kids (Windy Hollow Books, Spring 2014)

Marshall, The Sea Dog (Soundprints)

Who Was Walt Disney? (Penguin)

Landscape in Books and Books in Landscape (from last year at this time)

Books and Nature belong to the eyes that see them.

Emily Bronte

Guy Laramee

                                                       *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Su Blackwell

  And this, our life, 

exempt from public haunt, 

finds tongues in trees, 

books in the running brooks, 

sermons in stones, 

and good in everything. 

William Shakespeare

Debbie Harman

Lori Nix

   

 *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Rune Guneriussen

 Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience.
Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.  
Hal Borland

Eric Parker

The Landscape of Love

In the wake of Valentines Day, I have been thinking a lot about love. Beyond the tokens of chocolate and roses and lacy red hearts, beyond the outward demonstrations of gifting and the spice of sexual romance. 

Actually what I’ve been thinking about is the kind of sustaining love, nurturing love, that is as necessary to our flourishing as human beings as is air and water—the rich landscape of familial love and the love of heartfelt and caring friendships. And about the barren landscape that the lack of love, the loss of love creates. 

You can blame it on the four books I’ve been reading. (Yes, at the same time! Why write when you can read? I’ll get to that in a few minutes…) I've been in one of those reading frenzies with books that all have one kind of deadline or another—Lorrie Moore’s new short stories, Bark, for BookBrowse review, Jane Eyre for my Feisty Readers' seventh grade Mother Daughter book club, The Goldfinch which finally came from the library after my being #372 on the wait list and is due in three weeks. And is 771 pages long. And Why We Write, (collected essays edited by Meredith Maran) because I really need to figure it out, the sooner the better.

These books all have a common thread—especially the first three; they all seriously address the fallout from the loss of love in someone’s life.

The stories in Bark are all about divorce or the end of love and let me tell you right now, there are no happy endings—except (and this is huge) that loss of love causing such great misery only points to how incredibly important love is to basic happiness and well being.

We all know what Jane Eyre is about—a young woman who grows up lonely and unloved and her struggle to find what she has been missing all of her life.

In many ways, The Goldfinch is the most devastating as we watch Theo flail through life after losing his loving mother as young boy. I can’t stop reading because I so want him to find true and deep love in his life. (And if he doesn’t find someone to love and love him by the end of the 771 pages, I am going to throw the book across the room!)

Adam Sultonov heart island

The fourth book, Why We Write, (a book that might very well save me) addresses the issue of needing love in Kathryn Harrison’s chapter. (She wrote Thicker Than Water, Exposure, Poison, The Binding Chair, The Seal Wife, Envy and most recently Enchantments.) She tells the reader, “I write because it is the only thing I know that offers the hope of proving myself worthy of love. It has everything to do with my relationship with my mother. I spent my childhood trying to remake myself into a girl she would love—and I’ve translate that into the process of writing…” The hope that writing will reveal us a worthy of love makes a lot more sense to me than all of the claims that, “I write because I have to.” “I write because I would die if I didn’t.” Oh please. I’ve tried not writing and it hasn’t killed me. Yet.

Anyway. I think the most interesting thing for me in all this thinking about love and loss of love is the power of the negative—that to demonstrate the importance of something, showing the lack might be the most powerful way to do it. Want to write about love? Show what happens in its absence. Want to write about peace? Show the ravages of war. Want to write about loyalty? Give us betrayal.

Want to figure out a reason to write? Try not writing for a while. I think it’s working.

I got a valentine in the mail a few days ago from a dear friend (you know who you are!) with a map that shows a route out from Desolation. She knew I needed it. Now that’s the kind of love that I’m talking about.

Take Good Care,

Sharry

The Landscape of the Integrated Mind and Body

I've spent a lot of time this past week thinking about integration. Integration of the mind and the body. Integration of one emotion or truth with a seemingly contradictory other emotion or truth (emphasis on seemingly.) Integration of outside-offered knowledge and inside-felt intuition.

from Building Soul

We live in a culture where subtly is often hard to find. Loud is recognized. Absolute thinking is applauded. And an inflexible stand is all too familiar.  Politics make this clear, for sure, but I see it on a more intimate level too. Arguments between two people that fully operate on the premise that one belief cannot exist in the presence of another. Small and large beliefs and everything in between. It seems as if we are under the false impression that in order to feel secure and on solid ground, we need to hold onto one piece of information – a truth, a belief, an emotion, a reason, a decision – like it is a tree trunk, unmoving and firmly rooted.

I'm speaking from personal experience here. Go figure. And it has been causing a lot of heartache. Specifically, I have been experiencing how critical it is to integrate the mind and the body. The mind is capable of being in many places. It can be in the past, it can be in the future.  It can be in a memory, it can be in an expectation. It can be on the beach, in an airplane, in a classroom, a hotel, a forest. All of this time and place travel is fine.  It is extraordinary, in fact. But the mind can get stuck in one of those places, or one of those times, and if there is no path back – well, that is not so fine. That is the stuff of heartache…of losing a sense of direction, of purpose, and of self. This kind of existence is one of almost exclusive mind-living. It is easy to cultivate. Again, our culture kind of encourages it. Our intellect is revered.

But it is dangerous.

Integrating the body with the mind is a critical process in living a full and connected life.  Because the body is present. It is always present.  Wherever your mind may take you, your body is still right here, right now. You are thinking about 7^th grade? Your feet are still standing on the floor of your house today. You are imagining what it would be like to leave your job? Your hands are still wrapped around your tea mug now.

In an earlier post, I talked about this mind-body practice I have – I'll use the word, yup! – integrated into my life. I love this practice. It keeps me grounded in right here and right now. And, at the risk of sounding old and familiar, all we truly have is right here and right now. Or, hold up…wait a minute…let me revise: all we truly have to come back to is right here and right now.

That is the integration process.

And it goes back to that desire we all have to feel secure and on solid ground. But holding on to that piece of information – that absolute truth, etc – will not achieve that groundedness. Holding onto our bodies will though. Sinking into our bodies will. I like to imagine the landscape of the body and mind like a large tract of land and an island with a bridge between them. Build that bridge if you don't have one. Clear it of debris if it has fallen into disrepair. Imagine it into being. For me, it is a lovely wooden bridge with railings and the open sky above. I can trek across it, into my mind, and hang out there, dreaming of fulfilling all of my longings, and then I can stretch my legs and arms, turn around and trek back into my body and settle there for the day, working hard on whatever is my work in this moment, playing hard at whatever is my play for this moment too.

In this way, my longings are realized, bit by bit, moment by moment, a hundred journeys between my mind and my body, a well-worn path, an ease, an integration.

My dear friend and yoga teacher, Kara, read us this poem in class today.  I leave it for you.

Joy For No Reason

I am filled with quiet

joy for no reason save

the fact that I'm alive.

The message I receive

is clear - there's no time

to lose from loving, no

place but here to offer

kindness, no day but this

to be my true, unfettered

self and pass the flame

from heart to heart. This

is the only moment that

exists - so simple, so

exquisite, and so real.

                        —Danna Faulds

With gratitude,

Tam