Woogie, something Giant, hippo, Prismacolor, HARD, toys, McCay, and Sanford: Author/illustrator Aaron Zenz
Charlie Barshaw coordinates our regular Writer Spotlight feature and
interviews writers of SCBWI-MI. In this piece, meet author/illustrator Aaron Zenz.
[Note: the items in italics are from my research into Aaron Zenz. My questions follow the italicized items.]
The Bookie Woogie blog was:
7 years
6 kids
195 posts
140 book reviews
20 author interviews
178 books highlighted
177 authors &
illustrators highlighted
520 pieces of fan art
created (wow!)
It ran from 2008 until
2015. Your kids were partners in the book reviews, author interviews, and fan
art. (520 pieces … wow, indeed!) How did this family collaboration come about? Are some of
your children continuing in the art field?
Bookie Woogie started as
most of our family artistic adventures did - a simple “hey that might be fun…”
snowballing into a giant joyous undertaking!
Children’s books are
strange creatures because they are made for kids, but created by adults,
published by adults, purchased by adults, reviewed by adults. So our premise was simple: what if instead,
some kids shared their experiences with kids’ books???
When we started in 2008 my three oldest were ages
10, 8, and 5. By the end of our run, all
six kids had chimed in to varying degrees.
One of my favorite posts even celebrated the arrival of one of those
kiddos!
I LOVED
connecting with my kids over our favorite books. All kinds of books - chapter books, picture
books, board books, graphic novels. I
tried to remain fairly anonymous during the process - I wanted the focus to
stay on kids’ reactions to kids' books.
It wasn’t until the blog was close to being done that I put covers of my
own books on the site, revealing my identity.
But the kids became quite famous over those years! They appeared on the local news and had their
reviews reprinted in the Grand Rapids Press.
They even drew an international audience and had a big feature in a
South Korean women’s magazine.
It was
also a great place to play with art together.
Our favorite books inspired us to explore all kinds of materials -watercolor, scratchboard, collage, sculpture, food art, stone carving, even video! Jarrett Krosoczka once said, “Getting kid art by the Bookie Woogie kids is
the fan art equivalent of making the cover of Rolling Stone.”
The kids
are all still very artsy. Examples:
Isaac has done lots of commission work in his adult years, carving out a neat
niche for himself doing design in the disc golf community - even collaborating
on a series of discs for top disc golfer Paul McBeth. Amity Grace is a talented songwriter, and
creates amazing art that accompanies her music.
The rest of the kids do art as well - for pleasure, gift giving,
decor. And they are all very creative
thinkers!
You’ve done Art Prize projects with your kids. Tell us about one.
Art Prize
is a giant annual art competition in Grand Rapids MI, some years showcasing
around 1,500 entries. The displayed
artwork sprawls across the whole city, and they give out over $400,000 in
awards. Top prizes are decided by the
public. It’s an Event!
I’ve
entered Art Prize three times, the first time with my kids. It once again started with a simple “this
could be fun…” and snowballed into a HUGE undertaking. The kids and I had enjoyed Art Prize every
year as attendees. And every year,
people who knew I was an artist would ask if I was ever going to enter.
My answer was always the same: “I don’t have
a good ‘Art Prize Idea’.” A nice little
painting is never going to win Art Prize - the winners are always 1. something
Giant, 2. something Unusual you’ve never seen before, 3. something that
resonates with a large cross-section of the public.
So during
Art Prize year 7 we were walking around the event, and I was mulling over if I
could come up with something giant and unusual that would connect with a large
number of strangers. And I thought of a
small family art project we had done years earlier that had gone super viral
online. We had painted a handful of
rocks and hid them around town where we live (it is hard to believe, but yes
the kids and I were the first people to scatter painted rocks around in public
- we kicked it off - no one used to do this prior to 2011 - this sounds like a
CRAZY claim, but it’s true, traceable, and confirmable!)
Remembering
how that project checked the box of being unusual and checked the box of
catching viral widespread attention, I wondered if I could adapt it in a Giant
way for Art Prize?
On the ride home I
asked the kids if they would be interested in entering Art Prize 8 the next
year - but it would take a lot of work.
They were on board and excited, so over the course of the next year we
set out to see how many rocks we could paint in 12 months. Turns out it was over 1,000 rocks.
We painted them all in matching pairs. We
kept one rock from each pair at our venue near the Children’s Museum in a
sprawling display. The other 500
matching rocks we hid all around the whole city - on window ledges, in the
nooks of tree branches, under bridges, in planters. Then as people walked around Art Prize they
could play along with our entry however they wanted - see who in their group
could find the first rock, see who finds the most rocks, see how many they could collect through photographs.
There
were 1,453 entries in Art Prize that year.
Our family’s entry was voted into 3rd place in our category! While there was no prize for third place, we
had a ton of fun, made lifelong memories, and connected with and inspired so
many people!
Aaron Zenz is a West Michigan author and illustrator. He has created the art for over
45 books for kids; 9 of these books he authored as well. He loves visiting
schools and libraries all over the country where he helps kids to get excited
about reading, writing, and creating.
How “all over the country” have you been? Where was
your most unusual venue?
I
absolutely love doing school Author Visits!
It is the best part of this gig.
I’ve got a couple of presentations - one that covers the whole book
making process (and sometimes involves a disruptive puppet friend!) and one
that features lots of our family’s creative adventures.
The goal of both presentations is to start
off by catching students’ attention with the excitement of a real live author
in front of them, but then to quickly swing the spotlight off of myself and
onto their own imaginations and creative pursuits.
I don’t want kids to know a bunch of Aaron
Zenz facts. In fact, if I walk away and
they forget all about me but start making a bunch of their own things - I say
Mission Accomplished!
Most of
my travels are around Michigan - from the tip of the thumb, to the Upper
Peninsula, and everywhere in between.
But I’ve also done recent visits in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky,
Nebraska, and Virginia. I’ll travel
anywhere I’m wanted!
I don’t
know if this counts as an unusual venue, but it’s noteworthy! Just this past April I returned to my
childhood hometown of Jackson MI to do a story time in the middle of the
mall!
There is a hippo statue there in
the mall that every kid of my generation climbed all over, slid down, jumped
off. My first and most well-known book
stars a hippo, so it seemed fitting that at long last we’d bring these two
hippos together! It was lots of fun -
the mall provided snacks and crafts, and I did lots of radio interviews leading
up to the big event.
You’ve
said: My great LOVE is Prismacolor colored pencils. I started using them as a young kid –- it was a natural progression, stepping up from crayons. But being
self-taught, I didn’t know anything about
how you are “supposed” to make use of colored pencils, so I abused and battered the medium
until I got results I liked. I developed a system of pressing really hard,
getting solid coverage, not allowing any grain of the paper to show through. I
go through hundreds of pencils on any given project and bust tons of pencil
tips.
How
much of your art process is self-taught? What formal art training did you seek
out?
My art
process is almost entirely self-taught.
I drew all the time as a kid.
It was my favorite pastime. It
was Play for me. I went to a small
private elementary/high school that didn’t have any art program or classes, so
it wasn’t until college that I had my first real instruction in art.
But by that time I already had my style and
techniques down. However, I took as many
different kinds of art classes as I could, and I am amazed at how much those
sculpture and photography courses still inform and shape the way I think and
see and create - subtle ways that you would never guess.
But Prismacolor colored pencils are my
favorite tool, and I figured those out all on my own. In fact during college courses, I asked
professors if I could use Prismacolors instead of the media other students were
using. They humored me and said yes! So while everyone else was leisurely laying
down oil paints in portraiture class, there I was frantically scribbling away.
You’ve
said: I left a full-time, regular
paying job in 2003 to go work for a tiny publishing company that a few friends
were trying to get off the ground. These were wonderful, surreal, dream years.
Just four guys, tucked away in the corner of a dusty, abandoned warehouse. One
guy only had an old, propped-up door that he used for a desk. We were creating
coloring books, sticker books, and activity books and were getting into really
big-name stores. The ultimate goal was to eventually break into higher-end
publishing, so they asked me if I’d be willing to create the company’s first picture book. Let me think about that… Um,
YES.
And
from that company, The Hiccupotamus was born. Your first book,
writing and illustrating, and probably the one you’re best known for. What kind
of leap was it for young Aaron, to leave a steady job and go whole hippo into
kid’s books?
Oh, the
leap was huge, but the decision was easy.
There was never any guarantee that this publishing company was going to
endure. But for the three years it
existed, I had steady income there - that was an important factor for me at the
time. I also loved those guys. Some of my favorite people in the world.
The hard part was after the company
abruptly ended and I was unemployed.
Obviously that was not something I would have chosen. I immediately started looking for new full-time
employment, but this was in 2005/2006 when the economy had tanked and I was not
finding anything.
At the same time,
freelance work started slowly trickling in from an Art Rep I had acquired on
the strength of The Hiccupotamus.
So freelance wasn’t an intentional leap - I was sort of tossed into self
employment/freelance involuntarily.
Eventually I realized that dividing my energies between doing the
freelance work and my continuing hunt for employment was not helpful - I needed
undivided focus on one or the other. God
was providing the freelance work, so that’s when the BIG leap happened. I said alright Lord, since this is how You
seem to be providing, I’m going to lean all in and trust You. That was almost 21 years ago!
I saw
an early account of tight finances when you had a young family. You didn’t have steady employment, and you weren’t sure at the beginning of the month whether
you’d have enough to pay the
bills at the end of the month. But somehow, you always managed. Surely today
your finances are less tenuous? How did young freelancer Aaron make rent money?
Oh
Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. Hah ha ha Hah
hah! Hah. hah. I
have never had the privilege of less tenuous finances. It has been 20 years of miracle after
miracle, month after month, project after project. I’ve never had a guarantee that I’d still be
doing this 3 months out at ANY point in time over the past two decades.
But I’ve been operating as if there is a God
in heaven who knows my needs and is capable of meeting them even before I ask,
that He is good and in control and is full of grace.
My goal has always been to simply follow where
He leads, whenever and wherever that is.
If I’m wrong about all of that, then what I have been doing is
absolutely CRAZY. 100% so. But if it’s true, there should be 100%
security in Him. Not much middle ground.
Now you
may notice I said the freelancing started 21 years ago, and there have been 20
years of miracles. This last year has
been ROUGH. I don’t know what that
means. And I don’t know how much longer
this part of the journey lasts. I’m not
sure where God is leading. I’m
submitting my manuscripts and sending out illustration samples. But I am also sending out resumes and doing
employment interviews. I’m casting a
wide net.
So far, all closed doors, for
almost a year. So I’m not sure what any
of that means. I’m hoping the next
freelance project or two or three are right around the corner. But this journey might be heading elsewhere. I’m still trusting there is a God in heaven
who knows our needs and is capable of meeting them even before we ask, that He
is good and in control and is full of grace, and my desire remains to follow where
He leads.
You’ve
said: I
LOOOOOOVE doing school visits. It’s just as fun for me as making books themselves –- or perhaps even more
so. I do author visits all around Michigan schools and libraries and even
venture into other states from time to time. My programs are very interactive -– the students and I draw together, write poems together, laugh together.
Puppets make surprise visits. I dump water on myself. I walk everyone through
the writing and illustrating process and even show off original artwork. It’s a ton of fun.
That
interview was a decade ago. Since then, authors who visit have been through
school budget cutbacks, the pandemic, and the rise of on-line visits. How has
your approach to school visits changed from those early years?
My
approach to visits has remained the same.
It’s all about the kids! I’ve
crafted tight, solid presentations. Over
the past 2 decades I’ve honed them to the point where every word is packed with
purpose and intentionality.
I’m looking
to inspire, I’m eager for kids to run up to me afterward bursting with ideas
for things they want to create, I’m excited to hear teachers reporting that the
class wanted to stay inside for recess so they could make books. Any chance I get to do this is a good day!
I’ve never
had a great system for promoting my School Visits. I get them almost exclusively via word of
mouth. Recently I finally added an
Author Visit section to my website, and I can’t believe I didn’t do that
sooner. Some people are finding me that way now.
I’ve
developed good relationships with a number of schools. We’ve discovered that inviting an author to
visit twice over two consecutive years has a profound impact. You might fear the students would say, “oh
this guy again?” But it’s the complete
opposite: “We KNOW him!” The excitement is palpable. The energy and engagement are through the
roof. We’re already friends, we pick up
where we left off, and we hit the ground running. One elementary in particular I visited 5 or 6
years in a row. The kids thought of me
as part of their school!
I think
this might a good place to make a plug for “The School Visit” in general. Not for just for me - but for ANY author you
love. In light of the previous
question/answer about finances, surviving as an author or illustrator is
HARD.
School Visits are not just nice,
but essential to the process. There is
no way I could survive as a full time creator without them. So if you are a principal or a teacher or a
librarian, take a second to think of who your favorite creators are. You can help enable them to keep going!
Yes an Author Visit could be life changing
for your students, but it is also crucial for the authors you love. Which favorite creator do you hope makes one
more book? A School Visit invitation
from you is a very real and practical way you can make that more likely!
We
talked about your workspace challenges at a Claire’s Day dinner. How you had a nice, convenient
studio for years, but all of a sudden had to find a new place. Where do you
work now?
I still
work from the same building, now just in a tinier room. When the current owner bought the building,
he inherited me! He was kind enough not
to kick me out, but let me keep renting a big portion of the building that he
wasn’t using. After a few years went by,
he decided it was kinda nice having a bit of passive income. So he took that space and chopped it up into
4 separate areas so he could have even more renters. It was around this time you and I had that
dinner.
Now I’m in a room that was once
a literal closet! I had to condense a
TON, but it still works pretty well for what I need.
You’ve illustrated for dozens of different authors
and publishers. Which was the first? Which was the oddest?
The first
books I was invited to illustrate after landing my Art Rep were some books for
NASCAR. “NASCAR ABCs” and “NASCAR 123s”
written by Paul DuBois Jacobs and Jennifer Swender. What I didn’t tell anyone was that I had
never drawn a car before. I don’t even
think I had ever drawn a car in my childhood! I was all about characters and animals and worlds. I was not a kid who drew cars or ships or
tanks or planes. So I think the cars for
that book were LITERALLY the first cars I had ever drawn. But I pulled it off and it came out just
fine!
One book
that readers of The Mitten blog might be excited to learn about is “The Runaway Mitten” written by Anne Margaret Lewis.
It was a fun challenge because the main characters are actual mittens
that needed to hike and swim and carry stuff around. But the story is full of Michigan facts and
locations. When I got to choose which of
Michigan’s 116 lighthouses I was going to draw, of course I had to pick the one
in Grand Haven, my hometown!
Among
the many books that you illustrated, one cover stands out. Among the cute,
cartoony animals, Nugget on the Flight Deck by Patricia Newman floats
above the rest. A very realistically rendered aircraft carrier fills the cover.
Did the boy in you have fun drawing that?
Apparently
those two NASCAR books came out so well, that when another publisher saw them,
they decided I’d be the perfect
person to illustrate a book about jets and aircraft carriers!
So as I said earlier, this was completely out
of my comfort zone! The boy in me had no
interest in the subject matter. The
adult in me was terrified by the prospect, but was very interested in groceries
and rent. And the challenge was
exciting!
Plus the text is full of crazy
military jargon, and the nonsense-word-lover that I am was delighted by
that. In the end I think I pulled off
clear and engaging illustrations, and that book even went on to win an award!
You’ve done a number of books that became a series
(Otter B, Biggety Bat, and Howie). What special challenges await the illustrator when you return to a
character?
I don’t
think there are too many challenges when returning to a character. Instead, I feel like it’s mostly a much
smoother process! The style is already
set. The character designs are already
in place. I really love revisiting a
character. It’s catching up with a good
friend! The Otter B series written by
Pamela Kennedy and Anne Kennedy Brady currently has 12 books so far. By the 12th book, I felt as much ownership and
protectiveness over that little guy as if I had dreamed him up myself.
You
gave a photo tour of your one-room studio on Jennifer Chambliss’s blog. Lots of toys. How do your toys help you
get into a creative mood?
That studio space was 2 or 3 studios ago, but the toys and collectables follow
me! They reflect who I am
inside, and it just leaks out into my surroundings. My parents joke that they can Christmas shop
for my kids and I in the same aisles of the store. I surround myself with things that delight
me. Books, toys, drawings from my
kids. I don’t keep just any toy. I love characters, I love story, I love
playfulness, I love good design. I think
the toys I have around me are a curation of these things.
You’ve said: One of my childhood heroes is
Winsor McCay. When I was young, I
wanted to become an animator, and Winsor McCay was all over animation history. Then in college, I wanted to become an
illustrator, and Winsor McCay is all over illustration history. Years ago I moved to Spring Lake, Michigan for
a job. After living here for about 5 years, I randomly
found out this is Winsor McCay’s hometown! He seems to be following
me wherever I go. His childhood home was
across the street from the very library where I’ve illustrated entire books on my laptop. I helped found “McCay Day” here in town, and now I
share the story of his life and art with kids every year in a special
presentation at that library.
Wow!
Almost spooky how you are following in the footsteps, literally, of your artist
hero. Have you encountered other fortunate coincidences over your career?
I’ll
address the two ideas there separately: “coincidences” and “fortunate.”
One of
the craziest coincidences involves my book The Hiccupotamus. As I already mentioned, I created that while
working for a tiny startup publisher - four of us setting up shop in the corner
of an old dusty abandoned warehouse in Grand Haven MI.
Shortly after the book published, the company
disbanded. So The Hiccupotamus was only
on the market for a few months, and then was out of print for
three years.
And it would have stayed
out of print for the rest of history if not for a single solitary person. A fella who worked for the publisher Marshall
Cavendish loved his family's personal copy of The Hiccupotamus so much, he
wanted Marshall Cavendish to print a board book adaptation of it, even though
they didn’t publish the original. When
he couldn’t find any way to contact the publisher for rights (they’d been gone
for 3 years!) he reached out to me directly. I let him know that in addition to the board book rights, hardcover
rights were available too if they wanted them.
They didn’t. But right before the
board book published they thought, ah, what the heck, and did both.
Years and years later, Amazon decides that in
addition to selling books they also want to try publishing books too. The easiest way to do this if you are Amazon
is, instead of starting from scratch, to buy up some already existing
publishers.
They did this genre by
genre. First they purchased an audiobook
publisher called Brilliance Audio. Then
they bought a children’s book publisher - Marshall Cavendish. They went on to buy a romance publisher, a
faith based publisher, etc. etc.
Well,
Marshall Cavendish did not have their own warehouse and distribution, but
Brilliance Audio did. So all of the
children’s book stock got moved from wherever it had previously been stored
(who knows where, New York?) and sent to Brilliance’s facilities. And Brilliance Audio is located in… Grand
Haven MI.
So years and years after
making The Hiccupotamus here, after bizarre twists and turns in ownership, the
book is now housed about five minutes from where I live. In fact when I call up to order more copies,
the lady who answers the phone lives three doors down from me. Sometimes someone will just drop boxes off on
my porch on their way home from work.
And the fact that my book is stored here in town, has NOTHING to do with
me, nothing to do with me living here, nothing to do with it being created here
all those years ago. So bizarre! It’s just a small thing, but I choose to see
it as a nod from the Lord that He’s in control and is guiding things.
As far as
“fortunate” goes, I see good fortune all over my career. The career itself is a thing of great
fortune. Not “fortune” in the sense of
lots of money (starving artist, anyone?) but in the sense of great value.
That is not lost on me - I’ve never once taken it for granted. To do what I’ve done for the past two decades
is a priceless treasure. To earn income
from an activity you love is priceless.
To create in a way that reflects my Creator is priceless. To visit thousands upon thousands of kids
every year and inspire future things they will make and do is priceless.
The creative friends and colleagues I’ve met
and built relationships with - people with whom there is great creative overlap
but also fascinating differences - those relationships are priceless. I am so fortunate.
 |
| Aaron and John Sanford |
Another
major influence on you was illustrator John Sandford. What role did he play in
your career?
John is
one of my favorite people in the world!
When I got my very first job right out of college, he worked in the same
building but in a different department.
I was working in multimedia.
But
he was *an Illustrator.* A real
illustrator. A successful
illustrator. The first professional
illustrator I had ever met. That was my
dream job, but I had always considered it an unrealistic one. There wasn’t much reason (or encouragement)
for employees at that company to visit other departments.
But every once in a while John and I would
cross paths, I would swoon, and he would be so kind and encouraging. “You are going to do this someday,” he would
say, as if he really believed it.
 |
| An impressive body of work |
Then years
later, he proved that he had believed it by literally putting money where his
mouth was. John is one of the three guys
who started up the tiny publisher that put out The Hiccupotamus. They invited me to come on as the first (and
ultimately only) employee.
We spent
three years creating sticker books and coloring books and card games. But they wanted to break into publishing new,
original, higher-end trade books. And
John asked me if I would turn the Hiccupotamus dummy he’d seen years earlier
into their first book. He got this whole
thing rolling two decades ago.
John
scooted off to Chicago a while ago, but I still hold him very dear and will
meet up with him anytime I happen to travel to Chicago. He is kind and generous and so very
talented. He’s one of my heroes. It is my great FORTUNE to count him as
friend!
What’s next for Aaron Zenz?
Thanks
for all the great questions Charlie!
This September, my 46th book came out: Counting my Colorful World written by Kimberly Lanza. After that I
don’t know what’s next! I’m excited to
find out too! I’ve got lots of stories
on submission with my art rep Shannon Associates and we’ll see who picks up
what next and when!
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