Good morning everyone.

[Laughs] >> Good morning.

>> Shadra Strickland: Thank you all for being here.

I'm so delighted to speak to Christy and Devin today about their books.

Let me get the first slide.

Are you all seeing the slides?

Yes.

"The Bakery Dragon" by Devin Elle Kurtz and "Millie Fleurs Poison Garden."

But we'll be focusing on "Millie Fleur Saves the Night."

Am I pronouncing Fleur right?

>> Christy Mandin: That's right, Fleur.

>> Shadra Strickland: Thank you.

"Millie Fleur Saves the Night."

Christy, Christy and I already have something in common.

We're both from Georgia and both only children.

I was delighted to see that ‘cause only children get a bad rap.

Were you-- Did you entertain yourself with stories as a young child?

>> Christy Mandin: Yes.

That was my only option.

Because I lived way out in the country.

It was extremely rural in a time in the 1900s when we didn't have YouTube Kids or the Internet or satellite TV, cable TV.

All we had was just what came over the airwaves and your imagination.

And when school would let out at the end of the school year, my parents would say, "go outside and don't come back till September."

And so what are you going to do except tell yourself some stories, you know, and so it's like, "That's a cool rock.

I could probably make that a character."

>> Shadra Strickland: You know, so I know our panel is about scary and spooky things.

What types of things frightened you as a child?

>> Christy Mandin: I was definitely afraid of the dark.

I would run and jump in the bed because if you jump in, I don't know what that does, but you're safer.

And you just don't ever let your leg hang off the side, you know?

It's science.

And so, yeah, I was scared of the dark.

>> Shadra Strickland: Yeah.

Any other audience members afraid of the dark as children or adults?

Yeah, a lot of us, right?

So we'll be really interested to see how "Millie Fleurs Saves the Night" as being afraid of the dark.

And, Devin, we're working with dragons where your dragon is not at all scary.

[Laughs] Talk to us about just your fascination with dragons and why you like these fictional creatures.

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: Well, I think -- as children, sometimes we fall into categories such as wolf child or cat child.

And I was definitely a dragon child.

I -- went to Costco and found the "Dragonology Book," which I've heard still exists, still exists today.

And I was just obsessed.

I would get these big sketch pads and copy dragons from the covers of my books, and see if I could draw every single scale with my pencil.

And, you know, and I felt like dragons-- I didn't want them just to be enemies.

Like, I wanted them to be my friend.

So I thought you know, what if we could create dragons who, rather than being evil monsters, were more like inconveniently large reptiles?

>> Shadra Strickland: Absolutely, absolutely.

I would love to get into the process.

So many author/illustrators visualize stories first, as opposed to writing on the page.

How do you both approach your storytelling?

>> Christy Mandin: Do you want me to go first on this one?

>> Shadra Strickland: Whoever's the bravest today.

>> Christy Mandin: So my answer to that is always that, author me and illustrator me are often at odds.

We're two completely different people, and author me, that girl writes problems for illustrator me to solve.

And illustrator me is often just not happy with author me, because those words were great.

That was a great idea.

Curdled milkweed in the first Millie Fleur book.

That's a cool idea, right?

But how do you draw that?

And then I'm the only one that can solve that problem.

>> Shadra Strickland: So do you ever have like a back meeting at home like... >> Christy Mandin: Guys, guys we gotta get it together here, okay?

We got to have some solutions at some point.

>> Shadra Strickland: Nice, nice Devin, what about you?

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: I think I've always been a really, really visual storyteller.

Long before I was an author, I was an illustrator.

And a lot of what I like to do is try to tell a complete story in one picture.

A lot of my illustrations are kind of based around, like, how information can I give, so that you can kind of follow through and pick out all the story elements.

So for me, it's been a process of figuring out what I can tell with just the visuals and then figuring out what words I need to add in order to tell the complete story.

-- So for me, usually it starts kind of as a storyboard.

Like I came from the world of animation.

So I think very much in like snapshots and story beats.

So for me it's usually drawing out what are the story beats and then what words do I need to contribute to this to turn it into like a complete, full narrative with characters and dialogue and a storyline you can follow?

>> Shadra Strickland: Yeah.

Well, both of you have very character-driven books, right?

Really important characters.

Did those characters kind of talk to you at some point and want to be on the page, or was it the story first and then the character was developed through the story?

>> Christy Mandin: So a lot of the times when I am supposed to be writing, I'm just kind of -- goofing off and come across things that make my brain light up.

And I think, "Oh," and I kind of stick it in an idea jar.

So for me I actually, stumbled upon a weird bug in the yard, which I think we'll talk about later, but, -- and one thing led to another, and that's how the story developed.

But then as soon as I have that spark of an idea, I go straight to character development, because I have to know who that person is in the story and why do we care about her, you know?

So the character development doesn't always come first.

For me, it's usually a spark when I'm goofing off.

>> Shadra Strickland: Yeah, I love that.

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: -- For me, I think that when I was developing the story, I had the idea of a dragon who hoards bread instead of gold.

And that was kind of the first nugget.

But then I wanted to, like, tie it into an emotional throughline that was personal to me.

And for me, like, I grew up with a chronic illness, so I couldn't keep up with a lot of my classmates.

There was a lot of things they could do that I was just always falling behind.

So for me, like Ember, he's smaller than all the other dragons.

Like, he just can't keep up with them.

That's his reason that he can't keep up with them.

But -- I was able to kind of just, like, put myself right in his shoes.

And for me, the thing that I was able to connect with my community over was art.

But for him, it's baking.

And I was just like, "Oh, you know what?"

That's just like a perfect little marriage of our stories.

>> Shadra Strickland: For sure.

I love that.

[Laughs] Let's get into the process.

What kind of bug is it?

What kind of bug is that, Christy?

>> Christy Mandin: So while my editor thought I was at my desk, I was actually on a panic walk in the yard -- because when book one came out, they said, "We love it.

Do it again."

And I thought, "I don't even know how I did that the first time."

So I'm going to just go on a walk.

And while I was in the yard, I stumbled upon this guy and I thought, "I don't know what kind of bug that is," and I am insufferably curious.

And so I thought, "I'll take a picture of him.

I'll look him up later.

You're on a deadline.

Stay focused."

And when I got back to my desk, I did not open my Google doc to start my story.

I opened up Wikipedia and I-- my bug identifying app and found out that that's a click beetle.

And he looks pretty boring.

-- He has a kind of a cool name, I thought "click beetle.

Oh that's cool."

And the more I read about him, the more I found out, oh, he's actually really cool.

I think you might have a slide of what he does at night.

He does this at night.

But in the daytime, you would pass-- You've maybe passed by him a million times and never known because he's kind of boring in the daytime.

At night, though, you would have to go out in the pitch-black dark because he's quite tiny, and his little headlights that he makes are quite tiny.

And I thought, "If you weren't brave enough to go out in the dark, you would miss this amazing guy who just has this cool feature."

You'd never know what he could do.

And how many times do we pass by people, things, ideas, wonderful sparks and we don't know what they can do because we're not brave enough to be curious.

>> Shadra Strickland: I love that.

>> Christy Mandin: So then "Millie Fleur Saves the Night" was born.

>> Shadra Strickland: There you go.

I love that.

You know, you do, you do a lot of writing and, and dreaming through trapdoors instead of approaching things.

I'm the same.

I'm the same.

>> Christy Mandin: Yes.

I don't know if it's a great format.

Like, it's not super reliable.

It's like catching lightning in a bottle.

But it's all I've got.

It's all I've got.

>> Shadra Strickland: So the lead-in question that I forgot to ask is, what type of research do you all do to create these worlds?

So a lot of people, when you're reading books, when you're watching films, they assume that artists can just pull these worlds out of their head like magic.

-- But that's rarely the case.

And so for both of you all and Christie, you answered it a little bit.

How do you approach world- building research to, to build your stories?

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: I love that stage.

You know, as an artist kid, me and my other artist friends would always sit around and just dream up worlds.

Like, ever since I was like seven years old, I feel like we could spend an entire afternoon just coming up with, “what is this world?” “Who lives there?” “How do they live there?” You know, “what are the monsters that live there?” And, “how do,” you know, “these elements of this creature impact the world that the people live in?” So that part is like one of my favorites.

And I love putting in little pieces of, okay, if dragons live in this world, how would they show up in the architecture?

How would they show up in the little design elements?

Like you can find little dragon motifs in the architecture of the buildings in the same way that we might have like a rooster in ours, because they're just, they're just pests that live nearby.

So the weathervanes have dragons on them, and all the buildings on the outside of the town are made of brick, because we don't want anything flammable out there.

I love that part.

That part just excites me.

I could talk about it forever.

>> Shadra Strickland: I love it, I love it.

>> Shadra Strickland: And so we're looking at a sketch of some of the dragons in the book.

Does that happen along the way or is that kind of -- pre-production work for you?

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: So I really wanted all of the dragons to be very unique.

I wanted them not to just be like a crowd of kind of identical dragons, but I wanted to encapsulate all the different types of dragons that I've loved since I was little.

Like ones that look like dinosaurs, ones that look like eastern type dragons and western type dragons, and really silly ones and ones that look really cool.

I just wanted to have the full spectrum of dragons in this book.

>> Shadra Strickland: I love it.

[Inaudible] dragons.

Excellent, I love it.

So, Devin, you've been drawing and painting all your life since you were like two years old on Photoshop.

It's so amazing.

What was the hardest/scariest thing about making your own story as opposed to working and leading an animation team?

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: You know, I think in animation we are allowed to specialize and we can all kind of hold each other's hands.

And if there's something that we're not good at, we're allowed to say, "I'm not goingto do that.

[Laughs] You can do that.

You're much better than me."

But then when you know, you're illustrating your own book, those things that scare you, whether it's drawing a horse or drawing a car, you have to be the one to do that, too.

But, I actually found that it's been really rewarding because by getting to the other side of those fears and realizing I can do that, it's made me so much more confident in my abilities as an artist.

>> Shadra Strickland: Yeah.

And we're looking at right now that you all are seeing the screen of all of the -- It looks like the full book.

This is not the final art, which is embarrassing for me.

Because my sketches look nothing like this.

So talk with the audience about a little bit about the process and what we're seeing here.

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: Yeah, those are the like the color keys.

So in the animation industry, like, for example, if you've got a movie, you want to be able to see the color beats that translate to the emotions of the whole film -- from the beginning.

And I knew I wanted there to be a color journey through my book where it starts bright and warm, and then he kind of descends into the gloomy darkness, and then it's kind of the deep golds when you first get to the bakery, and then it explodes into like the golden warmth again, as there's kind of this connection at the end.

So I wanted to really have that planned out, that color journey planned out the same way that we do for working on an animated film.

>> Shadra Strickland: Nice.

Awesome.

>> Shadra Strickland: And where did the story come from?

So outside of your love of dragons, how did you connect bread, baking, and gold in the Ember story?

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: I feel like we might be kind of similar in that we love to just find like weird connections in the world, but like, I love the idea of the fact that, like, treasure can be all kinds of things.

Like for me, my treasures are probably my books, like I would be a book dragon.

I would curl up on my, like, hoard of books and I just thought from far away, a bakery window looks just like golden treasure.

>> Shadra Strickland: Yeah, yeah.

Christy, I'm looking at the lantern keeper here who we see in the book.

Is this preliminary work?

Was this sketching, goofing off?

>> Christy Mandin: This was solving a problem that I created for myself in book one because I, that is my-- What's my process?

I create problems.

It's me.

Hi.

So in book one with Millie Fleur there is nary a lamppost.

And in book two, the opening line says "Garden Glen was afraid of the dark.

At night the townsfolk rushed home and turned on all the lights, and every house and yard was lit up like the noonday sun.

Well, how, Shadra, when there's not a lamppost post in the whole town?

Not a spotlight.

Nothing.

Nothing.

But I couldn't go back because book one was out in the world.

>> Shadra Strickland: Sure.

>> Christy Mandin: So we had to figure out a way to light up the night.

Now, I did stick in one lamppost.

I feel like if people have questions about that, I will say, "There is a lamppost in the town that you just couldn't see.

You just couldn't see it in book one."

Okay?

But the lantern keeper was a problem-solving situation.

He brought a solution to lighting up the town.

But as you can see, my sketches, are not like Devin's.

[Laughing] >> Devin Elle Kurtz: And that's good, because we're two different people.

>> Christy Mandin: We're two different people.

And it's just two different ways to arrive at the end.

So-- >> Shadra Strickland: But, you know, Christie, I love so many design choices that you made with this book and how you're carving out the light on the page and using this really deep, really soothing blue as a background.

It's just really lovely.

When you're working on a double-page spread, you have to think of inventive ways to lead the eye.

And I thought that this was fantastic.

>> Christy Mandin: Thank you.

That one was really a challenge.

[Laughing] >> Shadra Strickland: Well done.

Well done.

So we're looking at we were looking at, some of the sketches before.

And Christy, I know as an illustrator I recognize that these are really rough sketches.

>> Christy Mandin: Yes.

They're not meant for anyone to see.

>> Shadra Strickland: Right.

Just talking to yourself.

Talking to yourself.

But you all can see as the thinking, as the conversation goes with editor, art director ideas become more real on the page.

And so thank you for sharing with people to see.

Devin, we just had a backstage conversation about perspective.

For all the artists in the room, raise your hand if you love perspective.

Devin clearly loves perspective.

[Laughs] Talk to us about this this part of your process.

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: Yeah.

Well, so I worked in the background department at an animation studio for four years, first as a member of the team, and then I led the team.

So doing the backgrounds for this book, like drawing them, I'm like, I'm in my zone.

I don't even need to think like I can put a podcast on just-- But I mean, in animation, we're constantly taking these really, really rough storyboards and then figuring out how to turn them into a complete world.

Like, what we get is like a character on sometimes just like a perspective plane, or maybe a really rough indication of a door.

And then we've got to figure out, all right, well, what world do they live in?

What information can we give about the character from, you know, their bedroom?

Like, you can tell so much about a character from their bedroom.

Do they just throw their things all over the room or do they hang it up nicely?

You know, what objects have they kept from their childhood?

Do they have, you know, a mishmash of different furniture they picked up off the street, or have they coordinated everything really carefully.

So it really excites me to design an environment, because especially in a picture book where you have such limited real estate, you can do so much worldbuilding and storytelling about the characters from what little details you put into the environments.

And I know, like you kids, you notice all of that.

Like when I do book events, you guys are the ones who come up to me and are like, "The bell is missing from the bell tower.

And then they bring it back at the end" and I'm like "You did notice that.

That's incredible."

[Laughs] >> Shadra Strickland: So we're just thumbing through some of the sketches and final art here as well.

So you can see with all artists, processes are going to be different.

And Devin, you're drawing and painting digitally where Christie you work with pencil first or is that digital?

>> Christy Mandin: It's digital.

>> Shadra Strickland: It's digital?

>> Christy Mandin: Yes.

>> Shadra Strickland: I'm old school.

It has to be pencil.

>> Christy Mandin: I like for it to look traditional.

>> Shadra Strickland: There you go.

>> Christy Mandin: So, yeah.

>> Shadra Strickland: Nice.

So we're going to get a little nerdy here when it comes to-- Oh, no, no, this is a question that I wanted to ask about the character the Dark and having been a child who was afraid of the dark.

What kind of thought went into the Dark character as a character in the book?

>> Christy Mandin: Yes.

So how many times have you been laying in bed in the pitch black dark, and maybe there's like a tree outside your window and it casts like a shadow.

And your imagination starts to like, work out what that shadow And then before long, you've worked yourself all up and you're all scared, and you have to run and get your grownup.

I still do that.

So I thought -- you know, those branches outside the window, what if they're just actually attached to something soft and cuddly and not at all threatening?

-- I think sometimes when you can't touch a thing, you can't hold a thing.

You can't know a thing.

It's just a thing in your head.

And you can't you know, you can't feel it.

It's scarier, you know.

And so if you can name a thing, if you can hold a thing, it makes it-- it's more disarming, like you've kind of disarmed that thing.

You're not scary anymore.

You're just the Dark, a cuddly creature.

>> Shadra Strickland: I think, I mean, you can name it, you can claim it.

And for you, you can draw it, right?

You can create it for yourself.

>> Christy Mandin: Right.

Make it whatever you wan >> Shadra Strickland: I love it, I love-- look at that >> Christy Mandin: So the Dark's not scary.

You just have to get to know it.

>> Shadra Strickland: Right?

Who's afraid of that beautiful Dark?

>> Christy Mandin: She's quite cuddly and she's actually afraid of them.

So that's just another thing to think about.

The things you're afraid of might actually be afraid of you.

So, you could just -- get to know each other and not be scared and be curious instead.

>> Shadra Strickland: For sure.

Do you have a moon garden at home?

>> Christy Mandin: So we do.

We actually grow lots of different things.

And moonflowers are one of them.

>> Shadra Strickland: Lovely.

>> Christy Mandin: Yeah.

And we also grow nicotiana which is a night blooming tobacco, which you hear that and you think, but it's actually a pollinator plant for our bees.

They like it.

It has a small bloom, and they have small mouths, so they appreciate the tinier flowers.

>> Shadra Strickland: So I'm still a little afraid of the dark, but this is encouraging me to try and grow something.

[Laughs] We have a few more minutes.

Devin, I just want to talk about, -- we talked about your use of color a little bit, but emotionally, like, what are your warmer colors?

And just talk about the emotional beats for the-- You did that already, didn't you?

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: Well, I mean, I can talk about, color and how I use it in the story.

>> Shadra Strickland: Sure.

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: Well, I like, I love to think of like, light and color as kind of like a character that's always present in the story.

And like, the way that I use it is so dependent on, I really want the color to put you in the character's shoes.

So especially like the paper of the book is actually something that I use to show -- Ember's kind of -- emotional state.

So when the paper behind the like comic panel-type panels is like white or this like light tan color, that's kind of the neutral state.

And then when he goes into like the darker, more gloomy emotional states, it turns into this kind of dark purple.

So it's kind of letting us into feeling like we are Ember.

And then as he emerges from that, it turns into this dark red.

When he's hiding in the bakery, you kind of feel like you're hiding because the panel that you see him hiding, he's surrounded by this dark color.

And then as he comes out into the warmth, it turns into this, like golden warm.

So I really want, like, readers as they're going through the book to be able to just see that around the edges and have it kind of impact how you're feeling.

And so you can feel like Ember, too.

>> Shadra Strickland: Now, this piece wasn't in the book.

This was for funsies.

Do you work on just one-off illustrations as you're working on books for fun, or are you thinking about what you might do with this after, or just to get to know your character a little bit more.

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: I think bringing it back to like my friends and I always work on projects together.

You know, we're coming up with a project and we're like, we're going to make this a movie one day.

One thing we would always do is make a movie poster for it, because why not?

That's what you see when you're a kid.

So I think this is my take on like, this is my "Bakery Dragon" movie poster because I made this thing.

>> Shadra Strickland: We could see that.

Totally.

Totally.

Just a book nerd here.

This is the cover of "The Bakery Dragon."

And then when you take the case off, you get more gorgeous art.

This is actually-- most people.

A lot of people don't see these.

Do you all look at the case covers when you get books?

Just beautiful.

Yeah.

What were you thinking with case cover?

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: So, I feel like the case cover is something that I usually look for after I've read a book.

So I think it's a really fun opportunity to create an illustration that encapsulates, like, the end of the story or like the whole kind of like story all together, which is all the dragons, like carrying all this bread that they've made rather than just like a teaser to get you into the story.

So that's what I wanted to do with that.

>> Shadra Strickland: Nice.

And Christie, so yours is very... So this is very feature film feeling and Christie is very like traditional book telling.

And so you get this gorgeous embossed -- icon of the moon.

Talk to us about your design choices.

Did you do this or did you have ask for it or did they say... >> Christy Mandin: So Scholastic is actually great about when I ask for stuff, they are pretty -- agreeable.

Yes.

So the embossing-- The only thing they've ever told me no about was on this book.

I want a really-- me, my editor and art director all pushed real hard for glow-in-the-dark treatment, but sales had a really great point that we don't read books in the dark because we can't see the words.

-- And you have to.

>> Shadra Strickland: I mean-- Y we get the flashlight under the.

>> Christy Mandin: So that one, they told me "no" on.

But yeah, the-- I feel like they I do all of the cover.

I do everything in the book.

>> Shadra Strickland: The hand lettering as well?

Wond >> Christy Mandin: The hand lettering and then I ask for, like, on the flourishes, the metallic treatments and the embossing and the spot gloss.

It's all very technical and nerdy, but I love all of those treatments.

>> Shadra Strickland: I love it.

>> Christy Mandin: If there's a treatment that exists, I, I love it >> Shadra Strickland: I love that.

And Devin, you also, are you doing hand lettering for yours too?

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: Yeah.

>> Shadra Strickland: Shout out to the hand letterers.

That's incredible.

Well, talk to us about are there going to be more Ember books and more Millie books in the future?

Can you tell us about the future books?

>> Christy Mandin: Yes.

So they're going to be more Millie Fleur books all the way until 2029.

>> Shadra Strickland: Woo!

>> Christy Mandin: So there are in total, once they all publish, there will be seven Millie Fleur books.

>> Shadra Strickland: Oh, yes.

>> Christy Mandin: So you're not rid of me anytime soon.

[Laughing] >> Shadra Strickland: And, Devin, are we going to see more of Ember?

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: Yeah, I'm working on book three right now, and then I'll go straight on to book four.

And it sounds like they want more, so probably, probably won't be the end of... You'll see me for a while too, I think.

[Laughs] >> Shadra Strickland: Excellent.

And wait, Christie, talk to us about "Bittersweet."

This is your very next one that's coming out.

>> Christy Mandin: Yes.

So this one is outside of a completely different vibe than the Millie Fleur books.

It comes out in October with Simon and Schuster, and it is nonfiction-ish.

Now, all of you book people out there are probably like, that's not a genre.

-- But it is now.

It's, it's nonfiction, but the main character is not -- She is not someone who existed in the real world.

She is a combination of stories told during post-war Berlin, when the U.S.

dropped food to the people in -- West Berlin.

They were blockaded and a guy named Gail Halvorsen, who lived to be 100 years old and has passed on.

He saw some kids at a fence watching the airlift, and he thought, "They haven't had chocolate in years.

They've not seen chocolate.

They've not had sweets.

We have all this flour.

We have these dried potatoes.

We're feeding them.

But they've not had any joy."

And he thought-- he was very conflicted by that, because not long ago the grownups in that country were their enemy.

And he thought "It's better to feed them than to hurt them."

So he dropped candy out of the plane, even though it was very much against the rules.

It was not an approved mission.

And it turned into -- so much candy dropped.

And those kids -- grew up and told those stories.

>> Shadra Strickland: Oh that's beautiful.

>> Christy Mandin: Yeah.

Which I think is timely for now.

You know, like, choosing kindness is also something that takes courage and can be often times complicated unnecessarily.

And he chose kindness.

>> Shadra Strickland: Beautiful.

Thank you.

I look forward to reading it.

And tell us about "The Dragon Bakery"-- I'm sorry, my brain.

"The Bakery Dragon and the Fairy Cake."

>> Devin Elle Kurtz: So, Ember in book one, like he picks up on baking bread pretty quickly.

He's a natural.

-- And he expects to continue to be a natural.

But when he's alone at the bakery, he gets an order for a cake from a fairy.

And it turns out that he doesn't know how to bake a cake.

And it is quite a bit more difficult for him than baking bread.

So I wanted to show kind of the struggle of someone picking up a new hobby, because sometimes it doesn't come easily all the way through.

But there's a lot of value in you know, going to the library, picking up a recipe book and getting feedback from your friends and figuring out how to do something the long way.

So that's what that book's about.

[Laughs] >> Shadra Strickland: This has been such a treat.

Thank you both for being here today with us and talking about your wonderful work and wonderful future stories.

It's been my treat to talk to you backstage as well, and I hope that you all have learned a lot about book making and about these scary, benevolent creatures.

And -- yeah, just thank you so much.

>> Christy Mandin: Thank you for having us.

>> Shadra Strickland: Sure.

Thank you very much.

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