Q & A with Carter Higgins: Author, Illustrator, and JLG Librarian!
Introduction
Carter Higgins has worn many hats: author, illustrator, animator, graphic designer, JLG librarian—when does she rest?!
Get ready to learn more about Carter’s experience as a librarian who used JLG’s collection development services, her knack for storytelling, and her advice for creators…
“…Young creators are so in tune with the act of creating. They aren’t really worried about whether a publisher is going to buy it, or how the public is going to react to it, or if Junior Library Guild will take it as a Gold Standard Selection… They don’t need advice to create.”
Sit back, relax, and open up Carter’s JLG Selections Some of These Are Snails and Round and Round the Year We Go for a colorful and memorable experience!
Q: Carter, tell us about yourself! We’d love to learn more about your writing, illustrating, Emmy-winning filming, and librarian-ing journey!
A: It all started in the library: I was a book kid. My dad took me to the library early to “get there before everyone else got all the good books!” I wasn’t forced to go to the library and it's not like books were pushed on me at home—although they were supported! —I was just always surrounded by them. It didn’t occur to me until much later that somebody had to make all these books, and this roundabout realization got me into making my books...
I come from a family of educators, so naturally, that's the path I started down in my undergraduate degree. I decided teaching wasn’t for me, although I should have taken my education classes more seriously because shortly after graduating college, I was given a great opportunity to start the school year as an elementary school librarian in Virginia. I wasn’t entirely qualified, but the administration team supported me in going to graduate school to earn my credentials. To this very day, I am grateful for that school district for believing in me.
In my new role, I was the only librarian at my school in our small-town rural public school system. I had to learn this job “on the fly” but I really enjoyed doing something different every single day without the teacher pressures of grading spelling papers or drafting report cards. I loved thinking to myself, Today is Tuesday, and there are new books out there in the world! My units were very experimental, and while our school district was small, we used a lot of educational technology—very innovative at the time! It was the early 2000’s and I was making digital storytelling portfolios with kids. We were burning them onto DVD’s so that students could take them home and show people what they were working on. I realized that I was drawn to this short-form storytelling, little snippets. Small, 32-second looping animations excited me, and I started to notice overlooked designed features like movie titles, and gas station TV. There were graphics everywhere! I started to realize that in the same way people made books, people had to produce these graphics and animations, and that is why I moved to Los Angeles.
I worked in the Hollywood grind for 6-8 years after leaving the library. In theory, it should have been a huge jump from teaching k-5 students to working on graphics for screens and television shows, but for me there was a link to visual storytelling that just made sense. For example, picture books are very similar to the opening title sequences in a film, or just a short animation for that matter. I worked in post-production for a while, which is basically anything at the end of the pipeline for creating animation or television shows; the final work before it airs. I liked this work a lot, but I was tired of constantly trying to find my next gig because in TV production, you work on a show for 6-8 months and when it's done, everyone packs up and goes home. Due to this stress, I thought it was time to go back to the library.
At this point, all my librarian credentials had expired, and libraries were closing. I had a hard time finding public school roles but eventually landed at an independent school in California. It was such a nice return to be working in a library again. It was during this time that I started writing for kids. I don’t think I would have been published if I hadn’t been in the library with kids. I worked in that library for 5 years and then in 2018, I started writing, illustrating and speaking at schools full-time. You know, in hindsight it's so clear: when I worked as a graphic design artist, all the art I was doing belonged to someone else's vision or direction, and that’s why at first, I had a difficult time writing my own stories, translating art into my own voice. It took me a long time to understand that I could do the same type of work and decide what I wanted my art to look like.
Q: How do your creative outlets coincide with one another? For instance, when creating a story, do you start with storytelling or illustrations, or do the ideas come all at once? We want to hear more about your processes!
A: I wish there was a clear answer to this, because then I feel like I would know what to do. The longer I work in writing and illustrating, the more I realize that every book is a completely different process. Just when I think that I’ve learned how to do it, something else comes along—and it’s all my fault! They’re all my ideas, but something always comes along that needs a different approach or process.
In my earlier books, when I was primarily writing, I would often get the idea for a title and then I would chase the ones that were most interesting. A title gave me a place to start, and I thought to myself that even if writing isn’t visual in the same way a piece of art is, there’s something that pulls me to that short burst of storytelling. Sometimes, I notice my writing becoming abstract or I’m trying to tackle too much conceptually, and then illustrating pulls me back to the story.
In my current and future books, I hope to simplify what each book is about. I think about the way kids experience the world, and they might take 25 minutes to look at a worm, right? They take their time investigating from all angles. The idea that a worm is great picture book source material, and you can spend like 12 pages on a worm might be like an imperfect metaphor, but that's what I'm trying to do. I’m trying to slow myself down so that it becomes something that kids can really take on, inspect and experience. I think this this idea comes from teaching. There's this concept of wait time in teaching, which is a strategy to give students some time to pause after you ask the question; this allows them to process what you have asked and then they can formulate a response, one that’s thoughtful. I’m seeing more and more how that is important in my storytelling. I want my books to introduce the pause. In my first JLG selection, Some of These Are Snails, I posed a lot of questions, which is a natural place for a pause to occur. I was intentional with my questions because I wanted someone’s answer to be multiple things. I think each one of my projects will be different, just like I enjoyed my days in the library—every day was a new adventure. I find the same qualities satisfying about books.
Q: Who or what are your artistic and literary inspirations?
A: I love the writer Ruth Krauss—I actually wrote a picture book biography about her! She was a midcentury writer for kids who was experimental, playful, and made her writing sound just like a kid would speak. She worked with her husband, Crockett Johnson, who is the illustrator of Harold and the Purple Crayon. I find that balancing literary devices with real, clear, distinct voice of kids is something I’m always after in my writing, and she was the absolute best at it.
Other creators I am inspired by is Al Jarnow from Sesame Street (he was an animator who did a lot of stop motion) and Saul Bass (a designer who designed iconic film sequences for Hitchcock). I’ve liked their work long before I was making my own because I take a lot of nuts-and-bolts inspiration from the way short films and short animations work. I want each page-turn to function as something to be watched, or something to be paused—a whole scene change. When I make a book, I’m always pressing pause to look a bit closer.
Q: Not only are you a gold standard author and illustrator, but you also share a special connection with our JLG members… can you share more about your experience?
A: When I was a school librarian, I did not have an aide (which could be both difficult and freeing at times). Being the only person in this role makes it impossible to do every part of this job well—librarians need support. While the most important part of my job was fostering a community, the second most important part of my job was collection development in order to serve that community, so I often looked for resources to support both aspects of my job.
I found that the amount of support given by publishers, their marketing teams, and library book vendors was remarkable. They shared new releases, offered opportunities to meet creators at events, and even sent new books to my students!
When it came to collection development, JLG really shined in making sure my collection was kept healthy. As the solo librarian in my school, it was impossible to get my eyes on every page that walked through my door, so having a trusted resource send me 12 vetted books every month was valuable, timesaving. The deeper benefit of using JLG as a collection development service was that they supported the goals of my library community. It felt like having a coworker working alongside me, and when our monthly book boxes showed up—I just LOVED the feeling of opening that big box. It was like a gift—all the books were shelf-ready and ready to be checked out that day. Just awesome…
Q: How have your experiences as a school librarian influenced your books and other creative projects?
A: There’s something that all book creators have in common: when we turn in that final draft to our editor, we know it’s not finished until someone reads it. We don’t always know what that experience looks like—I can’t package myself up to every person who reads my book and watch their reaction as they turn the pages—but being in a library allowed me to watch kids inhale books, to fall in love with books. To know that young readers are respecting my book, loving my book, hugging it close to their chest (even if they can’t read), is really special. Just knowing that kids are the type of audience that I am making things for has influenced the way I make my books.
Q: In your book, Some of These Are Snails, you immerse readers into pages with colorful shapes and patterns that contain a fun, rhythmic flow of words. What inspired this story and what do you hope young readers learn?
A: Some of These Are Snails is a follow up to my other book, Circle Under Berry, and I hadn’t realized that I had made a math book until I saw the response to Circle Under Berry. Creating Some of These Are Snails felt like a playful exploration of relationships and patterns, but the librarian in me failed to realize that I was also exploring key concepts for early math. Any bookmaker hopes that their book is well received, and that people find uses for it, but I was really surprised by the math reaction. Once I understood that the first book was actually about math, it made sense to pick up where I left off. Circle Under Berry was about naming multiple attributes for the same item, and this led to Some of These Are Snails being about sorting, classification, and some superlative concepts. While working on this book, I remembered a short animation from Sesame Street—probably from the 70’s or 80’s—that was very simple, maybe 45 seconds of triangles and circles moving around the screen, reorganizing themselves again and again by shape, size, color, etc. I thought to myself, Okay, this is what I want! and then I was thinking about how to rearrange everything and make it my own. I paired a rhythmic musical poem with seemingly simple pictures, but truly, these are some of the most complex books I have ever made. I needed to make sure that the language I used was paired with visually appealing illustrations, in this “spare” visual book. Maybe “spare” is the wrong word—each page is packed pretty tight with meaning…
Every time I turned a page, I wanted the reader to press pause, to capture how everything resolved. Like I said, I didn’t know I was creating early learning math concept books, but now I see the link between these concepts and visual literacy. Take a stop sign, for example. Every toddler learns what a stop sign is, but do they know what it is because it’s the shape of an octagon or because its red? They immediately recognize that those two attributes, when put together, make a stop sign—they know that it carries a message. I’m still finding those links and trying to explore them in my storytelling. Everything is connected…somehow.
Q: What can you tell us about your most recent JLG selection, Round and Round the Year We Go?
A: Earlier you had asked me whether my art or my words come first when creating a story, and in this case the words came first. I also had an inkling that I might want to illustrate it. Neither of my books Circle Under Berry or Some of These Are Snails are character-driven books. They are graphic design oriented and present an experience for the reader. I wanted to have more characters in this book, but I needed to be careful because I wasn’t sure how to tackle character design and I didn’t know how to illustrate a sequential narrative. I knew I wanted to tackle this new concept, connecting vignettes, but not through one storyline… I gave myself world-building rules and limitations as a challenge for writing Round and Round the Year We Go. During this time, I was a caregiver for my aging parents and didn’t have full, multiple-hour blocks of time to be working on this book. I could only connect with my creative side for 15–20-minute stretches. Playing with the puzzle of language during these small amounts of time was perfect for me. If my subject was the month of March, I didn’t have to think about plot or character development, I only had to think about the month. This is how the whole project came together, in little chunks of time.
When I first shared this story with my editor and art director, they said, “This is nice, but we think it’d be great to see some kids experiencing these things.” I was worried because I didn’t know how to do that—how do I illustrate kids? I was in my head about being a graphic designer and couldn’t possibly understand how I was going to make kids. My editor reminded me that they’re basically just circles—so I could draw that. This project really stretched me as an illustrator, asking me to rethink the art I was capable of creating. In hindsight, I’m incredibly proud of what I made. The process was really challenging, and it makes it even more special that it was chosen as a JLG Selection because I didn’t believe I knew what I was doing half of the time. There was an honesty to this book, an authenticity to the work that I think people can really see.
One thing that scared me about making books was having to carry the project all the way to the finish, being both the author and illustrator. But once I realized that I could do that, it felt very similar to the way I would make books as kid (I’m thinking back to when I was folding up construction paper and scribbling on it with a crayon!) I approached this book with so much anxiety and stress but now I see that I was just doing what I’ve always done—it doesn’t have to be so hard. That’s something I hope to carry with me to my next project so that I don’t get so stuck in my head about projects. Every book is a learning experience.
Q: Are you working on any new and exciting projects?
A: I’m working on something new, but I haven’t pitched it yet... I’m working through what it would look like to have a full-length picture book for a board book audience. I was thinking about making a book about a seemingly boring errand, like running to the post office, and thought, Could I create a book that is both an experience and something to play with? Something that is not completely formed… whatever that means.
I’m always experimenting—I’ve been so lucky in publishing that a lot of my books have been unusual formats, like with Some of These Are Snails. That book is 52 pages long, but it’s appropriate for toddlers! I’ve had such great publishers who have seen my vision, who have supported my invigoration. I’m always thinking to myself, What’s next for me to figure out? Now, it doesn’t always work—there’s so much rejection in publishing—but taking a shot at something that hasn’t existed before is innovative. In a way, that's true to what I want to be doing as a creator and the value I feel for the audience on the other end. It's worth trying.
Q: What advice would you offer to young creators, and what advice would you offer to librarians who are called to create?
A: I don’t think young creators are the ones who need creative advice. Kids are so naturally clear, and their creative processes are just as satisfying and dynamic and playful and experimental as the outcome. Now, sometimes the outcome might be, “I want to make something beautiful to hang on my grandmother's fridge!” but young creators are so in tune with the act of creating. They aren’t really worried about whether a publisher is going to buy it, or how the public is going to react to it, or if Junior Library Guild will take it as a Gold Standard Selection… They don’t need advice to create.
When I think about librarians who are called to create, it is so interesting because they have a front row seat to all of it—like the microcosm of all of it. They have diverse shelves they’re creating for their communities, thinking about the creator of the book, the text, the visual styles, and more. I would remind these librarians to just create. They might feel like they have a less playful approach than young creators, but I don’t want them to feel fearful. Publishing is always looking for how someone else sees the world and how they put it together in their own storytelling, their own fresh perspective. My art never looks like the art of other illustrators I know, and that’s fine. We’re all unique in our own ways. I don’t recommend trying to recreate anyone’s wheel… we all have our own wheel.
Q: How can librarians and educators connect with you?
A: I’m pretty easy to find online. My website, carterhiggins.com, is the hub for it all! That’s where you’ll find teacher guides, book resources, book trailers—I even have a shop that’s occasionally open with my art prints.
You can also find information there about author visits and keynote speeches—I LOVE doing school visits! When I get in front of kids, I’m reminded of what is was like to be a librarian. I hope as a former teacher that I can bring a lot of value to the classroom, like talking to students about my creating and revising processes. I hope it is educational and entertaining! I am open to travel or host meetings virtually.
I also have a newsletter that you subscribe to—you won’t find long essays but little boosts of playfulness. You can subscribe to it on my website.
Add Carter Higgin’s JLG Gold Standard Selections to your monthly book box!
