Publishers Weekly ran an interview with Portland, OR author and illustrator Emily Winfield Martin.
There’s a sample below, but read the whole thing in Publishers Weekly!
This year marked the 10th anniversary of author-illustrator Emily Winfield Martin’s bestselling picture book The Wonderful Things You Will Be, which has sold nearly three million copies and become a staple for new parents. “I still think of myself as kind of a weirdo, making these strange misfit things,” she said, “so it’s funny that I created this book that’s been enormously loved and embraced in this mainstream way. It’s surreal, but I’m so grateful.” In her new picture book, The Wildest Thing, a girl named Eleanor taps into the wild beauty of the natural world, ushering it into her home. Winfield Martin spoke with PW from her attic studio in Portland, Ore., about creation and curation, conscious and unconscious echoes of Maurice Sendak, and the gentle nudge of a squirrel and a rose that set her latest book in motion.
The word wild in the context of a picture book has a way of conjuring associations with Where the Wild Things Are. What were the creative catalysts for your story—Sendakian or otherwise?
This book took two years to make, and the Sendakian influence didn’t really dawn on me until I was well into it. I had made lots of dummies for the book, and I think it was when we decided on the title that I said, “Well, now everyone’s going to draw this association”—which is fine with me. But the catalyst for this book was really direct. My office is here in an attic, and in the fall, I always hear squirrels running on the roof, right above my head. Maybe two or three falls ago, a squirrel had gotten into the wall of my daughter’s room. We realized he had fallen into a vent and couldn’t get out. We heard his little scratching; it was so sad. I was just like, “Please don’t die in the wall!” But we had a pest guy come and get him out—he’s fine! And then at the same time, we have a thornless rose growing on the corner of our house and one of the shoots came in through the window. So, in the same week, there was a squirrel in our wall and a rose growing through the window. We just let it go, and every day it grew like a foot across the ceiling. And so, I had this idea: what if a little girl’s house went wild… and incrementally, over the course of the day, it got wilder? Then I was consumed with the idea. I put aside everything—I was supposed to be working on a book of short stories—to make this book.
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