Woogie, something Giant, hippo, Prismacolor, HARD, toys, McCay, and Sanford: Author/illustrator Aaron Zenz
Charlie Barshaw coordinates our regular Writer Spotlight feature and interviews writers of SCBWI-MI. In this piece, meet author/illustrator Aaron Zenz.
[Note: the items in italics are from my research into Aaron Zenz. My questions follow the italicized items.]
The Bookie Woogie blog was:
7 years
6 kids
195 posts
140 book reviews
20 author interviews
178 books highlighted
177 authors &
illustrators highlighted
520 pieces of fan art
created (wow!)
It ran from 2008 until 2015. Your kids were partners in the book reviews, author interviews, and fan art. (520 pieces … wow, indeed!) How did this family collaboration come about? Are some of your children continuing in the art field?
Bookie Woogie started as most of our family artistic adventures did - a simple “hey that might be fun…” snowballing into a giant joyous undertaking!
Children’s books are strange creatures because they are made for kids, but created by adults, published by adults, purchased by adults, reviewed by adults. So our premise was simple: what if instead, some kids shared their experiences with kids’ books???
When we started in 2008 my three oldest were ages 10, 8, and 5. By the end of our run, all six kids had chimed in to varying degrees. One of my favorite posts even celebrated the arrival of one of those kiddos!
I LOVED connecting with my kids over our favorite books. All kinds of books - chapter books, picture books, board books, graphic novels. I tried to remain fairly anonymous during the process - I wanted the focus to stay on kids’ reactions to kids' books.
It wasn’t until the blog was close to being done that I put covers of my own books on the site, revealing my identity. But the kids became quite famous over those years! They appeared on the local news and had their reviews reprinted in the Grand Rapids Press. They even drew an international audience and had a big feature in a South Korean women’s magazine.
It was also a great place to play with art together. Our favorite books inspired us to explore all kinds of materials -watercolor, scratchboard, collage, sculpture, food art, stone carving, even video! Jarrett Krosoczka once said, “Getting kid art by the Bookie Woogie kids is the fan art equivalent of making the cover of Rolling Stone.”
The kids are all still very artsy. Examples: Isaac has done lots of commission work in his adult years, carving out a neat niche for himself doing design in the disc golf community - even collaborating on a series of discs for top disc golfer Paul McBeth. Amity Grace is a talented songwriter, and creates amazing art that accompanies her music. The rest of the kids do art as well - for pleasure, gift giving, decor. And they are all very creative thinkers!
You’ve done Art Prize projects with your kids. Tell us about one.
Art Prize is a giant annual art competition in Grand Rapids MI, some years showcasing around 1,500 entries. The displayed artwork sprawls across the whole city, and they give out over $400,000 in awards. Top prizes are decided by the public. It’s an Event!
I’ve entered Art Prize three times, the first time with my kids. It once again started with a simple “this could be fun…” and snowballed into a HUGE undertaking. The kids and I had enjoyed Art Prize every year as attendees. And every year, people who knew I was an artist would ask if I was ever going to enter.
My answer was always the same: “I don’t have a good ‘Art Prize Idea’.” A nice little painting is never going to win Art Prize - the winners are always 1. something Giant, 2. something Unusual you’ve never seen before, 3. something that resonates with a large cross-section of the public.
So during Art Prize year 7 we were walking around the event, and I was mulling over if I could come up with something giant and unusual that would connect with a large number of strangers. And I thought of a small family art project we had done years earlier that had gone super viral online.
We had painted a handful of rocks and hid them around town where we live (it is hard to believe, but yes the kids and I were the first people to scatter painted rocks around in public - we kicked it off - no one used to do this prior to 2011 - this sounds like a CRAZY claim, but it’s true, traceable, and confirmable!)
Remembering how that project checked the box of being unusual and checked the box of catching viral widespread attention, I wondered if I could adapt it in a Giant way for Art Prize?
On the ride home I asked the kids if they would be interested in entering Art Prize 8 the next year - but it would take a lot of work. They were on board and excited, so over the course of the next year we set out to see how many rocks we could paint in 12 months. Turns out it was over 1,000 rocks.
We painted them all in matching pairs. We kept one rock from each pair at our venue near the Children’s Museum in a sprawling display. The other 500 matching rocks we hid all around the whole city - on window ledges, in the nooks of tree branches, under bridges, in planters.
Then as people walked around Art Prize they could play along with our entry however they wanted - see who in their group could find the first rock, see who finds the most rocks, see how many they could collect through photographs.
There were 1,453 entries in Art Prize that year. Our family’s entry was voted into 3rd place in our category! While there was no prize for third place, we had a ton of fun, made lifelong memories, and connected with and inspired so many people!
Aaron Zenz is a West Michigan author and illustrator. He has created the art for over 45 books for kids; 9 of these books he authored as well. He loves visiting schools and libraries all over the country where he helps kids to get excited about reading, writing, and creating.
How “all over the country” have you been? Where was your most unusual venue?
I absolutely love doing school Author Visits! It is the best part of this gig. I’ve got a couple of presentations - one that covers the whole book making process (and sometimes involves a disruptive puppet friend!) and one that features lots of our family’s creative adventures.
The goal of both presentations is to start off by catching students’ attention with the excitement of a real live author in front of them, but then to quickly swing the spotlight off of myself and onto their own imaginations and creative pursuits.
I don’t want kids to know a bunch of Aaron Zenz facts. In fact, if I walk away and they forget all about me but start making a bunch of their own things - I say Mission Accomplished!
Most of my travels are around Michigan - from the tip of the thumb, to the Upper Peninsula, and everywhere in between. But I’ve also done recent visits in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Virginia. I’ll travel anywhere I’m wanted!
I don’t know if this counts as an unusual venue, but it’s noteworthy! Just this past April I returned to my childhood hometown of Jackson MI to do a story time in the middle of the mall!
There is a hippo statue there in the mall that every kid of my generation climbed all over, slid down, jumped off. My first and most well-known book stars a hippo, so it seemed fitting that at long last we’d bring these two hippos together! It was lots of fun - the mall provided snacks and crafts, and I did lots of radio interviews leading up to the big event.
You’ve said: My great LOVE is Prismacolor colored pencils. I started using them as a young kid –- it was a natural progression, stepping up from crayons. But being self-taught, I didn’t know anything about how you are “supposed” to make use of colored pencils, so I abused and battered the medium until I got results I liked. I developed a system of pressing really hard, getting solid coverage, not allowing any grain of the paper to show through. I go through hundreds of pencils on any given project and bust tons of pencil tips.
How much of your art process is self-taught? What formal art training did you seek out?
My art process is almost entirely self-taught. I drew all the time as a kid. It was my favorite pastime. It was Play for me. I went to a small private elementary/high school that didn’t have any art program or classes, so it wasn’t until college that I had my first real instruction in art.
But by that time I already had my style and techniques down. However, I took as many different kinds of art classes as I could, and I am amazed at how much those sculpture and photography courses still inform and shape the way I think and see and create - subtle ways that you would never guess.
But Prismacolor colored pencils are my favorite tool, and I figured those out all on my own. In fact during college courses, I asked professors if I could use Prismacolors instead of the media other students were using. They humored me and said yes! So while everyone else was leisurely laying down oil paints in portraiture class, there I was frantically scribbling away.
You’ve said: I left a full-time, regular paying job in 2003 to go work for a tiny publishing company that a few friends were trying to get off the ground. These were wonderful, surreal, dream years. Just four guys, tucked away in the corner of a dusty, abandoned warehouse. One guy only had an old, propped-up door that he used for a desk. We were creating coloring books, sticker books, and activity books and were getting into really big-name stores. The ultimate goal was to eventually break into higher-end publishing, so they asked me if I’d be willing to create the company’s first picture book. Let me think about that… Um, YES.
And from that company, The Hiccupotamus was born. Your first book, writing and illustrating, and probably the one you’re best known for. What kind of leap was it for young Aaron, to leave a steady job and go whole hippo into kid’s books?
Oh, the leap was huge, but the decision was easy. There was never any guarantee that this publishing company was going to endure. But for the three years it existed, I had steady income there - that was an important factor for me at the time. I also loved those guys. Some of my favorite people in the world.
The hard part was after the company abruptly ended and I was unemployed. Obviously that was not something I would have chosen. I immediately started looking for new full-time employment, but this was in 2005/2006 when the economy had tanked and I was not finding anything.
At the same time, freelance work started slowly trickling in from an Art Rep I had acquired on the strength of The Hiccupotamus. So freelance wasn’t an intentional leap - I was sort of tossed into self employment/freelance involuntarily.
Eventually I realized that dividing my energies between doing the freelance work and my continuing hunt for employment was not helpful - I needed undivided focus on one or the other. God was providing the freelance work, so that’s when the BIG leap happened. I said alright Lord, since this is how You seem to be providing, I’m going to lean all in and trust You. That was almost 21 years ago!
I saw an early account of tight finances when you had a young family. You didn’t have steady employment, and you weren’t sure at the beginning of the month whether you’d have enough to pay the bills at the end of the month. But somehow, you always managed. Surely today your finances are less tenuous? How did young freelancer Aaron make rent money?
Oh Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. Hah ha ha Hah hah! Hah. hah. I have never had the privilege of less tenuous finances. It has been 20 years of miracle after miracle, month after month, project after project. I’ve never had a guarantee that I’d still be doing this 3 months out at ANY point in time over the past two decades.
But I’ve been operating as if there is a God in heaven who knows my needs and is capable of meeting them even before I ask, that He is good and in control and is full of grace.
My goal has always been to simply follow where He leads, whenever and wherever that is. If I’m wrong about all of that, then what I have been doing is absolutely CRAZY. 100% so. But if it’s true, there should be 100% security in Him. Not much middle ground.
Now you may notice I said the freelancing started 21 years ago, and there have been 20 years of miracles. This last year has been ROUGH. I don’t know what that means. And I don’t know how much longer this part of the journey lasts. I’m not sure where God is leading. I’m submitting my manuscripts and sending out illustration samples. But I am also sending out resumes and doing employment interviews. I’m casting a wide net.
So far, all closed doors, for almost a year. So I’m not sure what any of that means. I’m hoping the next freelance project or two or three are right around the corner. But this journey might be heading elsewhere. I’m still trusting there is a God in heaven who knows our needs and is capable of meeting them even before we ask, that He is good and in control and is full of grace, and my desire remains to follow where He leads.
You’ve said: I LOOOOOOVE doing school visits. It’s just as fun for me as making books themselves –- or perhaps even more so. I do author visits all around Michigan schools and libraries and even venture into other states from time to time. My programs are very interactive -– the students and I draw together, write poems together, laugh together. Puppets make surprise visits. I dump water on myself. I walk everyone through the writing and illustrating process and even show off original artwork. It’s a ton of fun.
That
interview was a decade ago. Since then, authors who visit have been through
school budget cutbacks, the pandemic, and the rise of on-line visits. How has
your approach to school visits changed from those early years?
My approach to visits has remained the same. It’s all about the kids! I’ve crafted tight, solid presentations. Over the past 2 decades I’ve honed them to the point where every word is packed with purpose and intentionality.
I’m looking
to inspire, I’m eager for kids to run up to me afterward bursting with ideas
for things they want to create, I’m excited to hear teachers reporting that the
class wanted to stay inside for recess so they could make books. Any chance I get to do this is a good day!
I’ve never
had a great system for promoting my School Visits. I get them almost exclusively via word of
mouth. Recently I finally added an
Author Visit section to my website, and I can’t believe I didn’t do that
sooner. Some people are finding me that way now.
I’ve developed good relationships with a number of schools. We’ve discovered that inviting an author to visit twice over two consecutive years has a profound impact. You might fear the students would say, “oh this guy again?” But it’s the complete opposite: “We KNOW him!” The excitement is palpable. The energy and engagement are through the roof. We’re already friends, we pick up where we left off, and we hit the ground running. One elementary in particular I visited 5 or 6 years in a row. The kids thought of me as part of their school!
I think this might a good place to make a plug for “The School Visit” in general. Not for just for me - but for ANY author you love. In light of the previous question/answer about finances, surviving as an author or illustrator is HARD.
School Visits are not just nice, but essential to the process. There is no way I could survive as a full time creator without them. So if you are a principal or a teacher or a librarian, take a second to think of who your favorite creators are. You can help enable them to keep going!
Yes an Author Visit could be life changing
for your students, but it is also crucial for the authors you love. Which favorite creator do you hope makes one
more book? A School Visit invitation
from you is a very real and practical way you can make that more likely!
We talked about your workspace challenges at a Claire’s Day dinner. How you had a nice, convenient studio for years, but all of a sudden had to find a new place. Where do you work now?
I still work from the same building, now just in a tinier room. When the current owner bought the building, he inherited me! He was kind enough not to kick me out, but let me keep renting a big portion of the building that he wasn’t using.
After a few years went by, he decided it was kinda nice having a bit of passive income. So he took that space and chopped it up into 4 separate areas so he could have even more renters. It was around this time you and I had that dinner.
Now I’m in a room that was once a literal closet! I had to condense a TON, but it still works pretty well for what I need.
You’ve illustrated for dozens of different authors and publishers. Which was the first? Which was the oddest?
The first books I was invited to illustrate after landing my Art Rep were some books for NASCAR. “NASCAR ABCs” and “NASCAR 123s” written by Paul DuBois Jacobs and Jennifer Swender. What I didn’t tell anyone was that I had never drawn a car before. I don’t even think I had ever drawn a car in my childhood!
I was all about characters and animals and worlds. I was not a kid who drew cars or ships or
tanks or planes. So I think the cars for
that book were LITERALLY the first cars I had ever drawn. But I pulled it off and it came out just
fine!
One book that readers of The Mitten blog might be excited to learn about is “The Runaway Mitten” written by Anne Margaret Lewis. It was a fun challenge because the main characters are actual mittens that needed to hike and swim and carry stuff around. But the story is full of Michigan facts and locations. When I got to choose which of Michigan’s 116 lighthouses I was going to draw, of course I had to pick the one in Grand Haven, my hometown!
Among the many books that you illustrated, one cover stands out. Among the cute, cartoony animals, Nugget on the Flight Deck by Patricia Newman floats above the rest. A very realistically rendered aircraft carrier fills the cover. Did the boy in you have fun drawing that?
Apparently those two NASCAR books came out so well, that when another publisher saw them, they decided I’d be the perfect person to illustrate a book about jets and aircraft carriers!
So as I said earlier, this was completely out of my comfort zone! The boy in me had no interest in the subject matter. The adult in me was terrified by the prospect, but was very interested in groceries and rent. And the challenge was exciting!
Plus the text is full of crazy military jargon, and the nonsense-word-lover that I am was delighted by that. In the end I think I pulled off clear and engaging illustrations, and that book even went on to win an award!
You’ve done a number of books that became a series (Otter B, Biggety Bat, and Howie). What special challenges await the illustrator when you return to a character?
I don’t think there are too many challenges when returning to a character. Instead, I feel like it’s mostly a much smoother process! The style is already set. The character designs are already in place. I really love revisiting a character. It’s catching up with a good friend! The Otter B series written by Pamela Kennedy and Anne Kennedy Brady currently has 12 books so far. By the 12th book, I felt as much ownership and protectiveness over that little guy as if I had dreamed him up myself.
You gave a photo tour of your one-room studio on Jennifer Chambliss’s blog. Lots of toys. How do your toys help you get into a creative mood?
That studio space was 2 or 3 studios ago, but the toys and collectables follow me! They reflect who I am inside, and it just leaks out into my surroundings. My parents joke that they can Christmas shop for my kids and I in the same aisles of the store.
I surround myself with things that delight me. Books, toys, drawings from my kids. I don’t keep just any toy. I love characters, I love story, I love playfulness, I love good design. I think the toys I have around me are a curation of these things.
You’ve said: One of my childhood heroes is Winsor McCay. When I was young, I wanted to become an animator, and Winsor McCay was all over animation history. Then in college, I wanted to become an illustrator, and Winsor McCay is all over illustration history. Years ago I moved to Spring Lake, Michigan for a job. After living here for about 5 years, I randomly found out this is Winsor McCay’s hometown! He seems to be following me wherever I go. His childhood home was across the street from the very library where I’ve illustrated entire books on my laptop. I helped found “McCay Day” here in town, and now I share the story of his life and art with kids every year in a special presentation at that library.
Wow! Almost spooky how you are following in the footsteps, literally, of your artist hero. Have you encountered other fortunate coincidences over your career?
I’ll
address the two ideas there separately: “coincidences” and “fortunate.”
One of the craziest coincidences involves my book The Hiccupotamus. As I already mentioned, I created that while working for a tiny startup publisher - four of us setting up shop in the corner of an old dusty abandoned warehouse in Grand Haven MI.
Shortly after the book published, the company disbanded. So The Hiccupotamus was only on the market for a few months, and then was out of print for three years.
And it would have stayed out of print for the rest of history if not for a single solitary person. A fella who worked for the publisher Marshall Cavendish loved his family's personal copy of The Hiccupotamus so much, he wanted Marshall Cavendish to print a board book adaptation of it, even though they didn’t publish the original. When he couldn’t find any way to contact the publisher for rights (they’d been gone for 3 years!) he reached out to me directly.
I let him know that in addition to the board book rights, hardcover rights were available too if they wanted them. They didn’t. But right before the board book published they thought, ah, what the heck, and did both.
Years and years later, Amazon decides that in addition to selling books they also want to try publishing books too. The easiest way to do this if you are Amazon is, instead of starting from scratch, to buy up some already existing publishers.
They did this genre by genre. First they purchased an audiobook publisher called Brilliance Audio. Then they bought a children’s book publisher - Marshall Cavendish. They went on to buy a romance publisher, a faith based publisher, etc. etc.
Well, Marshall Cavendish did not have their own warehouse and distribution, but Brilliance Audio did. So all of the children’s book stock got moved from wherever it had previously been stored (who knows where, New York?) and sent to Brilliance’s facilities. And Brilliance Audio is located in… Grand Haven MI.
So years and years after making The Hiccupotamus here, after bizarre twists and turns in ownership, the book is now housed about five minutes from where I live. In fact when I call up to order more copies, the lady who answers the phone lives three doors down from me. Sometimes someone will just drop boxes off on my porch on their way home from work.
And the fact that my book is stored here in town, has NOTHING to do with me, nothing to do with me living here, nothing to do with it being created here all those years ago. So bizarre! It’s just a small thing, but I choose to see it as a nod from the Lord that He’s in control and is guiding things.
As far as “fortunate” goes, I see good fortune all over my career. The career itself is a thing of great fortune. Not “fortune” in the sense of lots of money (starving artist, anyone?) but in the sense of great value.
That is not lost on me - I’ve never once taken it for granted. To do what I’ve done for the past two decades is a priceless treasure. To earn income from an activity you love is priceless. To create in a way that reflects my Creator is priceless. To visit thousands upon thousands of kids every year and inspire future things they will make and do is priceless.
The creative friends and colleagues I’ve met
and built relationships with - people with whom there is great creative overlap
but also fascinating differences - those relationships are priceless. I am so fortunate.
 |
| Aaron and John Sanford |
Another major influence on you was illustrator John Sandford. What role did he play in your career?
John is one of my favorite people in the world! When I got my very first job right out of college, he worked in the same building but in a different department. I was working in multimedia.
But he was *an Illustrator.* A real illustrator. A successful illustrator. The first professional illustrator I had ever met. That was my dream job, but I had always considered it an unrealistic one. There wasn’t much reason (or encouragement) for employees at that company to visit other departments.
But every once in a while John and I would
cross paths, I would swoon, and he would be so kind and encouraging. “You are going to do this someday,” he would
say, as if he really believed it.
 |
| An impressive body of work |
Then years later, he proved that he had believed it by literally putting money where his mouth was. John is one of the three guys who started up the tiny publisher that put out The Hiccupotamus. They invited me to come on as the first (and ultimately only) employee.
We spent
three years creating sticker books and coloring books and card games. But they wanted to break into publishing new,
original, higher-end trade books. And
John asked me if I would turn the Hiccupotamus dummy he’d seen years earlier
into their first book. He got this whole
thing rolling two decades ago.
John scooted off to Chicago a while ago, but I still hold him very dear and will meet up with him anytime I happen to travel to Chicago. He is kind and generous and so very talented. He’s one of my heroes. It is my great FORTUNE to count him as friend!
What’s next for Aaron Zenz?
Thanks for all the great questions Charlie! This September, my 46th book came out: Counting my Colorful World written by Kimberly Lanza. After that I don’t know what’s next! I’m excited to find out too! I’ve got lots of stories on submission with my art rep Shannon Associates and we’ll see who picks up what next and when!
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Website: https://www.aaronzenz.com/
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