In over two decades of friendship, Stephen Luk’s creative muse has surprised me twice.
The first time was at a graduation dinner our senior year of college. I knew Stephen as a sweet, talkative math major who, during our freshman year, needed a highly trained extraction team of dorm-mates to wake him up for class each morning. He’d never so much as hinted at a fondness for iambic tetrameter or enjambed lines. But suddenly there he was on stage, being crowned the official class poet of the Columbia College Class of 2001.
Flash forward to last December. I received a text from Stephen right after the Christmas holidays, informing me that the children’s book he wrote AND illustrated is now available on Amazon??!!
Luk occasionally travels to Austin from Southern California on business. Yet not once in the past two years, over our reunion ritual of doughnuts from Mrs. Johnson’s, did he mention that he had a kid’s book in the works!
It was time to get some answers. On the heels of last week’s post about children’s book author and father-of-two Arnold Lobel, I asked an old friend about his new book Astaire’s Warm Day. We talked about the children’s literature that inspires him, his experience of fatherhood so far, and how to make fresh pasta.
Name a few children’s books you especially admire. What do you love about them?
Having gone through the book publishing process, I developed a newfound respect for children’s books that are written and illustrated by the same author. It’s a daunting task to both write and draw, but I think it also provides the purist form of storytelling, since it captures an author’s thoughts in image, word, and sound.
I tend to be a fan of works that evoke the contents of a child’s imagination. As a kid, it’s one of the few times in a person’s life where they can let their imagination run wild without any form of reprisal. That’s probably why I’m a fan of stories like Where the Wild Things Are and comics strips, like Calvin and Hobbes.
What I like most about Sendak’s book is his illustrations. Sendak was initially an illustrator by trade, and his nativist-styled illustrations are so detailed, playful and brilliantly drawn. For a book published in the 60’s, it still remains quite unique. In Astaire’s Warm Day, some astute readers may be able to see some parallels to Where The Wild Things Are.
With Sandra Boynton’s books, I admire her attention to rhyme. As I learned, it’s quite difficult to rhythmically write something that is appealing to both children and parents, and even more difficult to write perfect rhymes. In many ways, I equate it to the Mozart of children’s storytelling.
And lastly, with Ezra Jack Keat’s The Snowy Day, I like how he uses a vibrant collage of color to portray the magic of a snowy day. In my own way, I have also tried to use color to advance the storyline of Astaire’s Warm Day.
Illustration from Ezra Jack Keats’ The Snowy Day (1962).
What inspired you to write Astaire’s Warm Day?
Funny you ask – it all started as a friendly husband wife wager. I was reading a bunch of children's books to my son David, and thought, "I can write one of these..." I told my wife, Ruth, and she countered, "It is way harder than it looks..."
Not wanting to be proved wrong, I told her that I could write one in two hours. I did write and illustrate a draft of the book in two hours, though it took nearly two years for it to become a reality. So, I guess (in part) she was right.
The inspiration for my book came from my birthday present to Ruth a few years back. I setup a one-on-one half day with the penguins at the Long Beach Aquarium. There, we met little Astaire penguin. Astaire really liked Ruth and kept close to her. With me, he spent a lot of time nipping at my jeans (I won't say where). His keepers told me that he was just allopreening me (the word for bird grooming), and that’s his way of showing deep affection. I’ll take their word for it…
The other (more obvious) inspiration for my book is my son, David. He loves to read, and I wanted to be able share bed time reading with him in a much more personal way. I also wanted to impart values on him, like family, friendship, and hard work.
Throughout the book editing process, as I read and reread my book to David (and other children), it has warmed my heart to see them absorb and practice these values.
Luk with his ‘muse’ Astaire at the Long beach aquarium.
Tell us a bit about your process: from coming up with the initial story idea to realizing you wanted to make a book to actually producing one.
Like I mentioned, coming up with a story for my book was the easier part – executing on it was a different story.
I’ve always been fascinated by people who are born into cultures that don’t suit their personal preferences. For example, what if you were born into a culture that favors spicy food, but you can’t take spice? How would you cope?
Taking that one step further, I reasoned that it would be even more difficult for animals that don’t follow the status quo, since it’s harder for them to communicate these preferences to their community and/or for them to travel to somewhere more geographically suitable.
A few years back, I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and watched a school of fish swimming by. I noticed that there was one fish that consistently swam against the stream. At times, the current would be so strong that the fish would give in, but as time passed, it would go back to swimming against the stream. This fish looked like any other fish within the school, but clearly, it was different. I sympathized with it, because even though it never got its way, it never stopped trying...
That led me to think, what about other animals? Could there be giraffes that are afraid of heights? Are there porcupines that are afraid of pointy objects? How about dolphins that don’t like the water? And of course, penguins that fear the cold… like Astaire!
In the book writing process, I found storyboarding to be quite helpful. Since most children’s books are about 32 pages in length (with 26 pages allocated for content), it can be quite challenging to write and illustrate a story that fits these rigid constraints.
These constraints, combined with the iterative editing process (as my wife can attest to) are sometimes quite onerous. The other challenges to writing a children’s book include digital editing and book formatting, which can be quite technical and time consuming.
That being said, it’s a great learning process…
Who are your parenting role models—either real people or fictional characters? What have you learned from them?
My parenting role models are my own parents and also a couple of family friends. I think the biggest thing that I learned from them is that the best way to parent is not by preaching to children, but by setting a good example for them.
Children tend to be very impressionable, and they emulate what they see. By being the best person that I can (which is easier said than done), my hope is that David will follow.
What’s one way that fatherhood has changed you?
Fatherhood has taught me that time is precious. I try to not take it for granted and I also try to enjoy the time I have with David, because he will surely grow up fast!
I think it has also shown me how challenging it is to balance marriage, family, work, and the rest of my life. That I’m still trying to tackle…
I listen to this podcast called Mom Rage, which looks at the less idyllic or sentimental side of motherhood. Do you have any “Dad rage” – something that irks you about parental leave policies? How dads are represented in pop culture? The unwieldiness of car seats?
It’s a fair point that paternity leave polices can always be more generous and car seats can be less unwieldy, but at the same time, we can also step back and take in all the progress we’ve made in the last century – like much more parent child bonding time and safer car rides! Hopefully that leads to less Mom and Dad rage issues for all of us…
What are some of your favorite rituals with your preschooler?
Cooking is one my favorite activities to do with David. Though he’s still too young to do everything in the kitchen, he can still pour, stir, and mix. It’s rewarding for us to work together, and to be able to enjoy the fruits of our labor.
In many ways, it’s not unlike writing (and publishing) a book!
please share your recipe for fresh pasta.
Ingredients:
6 Cups of All-Purpose Flour
Pinch of Salt
6 Egg Yolks
2 Whole Eggs
1 Tspn of Olive Oil
Directions:
1) Add flour, eggs, salt, olive oil into a bowl; mix until uniform.
2) Roll dough into a ball.
3) Cover and set at room temperature for at least ½ hour
4) Knead dough. Roll back into a ball.
5) Cut into 8 equal pieces.
6) Lightly roll each of the pieces using a rolling pin and feed into a pasta maker.
7) Toss into boiling water for 3 minutes
8) Add sauce and / or meatballs and enjoy!
If you don’t have a pasta maker:
1) Roll the dough flat
2) Fold into thirds
3) Roll again, perpendicular to the folds
4) Lightly fold the elongated dough onto itself, and cut into thin strands
5) Move to Step 7 & 8 and enjoy!
The magic pasta pot, from Tomie dePaola’s Strega Nona (1975).