A giraffe, a snake, and a clever fish – no, these are not a list of animals at the zoo. These are some of the characters in the two books author/illustrator DK Ryland brings to shelves this fall. First up is Splish, with a rhythm to the text that begs to be read over and over again and an ending that delights, Splish is one to add to the story time rotation. Then comes the third book in the Giraffe series, Don’t Open This Book! Giraffe and Friends are Sleeping. Of course, if you ask a child not to open the book, they are definitely going to want to peek inside. This meta book has the child reader help put each animal to sleep before hopefully dozing off themselves.
Splish hit shelves on September 15th and Don’t Open This Book! Giraffe and Friends are Sleeping will be available on December 8th!
Monica Acker (MA): DK, thank you so much for joining me on the blog! Can you share a little bit about yourself and why you create stories for children?
DK Ryland (DKR): Hi Monica! Thank you so much for having me! When I was a kid, I loved getting lost in funny, fantastical books. Then, when I had kids of my own, I absolutely fell in love with picture books all over again. I was really blown away by their creativity and depth, despite their brevity. I have always loved to dabble in all kinds of creative projects, so I pieced together an illustration and writing education online and eventually started writing and illustrating picture books myself. Animals are typically my main characters, and I love funny and quirky premises that I hope will delight young readers.
MA: What is your creative process like as an author/illustrator? Do the images or text come first? Is it the same or different when working on a story in a series?
DKR: It can be different each time but typically the images come first. Sometimes it’s a series of images and sometimes it’s just one funny image. For GIRAFFE IS TOO TALL FOR THIS BOOK, it started as an image of a Giraffe whose neck was too tall to fit in the page. For SPLISH, I saw the entire story with page turns. For THE DANGEROUS ALPHABET BOOK, it was an image of an Alligator interrupting an “A page” of an alphabet book by chomping down on an apple.
For a series, it is a bit different because I am working within certain parameters. For the GIRAFFE series, I had 6 animal characters with distinct personalities, it had to be meta, and they were in the confines of a book. It might seem like that is pretty restricting, but I find it a bit easier to write like that because it eliminates all the things that can’t be.
MA: Splish is so fun! Where did the idea for this story stem from?
DKR: Aw, thank you! SPLISH is one of those books that came to me as an almost completely fleshed out story. I saw the whole thing in images and realized it had awesome page turn potential. I’ve always loved picture books that are action packed and fast paced, so I was excited to see if it could be a real book. The text came later, and I think the text is what really makes it a fun, rhythmic read-aloud.
MA: The rhythm in the text is perfect for readalouds and is almost like a song. I can picture you and Laurie Berkner teaming up on a single. How did you land on your word choices and the repetition of asking “What kind of fish is Splish?”
DKR: What a compliment! Since SPLISH started out as a set of images first, I wanted the word choices to enhance the movement, excitement, and humor of the story. Luckily, a fish protagonist trying to evade danger lends itself to really strong read aloud words like flips and flops, wiggles and waggles, splishes and splashes, zips and zooms, and zigs and zags.
“What kind of fish is Splish” was one of the final text additions in the book and was a suggestion from my editor. We were really looking for a line that would tie the whole book together and that line was what did it. It’s funny because the very literal reader will be thinking more along the lines of species, but I was less interested in labeling Splish by species and more interested in who she is at her core, which I think the ending really points to in a playful and fun way.
MA: I don’t want to give away the ending, but I have to ask if you always knew you would have this clever twist or if it evolved over time?
DKR: The original ending was similar and always had a twist, but the current ending evolved as we were finding a way to make it funnier and a bit less dark. I’ll just say I love a picture book where someone gets eaten, but sometimes there’s a funnier option, so we went funnier and no characters were *fully* eaten in the final version.
MA: Splish is available now, but you also have Don’t Open This Book!, part of the Giraffe and Friends series, coming out early December. You are busy! Did you always know you wanted the Giraffe and Friends books to be a series or has that been a happy discovery over time?
DKR: Haha! I was super busy last year when I had coinciding deadlines! Luckily, anytime I finished a deadline for one book, I got an assignment for the other, and they traded off almost perfectly throughout the making of each book – but it was a busy 6 months!
When I first wrote GIRAFFE IS TOO TALL FOR THIS BOOK, I jotted down a couple sequel ideas but didn’t spend too much time on it because I didn’t know if the opportunity would come. Luckily the first book sold well, and Page Street asked me to do a sequel, which I happily said yes to. When the second book, GIRAFFE’S BOOK IS MISSING A STORY, received lovely reviews, my publisher asked for a 3rd book in the series, which ended up being DON’T OPEN THIS BOOK! GIRAFFE AND FRIENDS ARE SLEEPING. The third book was so fun to make because there are two simultaneous stories in one – one with the main characters and one in their dreams – it was such a creatively enjoyable book to make.
MA: All of the books in the series are meta, in that the characters are talking directly to the reader and asking them to do something. How do you come up with what a child can do that the characters can predictably respond to on the page?
DKR: That’s a great question, and I definitely had to edit some of the actions in the first book because the response potential was too open ended. In fact, here’s a quote from my editor’s initial line edits: “the better we can anticipate how a young reader will act or respond to a direct question, the better chance we have of maintaining the illusion that the book characters really are understanding and reacting to them!” She is obviously super smart. So I learned to include actions that had predictable outcomes and that also moved the plot forward while making the reader an integral part of the story.
I will say though, there is one open-ended question in the story where the animals ask the reader what they think Giraffe could do to fit in the book, and I get the BEST responses when I read it in a classroom. The creativity is inspiring, and I wish I had some of those answers when I was writing the book!
MA: I love the choose your own adventure element of the lullaby page. I always loved singing a lullaby to my kiddos when they were little. Do you have a favorite way to get a little one off to sleep?
DKR: I love that you asked that! The inspiration for that page actually came from a song I made up and used to sing to my kids when they were babies to get them to sleep. It will be hard to convey the melody but the song is “Hey little monkey sitting in your tree, eating a banana and looking at me. Hey little monkey, I’m a monkey too, I like bananas and throwing my poo.” It worked like a charm.
MA: Final fun. There are so many animals in these books. What is your favorite animal to visit at the zoo or see in the wild?
DKR: OMG I love them all. But currently, I have season passes to the San Diego Safari Park and Zoo and my favorite are the Coatis – they are South American raccoon looking critters. They are such characters, and my son and I love watching them run around in the trees.
We will have to wait to see if a coati makes it into one of DK Ryland’s future books! Until then, enjoy these fun and vibrant books with the little readers in your life.
