The Names in the Tree—a children's book
"The view from Valerie’s new house was beautiful and that’s what bothered her most."
Author’s Note
Even though it doesn’t really feel like one to me, from what I understand the style of this one is a bit of an experiment. When it comes to children’s books—from the money-making side of it through the education system here in the U.S.—things are pretty strictly categorized. And generally, I feel, for good reason. Boundaries are constructed and maintained to increase the likelihood that a text is reaching the right mind at the right stage of development.
A taste of what this looks like can be had by considering the list of following “children’s book classifications” (head here for more info on each):
Board Books
Picture Books
Chapter Books
Graphic Novels
Easy Reader
Juvenile
Middle Grade
Young Adult Books
There are, of course, subclassifications nested within each, but that isn’t what we’ll be digging into here in the author’s note. No, I share this with you to be clearer about the following:
I tried to force The Names in the Tree into a picture book for what felt like a long time. I wrote several drafts over the course of about a year. I think early on it was pretty clear to me that it wasn’t going to be a fit, yet I kept hammering away—folding, trimming, doctoring. Hell, even transplanting.
And the why was simple: it’d be easier to sell if it fit neatly into a certain box.
I’m not a children’s book author, after all, in training or in (consistent) practice. Nor is mine a household name. So, if putting something out there that straddles a couple of the aforementioned categories, not only would it be more difficult for me to acquire representation for the project, but it’d be more difficult for said representation to convince a publisher of the project’s marketability.
I get it: it’s a business at the end of the day, and it’d be hard for someone to make that sort of investment, into something, and someone, with so many question marks.
This whole intersection of art and commerce is something to which I’m not a stranger. Rather, as someone who does hope to make writing their living, it’s something I think about daily.
Writing, I believe, is important. The art of it is important. But, though the act of writing does bring me joy, the aim is to receive some sort of compensation in the process.
Yet, in the past, the victor of the internal debate has always leaned toward the art of it. What the story seems to want and need to become—that’s what matters most to me at the end of the day. Not whether it fits into a well-defined, highly-marketable box.
Here’s the thing, though: with, say, a post-apocalyptic novel, there exists a cost effective safety net should it not go on to be represented and traditionally published. A place to land if you strike out with your 100+ inquiry letters. It’s called self-publishing, and there are plenty of avenues to do it. Platforms. Printers. Etc.
(What you’re reading this very second is a text that has been self-published)
Do those same services exist for children’s books? Sure. You can self-publish children’s books. Hard covers, paperbacks, and eBooks. But what’s crucial to the success of children’s books? Illustrations. And who can illustrate?
Not I. Not a lick.
And look, illustrators—good illustrators—they cost some money, and for good reason. An illustrator can take a text to incredible heights. They can in one illustration render pages of text unnecessary, just by capturing a look, a moment, a feeling.
Good freelance illustrators are out there, certainly. They are, and they’re findable. But I also do not have the funds to properly compensate them.
So, naturally, the push toward fitting The Names in the Tree into a well-defined box over the months became all the more forceful.
“If I can’t fit it into a box, then it has no future,” was the thinking.
But, the more time I spent with the text, the more I just couldn’t keep going down that path. This story is personal. They all are. But this one is different.
Centered around eight-year-old Valerie as she adjusts to life following the death of her father, The Names in the Tree is an illustrated chapter book about grief, friendship, and place—both the place you call home, and the place one finds for themselves in the world.
It’s a story whose origins, like so many others I’ve written, are rooted in fear. Less of a fear of death itself—though I won’t claim to have accepted that either—but a fear of how my death could impact my daughter, who at the time of writing the first draft was eighteen months old.
In other words, not necessarily something I felt good muzzling. No. The more tactics I used to make the story conform, the further away I felt I wandered from what made the story compelling at all.
Though the hope remains the story is of a high enough quality to transcend classifications, I decided that it was more important to explore the feelings driving the story, and to give what I discovered through that exploration the time and space it needed to breathe, to unfold, and to give it an actual chance to be impactful.
Time will tell, as it always does.
(REMINDER: as I did with Otis Licks His Tiny Human and Anything to Help, My Friends, I’m attaching this children’s book as a .pdf—it’s the best way to preserve formatting while sharing with you.)
Download The Names in the Tree (.pdf)
What'd You Think?
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This is very sweet, Garrett - yes what Nadia said but also... (I hesitate to suggest it...) Maybe Midwinter or DALL-E for a few "exploratory" images? Or a few sort of narrow angle images - Valerie's face, the yellow house, the magical trees... What if you collaborated with a kids arts program and made it a collective project, illustrated by the age group? Just brainstorming...
Your work is worth exploring authentically, classifications be damned! Maybe you can crowdfund it or seek out a grant.