Mo Willems is the go-to author for children — and their parents. “And now,” announces Willems, 43, with the booming theatrics required to hold the attention of a short audience, “I am going to teach you how to infringe on my copyright!” Do you get it now? Mo Willems is doo-doo funny for kids, but he’s witheringly funny, almost sad-funny, for their parents. His books are the barometers of taste for the toddler set. His works, say the people who deeply believe in him, mean something — something both very basic and very complex that has been distilled into cartoons and monosyllabic words. “He really,” says Edith Ching, a children’s literature instructor and friend of Willems, “he really understands the human condition.” Real life at a child’s level “The thing about writing for kids is that there are no cultural modifiers. Willems has just finished up at Raymond and is consoling his vocal cords with a cup of tea at a Columbia Heights coffee shop.
Willems’s success and his career is based on this lack of context, the temporal nature of childhood. Guilt for dinner: The Mo Willems interview - Time Out Chicago Kids. Photo: Marty Umans Even in those halcyon days when my wife was pregnant and we didn't know anything about anything, the one thing all of our parent friends thought we should know about was Mo Willems. The former Sesame Street writer won back-to-back Caldecott medals for his books, the exuberantly silly Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and the strikingly empathic toddler tale Knuffle Bunny. On Friday 6, he delivers the Zena Sutherland Lecture at the Harold Washington Library Center.
We phoned him at his home in Brooklyn and chatted about pigeons, stealing from his daughter and Dashiell Hammett. So you’re delivering the Zena Sutherland Lecture. Do you have a sense of what you’re going to talk about? I can’t see that going wrong at all. When you’re approaching a new book, do you think about what sort of issue a kid might be dealing with, or do you think, wouldn’t it be hilarious if a pigeon wanted to drive a bus? Well, that’s good, because I didn’t.Right, well, good for you.
Right. Mitali's Fire Escape: Life Between Cultures. First Prize 2011 Prose Contest Picking a Side by Helen, Korea/CA, Age 16 At age five, the only thing that separates you and your seatmate in class is, well, nothing. His sandwich is as good as your packed Korean food, and your handwriting is just as good as his. You play with the same lego blocks and throw around the same rocks during recess, and you even share bits of your lunch. At age nine, you’ve measured the length of your table and found where the halfway mark is, and then drawn a shaky line across your table.
That’s all that separates you from your seatmate that, and that he’s a boy, with cooties. He still reaches across and slaps your arm when he’s feeling manly, and you can still extend your leg to kick his knee in retaliation. At age thirteen, you learn a new word : racism. Even though you’re not ‘white,’ you successfully avoid being bullied for being Korean, because you were born here and you dress in Hollister and you don’t have such an obvious accent.
Can’t drive that well? Julia Alvarez: official author website. Nikki Grimes children's book author poet teacher children's literature young adultsCoretta Scott King award. Chains: The Music Video. Jacqueline Woodson: Author of books for children and young adults.