8/6/2019 Love Waves - Q&A with Rosemary Wells

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  Tell us about the con-cept of love waves.

 What are they? Wheredid you get the idea for them?

 All my lie as a mother,I have spent time trav-eling. When my daugh-

ters were younger, I would talk to them and my husband, Tom, by phone rom distant places, andeach time I would send them “love waves.” They 

 would say, “Oh, yes, I eel it!” And they would sendthem back, and indeed I could eel those love

 waves like a small cloak landing on my shoulders.

  What inspired you to create the book love Waves ?

I thought it would be nice to reveal and describethis as-yet-unknown wave system to the generalpublic. Sort o like discovering radio waves, which,o course existed long beore Tesla and Marconi.

 ou have such a wide range of expertise — writ-ing and illustrating picture books and also writ-ing books for older readers. How do you choose

  your projects? Do you generally work on onebook at a time or several at once?

Many books come to me at once. I have to orderand reorder them. I do one at a time, but I alwaysknow the next book is circling in a holdingpattern with the third and ourth and hopeully 

not running out o uel!

  What have you found to be most satisfyingabout your career in children’s books? Do youhave some favorite moments that stand out?

I have been in this feld since I was twenty-two,much longer than I haven’t been. I think the best

 was the reception that the Mother Goose booksreceived. It propelled me to do more and gourther than I ever had. Another was the magicalarrival o the whole story o On the Blue Comet,

all at once. I hardly wrote it. It wrote itsel.O course, being in the White House and

having my hero, Hillary Clinton, present my book Read to Your Bunny to a large audience, then

 watching her applaud and say “Author! Author!”and welcome me to the ront was not bad, either.

But I think one o the best things was a visit

  with high-school age girls in Lincoln, Nebraska,  who were part o a program designed to keeppregnant and mothering teens on track to gradu-ate. I had been asked to speak to these girls aboutthe importance o reading to their kids. I didn’tknow where to begin. Here were a hundred teens,all o whom were pregnant or had given birthrecently and seen their lives change and oten allapart.

So I asked or a show o hands rom anyone  who wanted her little newborn, sixteen years

rom now, to be in the same situation. No hands.Much seriousness.

“Well, let’s talk about how to prevent that,” Isaid. “How to bring up a kid who can make criti-cal choices in lie. Books. Every day, every sparemoment, turn o the TV and bring books into

 your lie and your baby’s lie. Let books and storiesbecome the oxygen o your child’s lie. In thosebooks your child will fnd a sel, an escape, and aladder to a better lie.”

  Aterward, more than hal the class lined upor library cards. It’s not saving someone rom aburning building, but it maybe can make a littleheadway.

8/6/2019 Love Waves - Q&A with Rosemary Wells

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I wanted to use a new technique or the illustra-tions in Love Waves, other than the usual water-color. I tried pastels. I tried them on coloredpaper, but that smeared terribly. Then I discovered“sanded paper.” This expensive pastel “ground”

is available rom many countries and in many shades and degrees o hardness. A sotly sanded

surace holds and grabs the powdery color o thepastel and keeps it there (somewhat). Some o thesanded papers permit watercolor to be used as

 well. Some, like the French “Sennelier card,” have vegetable chips rather than sand adhered to thedark background, and i the artist is so oolish asto apply water, then a big white gap opens up.

 What I ound in the end is a marvelous papercalled pastel deluxe, made only in summer insomeone’s barn in Maine. It comes in the mostbeautiul blue, red, and aqua that I have ever seen.

Using pastels is a tremendous chore. Once theoriginal line drawing is transerred to the darker

pastel paper, you start working with the intensely hued, blunt, crumbly sticks o pure pigment. They create dust. They break in your hands. They getall over your fngers; they are horribly messy. Buttheir intense colors sit up on the page as i they had a lie all their own. They are un-erasable, ugi-tive, and permanent.

I love them, but I am glad not every bookrequires this much huge prep and difculty.

– Rosemary Wells

 Author and illustrator o Love Waves

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