Today's author sit-down is with Katie Stewart. Katie and I go way back, though we've never met in person, so I was delighted to ask her five curly questions about her new picture book, You're Too Little.
1. Can you remember the moment the idea for You're Too Little popped (or crept) into your mind? If so, please tell us about it.
I don’t think there was any one moment. Pygmy possums have always been my favourite marsupial, so as I kept writing stories, I kept thinking, ‘I really should write one about a pygmy possum’. After my last book I decided that now was the time and I started brainstorming ideas. What problem could a pygmy possum have? Being considered too small seemed a good fit, so the story developed from there.
2. Who is your protagonist?
The protagonist is Western Pygmy Possum, who like all pygmy possums is very small. I always use the animal name for my characters to avoid too much personification. Through most of the book, she’s simply known as Pygmy Possum, but the other characters are all Western Australian animals, so I needed to use ‘Western’ at the beginning of the story. It also says ‘young’, because an older Pygmy Possum would already know what she can and can’t do.
3. High concept of 25 or fewer words to "sell" your book to us?
“A tiny creature shows how important it is to know what your skills are and to believe in yourself to achieve your goals.”
4. How has your rural background impacted your writing?
Living in the country for most of my life has brought me closer to nature, so I think using animals as characters is only natural. As a child, I was always out watching animals and birds on the river and it’s something I carried on when my husband and I were on the farm. The themes of the stories, though, come from my subconscious after my years of teaching and motherhood. I don’t set out with a theme in mind. Sometimes it’s so subconscious that when I go back and look at it later, the theme surprises me. That is definitely the case with ‘You’re Too Little’. Yes, I was writing about a pygmy possum, so the idea of her being told she was ‘too little’ by others was the obvious plot. However the idea that she not only believed in herself because she knew what she could do, but also that she needed to use all her abilities to make it work came out without me thinking about it. I do believe that children need to learn to ‘give it their all’ to achieve their goals, but I didn’t set out to write that.
The book that most relates to my rural background is probably “When I Can Fly” which, sadly, has been my least successful book. I think people in the city saw it as a take-down of city life, when it really wasn’t. It was based directly on my second son’s experience and was more about the fact that you can really want something and work towards it, only to find that you don’t like it when you get it – and that it’s also okay to admit that you don’t like it.
5. You are both artist and writer. Which talent is more "you”?
That’s a really good question. I always enjoyed both writing and art. I was good at English, especially creative writing, but it was Art that I really loved and Art that won me prizes. Surprisingly though, it was only because of my family moving towns that I ended up doing Art in my final two years of school. Even though I loved Art and wanted to go on to do Art after school, I’d been pressured by the school principal to choose ‘real’ subjects, so I put down to do German. But the new school didn’t offer German, so I had to do Art instead! Unfortunately, my mother didn’t see Art as a real job prospect either, so my dream of going to Art School was stymied. I went on instead to do a degree in English, hated it (how would I know what an author was really thinking?) and changed to Archaeology. By the time I finished, I’d lost confidence in my artistic ability and took a very long time to get back to it seriously. The fact remains though, that Art is my ‘thing’. Even when I’m writing, I think in pictures. I have the book spreads clear in my head as I go.
In short - if I had to choose between writing and art, it would be art every time. Even when I’m not doing a book, I’m in my studio doing something artistic. If I can’t draw or paint, I’m miserable. So art is “me”.
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