Happy BOOKSgiving!
Since it’s almost Thanksgiving here in the U.S.
today we highlight two sweet picture books that remind us of
#gratitude, inclusion, and how we all belong in our world:
ONE SMALL KOALA AND THE BIG BLUE EARTH (Tory Christie / Illus. Luciana Navarro Powell/ Amicus)
LISTEN, WONDER, ASK (Elly Berke / illus. Luciana Navarro Powell / Tilbury House)
About the books:
ONE SMALL KOALA AND THE BIG BLUE EARTH In Australia, a small koala munches on eucalyptus. Where is his place on the big blue Earth? Starting with a baby koala in Australia, this richly illustrated poem illuminates a unique geographical perspective, showcasing the Australian environment.
LISTEN, WONDER, ASK When Nadine asks a new friend if she has a “coming-here story”, she begins a community-wide chain of listening, wonder, and discovery of how neighbors and new friends fit into the fabric of a community.
written by Elly Berke (Tilbury House).
Meet the creators:
Let’s ASK some questions!
Q 1. Both of these lovely books encourage readers to think about their places in our world and their communities. Taking inspiration from LISTEN, WONDER, ASK, we would like to ask all three of you: What is your family’s coming-here story?
Luciana Navarro Powell: My coming-here story started in 2002 when I moved from Brazil to the United States to be with my husband, who I had met in Brazil the year before.
Elly Berke: Thank you for asking! On my dad’s side, my grandfather emigrated from Hungary around 1920. He was a young boy and remembers the bumpy journey of learning English as a Second Language! They came by boat across the Atlantic because my great-grandfather had been exiled from the Austro-Hungarian Empire due to a violent misunderstanding with an anti-semite! My mother’s grandparents boarded a boat a few years earlier and came from Naples and Sicily to the Merrimack Valley area of Massachusetts, for work opportunities.
Tory Christie: Like Elly’s family, my family has been here since the early 1900s. My father’s family came from Ireland and Sweden and my mother’s family came from Austria. I just returned from a trip to Sweden and it was so interesting to see how similar the lakes and forests of Sweden are to those in Minnesota where I grew up – it’s no wonder so many Scandinavians settled in the upper Midwest!
for ONE SMALL KOALA AND THE BIG BLUE EARTH
written by Tory Christie (Amicus Ink).
Your Place
Q 2. Taking inspiration from ONE SMALL KOALA ON THE BIG BLUE EARTH, this time: Where –geographically (near and far–beach, farm, mountains, country, — to state, nation, continent?) is your place on the big, blue Earth?
Luciana Navarro Powell: My place on the Big Blue Earth is where I live with my family, the city of Bellingham, Washington state, United States of America, in North America.
Tory – My favorite place on the Big Blue Earth is our family cabin where I can sit, nestled between the oak trees, and watch the herons and ducks play on the river. I love seeing eagles swoop down from the sky and catch fish, leaving a ripple on the surface that spreads across the water. Our cabin is in Wisconsin but I have lived across the Midwest, from Minnesota, to Kansas, to North Dakota. While this part of the United States is my home base, I love to travel and explore the rest of our Big Blue Earth.
Q 3. Since LISTEN, WONDER, ASK is about asking good questions—Can any of you share one of the best questions a student or reader has asked you about your book? (And please share your answer.)
Tory Christie: Students always ask me how long it takes to write a book. And that really depends! Sometimes I will have a draft in an afternoon, but I revise a lot and this revising can go on for months. Even though the Big Blue Earth books have very few words, a lot of thought goes into picking just the right words to give it a certain feeling and flow.
We’re WONDERING…
For the Authors:
Q 4. What inspired the lovely, lyrical text of these books? Where did you hone these skills?
Tory Christie: I have always loved poetry and still have a book of poetry that I wrote when I was in high school. As a scientist, I love math as well and I see a connection between math and the rhythm and meter of poetry. I belong to a poetry group where we work on different poetic forms like haiku, limericks, and couplets.
Elly Berke: I have always written poetry and enjoyed figurative language. I remember an elementary school teacher asking my child self: “What do you think it means that the man in the story had a ‘chocolate voice’?” I love the idea that tangible objects could represent sounds and help us paint a picture of a character in our minds. I wanted to play with different senses informing one another. Listen, Wonder, Ask began as a poem in rhyming verse. Jonathan Eaton at Tilbury House told me to lose the rhyme and just tell the story. The joys of rhyme, rhythm and poetry are what carried me into this story. The support of Grub Street writing coaches Jenn DeLeon, and Joy Baglia as well as the suggestions of the publishers are what helped bring about the final product.
Q 5. What surprises did illustrator Luciana Navarro Powell bring to your projects?
Tory Christie: From the very first book in the series, A Tiny Brown Monkey on the Big Blue Earth, I felt so lucky to have Luciana as the illustrator! The pictures are so vivid and the characters come alive on the page. I love looking through the books and trying to spot little surprises, like a bird that appears in different places throughout the pages. In One Small Koala on the Big Blue Earth, my eyes follow a plane, or its shadow, from different perspectives as I turn the pages.
For the Illustrator:
Q 6. Which spread in each book is your favorite, and why?
for ONE SMALL KOALA AND THE BIG BLUE EARTH
written by Tory Christie (Amicus Ink).
Luciana Navarro Powell: My favorite spread in One Small Koala is the one that shows a kangaroo hopping high over a wombat’s den and bandicoots, watched by a kookaburra, with the small airplane flying overhead. The composition of the whole spread is a spiral that ends at the joey inside the mama’s pouch, looking right at you, the reader. It turned out to be a dynamic, engaging illustration.
written by Elly Berke (Tilbury House).
My favorite spread in Listen, Wonder, Ask is the one where Muhsin from Iraq tells Amiina his coming-here story. Elly compares the sound of the song he is listening to crystals, so I had fun using actual pieces of glass combined with paper cuttings and octagon islamic patterns to make the illustration.
We’re LISTENING…
Q 7. What do you hope readers will take away from reading your book?
One Small Koala…
Tory – I hope readers get a sense that each of our different places on the planet are connected. I was also hoping to help kids understand spatial sense—the idea for this series started with a map theme, and I am so glad that Luciana included maps on the end papers, so kids can see the continent featured in each book.
Luciana Navarro Powell: I hope this book will encourage readers to be curious about different continents, which is the goal of this whole series, and discover interesting animals they didn’t know about. For example, doing research I found the Thorny Devil Lizard that lives in the desert in Australia. It’s “hidden in plain sight” in one of the pages of this book, can you find it?
for ONE SMALL KOALA AND THE BIG BLUE EARTH
written by Tory Christie (Amicus Ink).
Listen, Wonder, Ask
Luciana Navarro Powell: I hope this book will encourage young readers to be curious and open minded – and hearted – about people that come to the United States from other places. I love how the title is literally a recipe for tolerance. If we listen, wonder, and ask questions, we will connect with someone different and therefore not believe nonsense and misinformation we may hear about them in these divided times.
#Kidlit Tips
Q 8. Since the three of you range from debut author to creators of numerous books, what tips would you give pre-published you that you wish you’d known then?
Debut Author Do’s and Don’ts
Elly Berke: I started to blindly send my manuscript to publishers all over the country. I wish that I had sat down with a literary agent in an informal meeting and learned a bit more about what they do. I didn’t know that my book would be published and now I wish I had a bit more knowledge of the industry and business of writing. It is something I could, in theory, do for the rest of my life.
Tips from Two Multi-Published Creators
Luciana Navarro Powell: That just like in life, we can only control so much. It sounds obvious but it’s easy to get carried away and overwhelmed by the publishing process when you are starting. There is creating the book, then there is selling the book. We as book creators have control on the creating part and we should focus our best efforts on it. We can promote them as best as we can, but really once the book is out in the world it has a life of its own and we can’t control how well it will sell.
Tory Christie: One Small Koala is my fifteenth children’s book. This might sound cliche, but my best advice would be to write what you know. I am a scientist who started writing non-fiction science books for kids. Once I had a few non-fiction books published, I expanded into writing more lyrical text about interesting animals and natural environments.
BONUS: FREE Activities for Classes & Libraries
Q 9. Are there supplemental reading materials that teachers, librarians and educators could use with One Small Koala on the Big Blue Earth and Listen, Wonder, Ask?
Luciana Navarro Powell: Thank you for asking! Yes! Tory Christie, Elly Berke and I developed wonderful activity sheets to be used with both of these titles.
They can be downloaded for free from my website: lucianaillustration.com/downloadables
What’s next?
Q 10. What new projects are you working on now?
Luciana Navarro Powell: I have 2 contracted new books to illustrate to be released in 2026:
A Speedy Little Cheetah on the Big Blue Earth, written by Tory Christie (Amicus Ink)
and Squirrel Draws Big Feelings, written by Erin Dealey (Beaming Books).
Besides that, my agent is pitching 3 other projects to publishers. And I always have something on the back burner in different phases of development. Very happy to be so busy!
Elly Berke: My latest manuscript is a lyrical ode to my nose! I wrote it at the Offshore Writers’ Residency at Nantucket Island School for Design and the Arts (NISDA). My whole life, adults and children have commented on the size and shape of my nose. The story is a whimsical, Seuss-esque dedication to my nose and to body positivity in general. I hope to find a publisher or agent to make my second children’s book a reality.
Tory Christie: As Luciana said, up next is A Speedy Little Cheetah on the Big Blue Earth with Amicus Ink. We can’t wait to share it with you!
We are #thankful to these three for sharing #kidlit insights about their latest books.
To learn more, follow the social media listed on their websites:
Tory Christie www.torychristie.com
Elly Berke ellyberke.com
Luciana Navarro Powell lucianaillustration.com
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