One Duck Stuck: A Mucky Ducky Counting Book

“Picture books are performances,” says Phyllis Root, quoting some sage advice she once received. “They’re performances that involve a child—something both of you do. And once I started thinking of them that way, I started getting much looser about making up words and playing around with rhythm.” Phyllis Root picked up an early affinity for colloquial language while growing up in Indiana and southern Illinois, “where people actually say things like, ‘I got a hitch in my git-along’!” She decided to be a writer in the fifth grade, but it wasn’t until she was thirty years old that she took a writing course with an influential teacher who gave her “the tools” she says she needed. “That’s when I figured out that you could learn to be a writer,” she says. What followed was a series of rollicking stories that take on a new life when read aloud, among them One Duck Stuck, a one-of-a-kind counting book; Kiss The Cow!, an affectionate salute to stubbornness; What Baby Wants, a tale of increasingly ridiculous efforts to quiet an infant that one reviewer compared to an episode of I Love Lucy; and Looking For a Moose, a buoyant tale with a final surprise discovery. The author does “endless rewriting” before a book is finished, but often starts out by writing her stories in her head, a trick she learned as a time-pressed mother when her two daughters were very young. For example, Rattletrap Car—a joyful celebration of perseverance—began with her playing around with sounds (“clinkety clankety, bing bang pop!”) and calling up bits of old camp songs. A master of rhythmic read-alouds, Phyllis Root exhibits a range many writers would envy. Her counting book Ten Sleepy Sheep is as serene and lulling as One Duck Stuck is rambunctious. “Counting sheep isn’t always easy,” she notes. “Once, while we were farm-sitting, my daughter and I had to chase down two runaway lambs in the growing darkness, then count twenty-seven frisky lambs to make sure they were all safe for the night. Luckily, they were.” Oliver Finds His Way is a quiet, classic picture book about a defining moment in the life of a small child—getting lost and having the pluck to find the way home. On the other extreme, Phyllis Root takes on no less than the whole universe in Big Momma Makes the World, a powerful, original, down-home creation myth that received rave reviews and won the prestigious Boston Globe–Horn Book Award. And her book Lucia And The Light is a timeless adventure about one brave girl’s quest that was inspired by Nordic lore. When she’s not writing, Phyllis Root teaches at Vermont College’s MFA in Writing for Children program. She lives with her two daughters and two cats in a hundred-year-old house in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and loves to read (mostly mysteries with female protagonists) or spend time outdoors gardening, camping, sailing, or traveling. “One of the things I’ve learned about myself,” she confides, “is that when I get really stuck and can’t seem to get writing, it’s because I’ve forgotten to take time out to play.”

When Jane Chapman, an illustrator of children’s books, heads off to work, she doesn’t have far to go: her kitchen serves as her studio. “I live in a little 300-year-old cottage in Southwest England, very rural, in the middle of the countryside. The kitchen looks out into the garden, so I paint looking out at the garden. It’s a very idyllic setting, really.” This residence provides invaluable inspiration for her work, in sometimes surprising ways. One Duck Stuck, a Northwoods kind of counting book, is accurate to marshes of the Minnesota area. But when Jane Chapman illustrated it, she was able to use her own surroundings, indoors and out, as her muse. “The blue that’s all over the book is the exact same blue as the color of my kitchen—I’m obsessed by that color blue!” she remarks. Jane Chapman also has a soft spot for the subject. “I LOVE ducks. There are lots of photos of me feeding them at Bird Reserves. I don’t have a pet duck because I love my garden more, but one day I’d like to (and I know my husband definitely would). In One Duck Stuck, the close-ups of the duck are my favorite pictures.” For another picture book, One Tiny Turtle, it was Jane Chapman’s indoor companions that aided her artwork. Her home may lack a duck, but it does boast at least one prominent pet: “a seventy-something tortoise called Muggs, who is a family heirloom.” Jane Chapman says that both her pet and her illustrator husband influenced her illustrations, which depict the life’s journey of the loggerhead turtle. “My husband has the most amazing collection of magazine, videos, and articles for research purposes,” she says. “It’s quite an impressive filing system, boxes and boxes of materials.” For One Tiny Turtle, Jane Chapman needed all the information she could find. She explains, “There is very little [research] about loggerheads, and I wasn’t able to use other turtle references because of subtle changes in shell shape, flipper shape, skin patterns, skull shape.” Luckily, being married to a fellow illustrator has another benefit as well. “If I get stuck on something in particular, he can help. It’s also helpful to talk to someone who understands and knows about deadlines.” Doing the artwork for The Emperor’s Egg proved an easier task for Jane Chapman than working on One Tiny Turtle. When asked about illustrating the story of the male emperor penguin, she sighs contentedly, “Aah, bliss!” Not only are there “massive archives of reference for Emperor penguins,” she notes, but ever since her honeymoon—when she visited a Scottish zoo and watched a parade of penguins—she had hoped to have an opportunity to paint them. The project also offered much-appreciated creative opportunities. “It was very design-led,” she says. “It was wonderful to be able to let myself go on the pink and purple snow.” Jane Chapman’s interests include gardening, sewing, quilting, cooking, and playing bass guitar. She also enjoys “lots of socializing and sitting around with mates in the garden.” She lives with her husband, son, and turtle in England.