Creating stories to delight children and help them understand sophisticated social concepts is a primary objective of children’s book authors. But it is often hard to cut to the essence of situations in language children understand. Penny Claire Holland had the story for a children’s picture book many years ago, but let her manuscript sit while she pursued other writing goals and learned more about writing for children. Events in her family’s life brought her back to the project. and The Adoption of Boris is out now. Penny’s hometown newspaper has spread word and Penny is actively involved in sharing the story with her community, especially its children.

Sheila
I enjoyed reading The Adoption of Boris very much. Following four-year-old Chris as he adopts Boris, a home made stuffed dinosaur, is touching and entertaining. Chris’ dialog teaches without taking us out of the story, for example, the part where he has the idea to make for Boris what his parents made for him:

“Wake up, Mom and Dad. I have an idea,” said Chris, “I want to make an adoption scrapbook for Boris, like the one you made me.”

From conversations when we met, I know there is a big story behind your creation of the picture book. Let’s start our conversation with that story.

Penny
I wrote the original version of this story in 1979 for my four-year-old adopted son, Chris. (I still have an old, smudged copy of that typed manuscript.) When Chris’s grandmother, Eleanor Holland, read the story, she surprised us a few months later with nine beautiful watercolor illustrations. It was then that I realized the story was not just for Chris, but it was a real picture book, and I set out to learn how to get the book published. Within a year, I had attended a writers’ conference and joined Surfwriters, a local writing group. They encouraged me to join the Society of Children’s Book Writers (now SCBWI, with the I for Illustrators being added some years later.) There I learned that a picture book manuscript must stand on its own, and that you do not need to find an illustrator before showing your book to a publisher, as they generally prefer to find their own illustrator for a project.

Meanwhile, I was hooked on  writing for children and through my SCBW contacts, I sold a series of eight easy-to-read computer books to Franklin Watts. Even though I had put the adoption story on hold, I would bring it out from time to time and work on improving the story. I even submitted it to the contest for attendees at the Whidbey Island Writers’ Conference one year, where it was selected as one of the winners.

In 2003 when Eleanor Holland passed away, we displayed many of her paintings at her memorial service. Even though the adoption pictures weren’t framed, I decided to bring them to show, and her family was rather amazed at this art they had never before seen. I knew then that I wanted to make Eleanor’s illustrations available to her sons and grandchildren. Because I’m a great procrastinator, enough time passed for me to realize I could not only give them each a copy of the paintings, but also a copy of the entire book.

I began learning about self-publishing, took a local class and read articles online. I purchased Adobe’s Creative Suite so that I could use InDesign for the book layout. It took me about a year to learn the program, and to begin to make a dummy of the picture book. Very soon I realized that Eleanor’s nine paintings were not enough for a proper picture book. I could see what was missing, and before I asked one of my artist friends to do the art for me I decided to first try it myself. Even though I have been taking watercolor painting since about 1996, I do not think of myself as an illustrator. I tried once years ago to illustrate a very simple book and all I did was make a mess. But for some magical reason this time the illustrations came out okay. I tried to copy Eleanor’s style, which is a fairly simple painting with black ink outlines. It seemed to work! I filled in the needed artwork and soon I had a completed book.
Sheila
My literary agent used to tell me that books happen and books get to press in their right time. I am reminded of this as you recount the story of this book. What did Chris think of the book?

Penny
Chris heard the original story when he was four years old. I showed him the pictures his Grandma Eleanor painted as I read the story to him. He seemed to be delighted to have a story written just for him with illustrations that included his entire family. Unfortunately, he passed away in 1996 so we can only imagine that both Chris and Eleanor are smiling from above at the book that is dedicated to their memory.

Chris was a talented artist, and when he died he left hundreds of drawings, paintings and pieces of art, many or which were auctioned off to create the Christopher Holland Memorial Scholarship at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA. I think Chris would feel very proud to know that proceeds from this book will benefit his art scholarship.

Sheila
I am very moved by your dedication to this book project as a way of honoring your son and his grandmother, and as a way of healing by helping others, specifically children, understand a way of feeling positive about adoption and its gifts.

Can you tell us more about what people, organizations and resources helped you get behind the idea and project and what you found most valuable in the process?

Penny
The answer to this question is a whole course. For me it was two years of learning and studying, trying, practicing, tearing my hair out, trying again, and finally succeeding. I’ve always loved computers and especially computer graphics, so that part came easier for me. To self-publish a novel without having to worry about illustrations would be a piece of cake compared to doing a picture book.

The first thing I did was to take a three hour class from a local Whidbey Island writer named Tom Trimbath on self publishing. He had great hand-outs and gave specific details from his own self-publishing journey. For my picture book I needed a good program for book layout and so I bought the best–Adobe’s InDesign. To learn that program, I bought a month’s worth of Lynda.com, a fantastic on-line set of courses on any topic you can imagine. (You can watch video tutorials from Lynda.com 24/7 for $25 per month!)

When I was getting close to having the book done, I used Google to look up book printers. Once you know how many pages and the dimensions of the pages, there are many printing sites that have on-line calculators so you can find out how much the book will cost. I gathered together what looked like the best five or ten online printers. I made phone calls if I wasn’t sure about the paper weight, or what kind of coated paper they used. One publisher even mailed me one of their picture books to take a look at. Another thing these on-line printers have are various packages of help. I chose to do everything myself from editing, book layout, and cover design. But for a fee you can get lots of help if you are willing to give up some control.

My first book printing was to fulfill my gift to the Holland family in memory of Chris and Eleanor Holland. I had fifty hardbound copies printed in time for a mini-Holland reunion last July. The family was immensely surprised and quite happy with their books. That was about all I had originally planned for, but the book just kept wanting to do more. As I was working on the illustrations at the Oak Harbor Senior Center where our art group meets, many of the people in my group were asking how they could get a copy of the book. Since I had done most of the hard work getting the book printed, it seemed a simple step to make the book available for anyone to buy.

In all my forging around on the Internet, I ran across what was for me the most helpful site www.selfpublishing.com There I found some presentations by Ron Pramschufer that were fantastic. They also have an invaluable book called Publishing Basics, Navigating the Self-Publishing Minefield that you can download for free. I was very close to having this company print up the next batch of my books, and I think they would have done a marvelous job, but my family gave me a wake up call. Did I really want to print a thousand books, warehouse them somewhere, and have to deal with sales and shipping details? I listened to reason and decided to try Print on Demand (POD).

I did more searching on the Internet and talking to people such as my fellow writers at Andrea Hurst’s Just Write group that meets every Wednesday on the Coupeville Wharf. I finally decided to go with CreateSpace, a POD publisher that is a subsidiary of Amazon. Despite the fact that I could only get my book in a softbound version, I have been very happy with this company. They have fantastic assistance and technical help and everything has worked smoothly. I also think that the books have turned out quite nicely, the colors look true and there have been no surprises.
My last step is to get my book published on Kindle or other eReaders. So far the Kindle conversion has not worked for me because half of my illustrations are double page spreads, and these all have to be reformatted for the Kindle to fit onto one page. Stay tuned to see if I ever get this problem figured out.

One more aspect of self-publishing is the marketing. Even with a book published by a major publisher, the author needs to do a good bit of marketing and publicity. But when the book is self-published, the onus is totally on the author. A good webpage is a must and being a do-it-yourselfer I first tried to create my own website. I could do it, but here is where I felt it was worth hiring somebody to help. A fellow writer and artist is also a web designer. Shane Watson did a fantastic job of the basic design that was simple yet elegant and got my point across. I’m still in my baby steps of marketing, so ask me in a year and I’ll most likely know more. Besides word of mouth, FaceBook is my favorite site for spreading the word.

Sheila
While we are on the subject of support, were there other supports in addition to Surfwriters and the SCBWI organizations that helped you write for children in particular?

Penny
My current group, Just Write, on Whidbey Island is very helpful. I am a great enthusiast for the small critique group where in a safe atmosphere you have your work read and critiqued. Of course, I love books, and read many how-to books on the topic of writing. Probably my two most favorite have been Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, and Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. Numerous writing classes, especially in the Kirkland/Bellevue area by Peggy King Anderson, and on Whidbey by Deb Lund are always helpful. And for the illustration side of things, I must also mention my amazing watercolor teacher who has inspired me and given me great courage, Caroline Buchanan, who even has classes online.

Sheila
Where are you in the distribution of your book right now?

Penny
The POD books are for sale via my website that has a link to the CreateSpace eBookstore. I understand that they are now also available through a book distributor, so people ought to be able to go an online seller or into their local bookstore and ask to have the book ordered. As I mentioned above I have yet to get the Kindle version working, but I’ll keep trying. I suspect I might have more luck with the eBook version, such as what one can get on an iPad, so I will soon pursue that challenge. I also have an editor who asked for a copy of my book because she wants to show it to some people. I’d be happy to have a publisher take over the project someday.

Sheila
It does sound like work to produce a book like this. But it sounds like you enjoyed the process and benefitted from all you learned. In your experience, what is the best part of writing a book for children?

Penny
The audience! I love children and enjoy seeing their reactions, which are so often unpredictable. I also get a kick out of seeing their artistic depictions of their favorite scene from the book. Writing for children who are still growing and learning is such an honor and a privilege. But when the book is done and you, as the author, actually see how it affects them–well, that’s the best part for me. It’s priceless.

Sheila
I’d like to know what you think was the hardest part.

Penny
There were lots of hard parts along the way, and places where I felt like I’d hit a brick wall. In this self-publishing arena there are so many technical hurdles to jump. But overall, I’d say that getting the story just right is probably the hardest as well as the most important part of the process. If you don’t keep editing and rewriting until every word is perfect and every sentence shines, then no amount of technical correctness is going to matter.

Sheila
But obviously, the effort is worth it. What are you most proud of about your effort?

Penny
I am proud of the fact that I stuck with this story for so many years, and that I was actually able to paint some of the illustrations for the book. For me, this has been like something magical, and I wonder if somehow Chris and Eleanor were guiding my hand in the art. When I look at the finished book it almost makes me cry.

Sheila
I am sure that those who are learning here from your experience would love to have your summary of key lessons you learned in completing this book.

Penny
Believe in yourself and your project, and NEVER give up!

Sheila
As writers we need to have confidence in the projects that become our passions. How has the writing of this book benefitted you and your family emotionally?

Penny
Most of the key players in this story are no longer alive, and yet we now have the book which contains Eleanor Holland’s art. Her drawings are caricatures of our family back in 1979, and a lot of my story actually happened. So in many ways it’s like a slice of our life back then, and it brings back many good memories. I think these kinds of memories help to bring closure for the family.

Sheila
I so much appreciate learning about the way you were able with your writing and book publication to honor the memory of your son and his grandmother.

What are your hopes for the book’s audience?

Penny
So far my book’s audience consists mostly of my family and friends, but I am really touched when I discover that someone who does not know me buys the book because there is an adoption in their family. I hope that more people will discover its message and spread the word. Being a family, whether biological or adoptive, is a lot of hard work and unconditional love and I hope that message comes across to my audience.

Sheila
I know the audience consists also of the many children you read it to. They might not be a paying audience, but they are the ones who benefit from your book’s availability.

What feedback are you getting since the book’s release?

Penny
I’ve had a lot of positive feedback from the book, but what surprised me the most was that I originally saw my audience as being adopted children; yet many people have told me that it’s not just for that group, but rather it is a wonderful way to show all children what adoption is all about.

Penny
I couldn’t agree more. Children are eager to learn about life.

Sheila
What are the thoughts you’d share with others who want to self-publish children’s books?

Penny
It’s a rather steep learning curve, but taken one step at a time it is not impossible. Along the way are many instances where you can pay others to do some of the work, such as book editing, layout and design, artwork, cover art and design. If you want to do it all yourself, it is possible if you are persistent.

Sheila
How does using profits from the book for charities, including the Christopher Holland Memorial Scholarship at Cornish College, help you in your promotion and your enthusiasm for seeing the book reach others?

Penny
On the promotion side, I can’t say that the charity idea has helped much in book sales. But on the “Feel Good” side, it is a big help. Even though my business is still running in the red, I have already made a donation and sent along a copy of the book to Cornish College of the Arts to benefit the Christopher Holland Memorial Scholarship. In the future I hope to find an adoption charity that I can also donate to in Chris’s memory. I think he would approve.

Sheila
What are your next projects?

Penny
I have many projects. Completed and looking for publishers are several picture books including two concept/picture books, and also an easy-to-read chapter book series along the lines of Amelia Bedelia. (Who knows, maybe I’ll end up self-publishing these once I have the first one successfully under my belt.) I’ve also started a middle grade novel that is calling to me.

Sheila
Penny, thank you for your time telling us your story and my best wishes on this book launch and all your future ones.