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Alumna Deborah Diesen has Time on her side
(Jan 2009) Alumna Deborah Diesen is a first-time author, but she rates in the top 10 of her field -- and has an impressive list to prove it.
Diesen's book, The Pout-Pout Fish, earned a place on Time magazine's list of top 10 children's books of 2008, landing at number seven.
The book also spent two weeks on the New York Times Book Review best-seller list for children's books this past September. The fish tale, published by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, follows Mr. Fish, a glum swimmer with an ever-present snout.
"Younger kids will love the repetition of the verses in this tale of a pout-pout fish who spreads his 'dreary-wearies' and is an absolute buzz-kill wherever he swims," Time wrote.
Diesen's road to becoming a children's author writing about a magical underwater world was covered with dust -- sort of. "In elementary school, I wrote a Little House on the Prairie-style story and showed it to my school librarian. Even though it was a total Laura Ingalls Wilder knock-off, down to the covered wagons and the sun bonnets, my librarian was kind enough to praise my writing and to encourage me to keep at it," she says.
"In my teen years, I moved on to awful, angst-ridden free verse; then in my 20s, I pounded out a pretty awful novel manuscript. By then I figured I'd better park my writing dream and move on to more practical things."
Not one to give up, Diesen rediscovered the urge to write after reading books to her son. "Not only did he have favorite books, he had favorite pages within his favorite books, and even favorite sentences that he wanted to hear over and over and over again," Diesen says. "All that out-loud repetition of book after book -- and sentence after sentence -- served as an informal class in the structure and conventions of children's books. It also reawakened my interest in writing. So eventually, I uncapped a pen and started writing children's stories of my own.
Diesen says she wrote off and on for quite some time without really admitting it to anybody. "About seven years ago," she reveals, "I came out of the shadows, joined the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, and found a writing group."
Fortunately for Diesen, she could handle rejection of not being an instant success. "I submitted various stories of mine to various publishers over the course of several years, and acquired over 100 rejections. Then in October 2004, I received a call from an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux offering me a book contract for my story, The Pout-Pout Fish." The book, illustrated by Dan Hanna, was published in March 2008.
Writing a children's book is not as easy as one might think. For one thing, it's a book that must resonate with two age groups who absorb the story differently.
"Most of my manuscripts are read-aloud picture book stories," says Diesen, who received her master's in library science in 1996. "The hardest part about writing a read-aloud story is that the story has to please two very different audiences: the children who hear it, and the grown-ups who read it out loud. Both audiences are equally important. Children, of course, are the reason for a children's story; so the story has to entertain and resonate with kids."
Diesen adds that if the story doesn't also appeal to the parent, librarian, or caregiver who picks the book up, it won't ever be read aloud, and the child will never hear it.
"It's got to do both," she points out. "Finding the right mix of kid-pleasing and adult-pleasing components, working them into a satisfying plot arc, and managing to do so in rhyme, and all in about 500 words or less, can be quite a challenge. But it's also a great deal of fun!"
Diesen's next book, The Barefooted, Bad-Tempered Baby Brigade will be published in 2010 by Tricycle Press.
Although she's officially an author, Diesen has a desire to return to her roots in the library world. After earning her master's degree, Diesen started her career as a librarian, first at the Adrian College Library in Michigan and then at the Library of Michigan. Later she subbed at the Capital Area District Library in Lansing, Michigan.
"I'm currently working out of field," she says, "managing the grants and budget of a small nonprofit organization, but I remain in my heart a reference librarian. I look forward to eventually making my way back to a reference desk."
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Deborah Diesen
The cover of Pout-Pout
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