Writing With a Broken Tusk
Writing With a Broken Tusk began in 2006 as a blog about overlapping geographies, personal and real-world, and writing books for children. Since March 2024, Jen Breach (writer, VCFA graduate, and former student) has helped me curate and manage guest posts and Process Talk pieces on this blog.
The blog name refers to the mythical pact between the poet Vyaasa and the Hindu elephant headed god Ganesha who was his scribe during the composition of the epic narrative, the Mahabharata. It also refers to my second published book, edited by the generous and brilliant Diantha Thorpe of Linnet Books/The Shoe String Press, published in 1996, acquired and republished by August House, now part of Reading Is Fundamental, and still miraculously in print.
Posts on this site reflect personal opinion and commentary protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Process Talk: Martha Brockenbrough on A Gift of Dust
Martha Brockenbrough (she who wrote that amazingly perceptive book about 45-47, way before rising numbers of the public cottoned onto his deceits and conceits) has now written a picture book that dazzles while it informs. A Gift of Dust: How Saharan Plumes Feed the Planet sings in rhythms, plays with words, and manages to make room for its audience in the magnificent world it encircles. All the way from “that certain slant of light” in the opening to the single word “tomorrow” on the last spread, the text pays simultaneous homage to poetry and the science of a single marvelous natural phenomenon. I asked Martha to tell me more about where this book came from.
Guest Post: Shruthi Rao on When Science Stood Still
Sometimes you come across a book someone else wrote that taps precisely into a story you wanted to tell yourself, that you perhaps tried to tell and never quite managed to. That’s part of the writing life. You chalk it up to experience and move on. But wait, twice? Twice, and it turns out to be the same writer who snagged the very story fruit you were reaching for? Can this happen twice?
Reader, it did. Shruthi Rao has managed to bring to the page two-count-em-two book ideas I tried desperately to pitch for decades without finding traction. What was the problem? Timing? Focus? Execution? Too much critique? Not enough? Who knows?
Process Talk: Pooja Makhijani on Bread Is Love
My writing path has crossed Pooja Makhijani’s many times since I first came across her essay, "The First Time," in the November/December 2003 issue of Cicada magazine, an essay for which she won that year’s SCBWI Magazine Award Honor in Nonfiction. years later, we chatted about the first Asian American to win the Newbery Medal—Dhan Gopal Mukerji, in 1928. That conversation and others led to her terrific article in The Atlantic on the implications, of this forgotten history of American children’s literature. Pooja’s picture book, Mama’s Saris, captured the delights of dressing up, the allure of beautiful fabric and the longing of a little girl to celebrate identity in her own way. Now another picture book, Bread is Love, illustrated by Lavanya Naidu, similarly blends sensory moments with the delicious warmth of shared family connections. Welcome to WWBT, Pooja!
Process Talk: Sandra Nickel on The True Ugly Duckling
Hans Christian Andersen’s stories were part of my childhood writing life. It was a weirdly magical intersection that I’ve written about over the years. When I was invited to write text for Nasrin Khosravi’s glorious Thumbelina art, it felt like a circle completing. What’s even more gratifying is that this circle keeps expanding.
Sandra Nickel was a student at VCFA when I taught there, and she’s just written a picture book biography of Andersen that delves into his life, his creative impulses, and the many ways that story transformed “a poor shoemaker’s son. who was tall and skinny.” The True Ugly Duckling: How Hans Christian Andersen Became a Swan is a picture book with many layers of story and cut-paper art, at once delicate and wildly fanciful, by Calvin Nicholls. Here’s my conversation with Sandra Nickel about her picture book tribute to a man whose immortal stories and sometimes melancholy life continue to intrigue and inspire.
Guest Post: What if…?Julie Lawson on Bear on the Train
Julie Lawson’s Bear on the Train is a wordier picture book than we’re used to seeing now, yet how delicately drawn its relationships are: boy and bear, bear and landscape, landscape and train. The train is the moving target of the reader’s attention and the boy becomes a stand-in for the reader. I have admired this book for years, I once had a copy that walked away from my bookshelf (maybe it took a train somewhere), so I was delighted to find a replacement copy at Russell Books, Victoria’s wonderful used bookstore. I was further delighted to find that Julie is the friend of a friend, so I asked her to reflect on the making of this book, which is sadly out of print now.
Process Talk: Monisha Bajaj on A Year of Kites
I used to be a clumsy kid, so I have to admit that I never took to kite-flying. It called for more dexterity and coordination than I was ever capable of, but I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of kites, at once tethered and not, splashing the sky with bright color and fluttering movement, riding on the wind. They’re also amazingly poignant symbols of us, humans, our feet on earth and our hearts, yearning. See my post on the Fly With Me Kite Festival. So I was delighted to see the e-galley of A Year of Kites by Monisha Bajaj, illustrated by Amber Ren. Its spreads are filled with the magic of kites in skies around the world. I invited Monisha to talk about the creation of this book.
Guest Post: Rowena Rae on Why We Need Vaccines
I met Rowena Rae when our books were both shortlisted for the 2025 City of Victoria Children’s Book Prize. That unexpected recognition (for me anyway!) brought us together — it’s the kind of writerly connection that feels like a gift.
We all come to this children’s writing gig along vastly different paths. Rowena worked as a biologist in Canada and New Zealand before becoming a freelance writer and editor and a children’s author. Like me, she lives in Victoria, British Columbia. We share a sense of perspective lent by a little mountain that used to be called Mount Douglas and has now officially embraced its SENĆOŦEN (Saanich language) name, PKOLS. I love that the Indigenous name has slipped gracefully into public nomenclature. The mountain is a defining geographical feature of this island that Rowena and I both call home.
Rowena’s shortlisted book is Why We Need Vaccines: How Humans Beat Infectious Diseases, illustrated by Paige Stampatori. I asked Rowena to tell me more about the creation of her information-packed book for young readers.
Guest Post: Megan Pomper on What Makes a Bird?
I met Megan Pomper when our books were both shortlisted for the City of Victoria Children’s Book Prize. Megan’s book, What Makes a Bird? follows a child asking that singular question. It follows a child’s curiosity. In seeking to define a bird, the book accomplishes many things at once.
It shows us the amazing range of birdlife while serving as an introduction to sameness and difference, categories and criteria. It teases apart feathers, flight, songs, nesting, eggs, and migration, showing how shape, habit, and habitat combine to make each bird species distinct, yet part of a larger avian family. Maia Hoekstra’s full page and spot illustrations will help children connect observation to understanding and encourage backyard investigations. Flat colour contrasts with white line-work that depicts bird silhouettes, bubbles, shoreline, and the light in the sky.
Guest Post: Karen Leggett Abouraya Talks Art Process with Susan L. Roth
Karen Leggett Abouraya and Susan L. Roth have collaborated on picture books for years. Yes, collaborated, which isn’t something authors and illustrators are known to do in North American publishing. We’re all carefully schooled in detachment in the creation of picture books, right? Here’s a different take on this.
Their picture book, Zamzam, is an ode to family love that reaches its arms around the world, and an exploration of the big and little differences that colour us human. It’s also a verbal-visual collaboration.
Zohran Walks New York by Millie von Platen
Only in America would a Democratic Socialist candidate cause as much pearl-clutching as Zohran Mamdani managed to set off. Primary voters cast enthusiastic ballots for him, electing him the Democratic candidate in the race. Then came a tidal wave of misinformation and attacks. It felt as if the pushback came precisely because he was trying to be the first millennial, Muslim, Indian-American mayor of New York City.
But Zohran had built a powerful campaign. Volunteers knocked on over a million doors on his behalf. And he had done something else. He’d walked the five boroughs of the city, meeting voters and getting to know their lives and their concerns.
This is the element of Zohran Mamdani’s story that led to today’s delightful picture book, Zohran Walks New York by Millie von Platen (Calkins Creek).
Process Talk: Cynthia Leitich Smith on Firefly Season
Among the many voices bringing contemporary Indigenous stories to young readers in North America, one narrative has been conspicuous in its absence. By that I mean stories of relationships between Native American or First Nations characters and those from India—children with very different origins and histories, from very different places on the face of our planet. yet sharing a moniker that is a bitter kind of joke, bestowed upon many diverse communities by the circumstances of colonization. So when I heard about Firefly Season (Heartdrum) by my dear friend and colleague Cynthia Leitich Smith, I knew I'd want to hear more from her about the making of this book.
Process Talk: Karen Krossing on My Street Remembers
In a big-hearted treatment of place and history, akin to Australian writer Nadia Wheatley’s iconic picture book, My Place, Karen Krossing’s latest release, My Street Remembers, is grounded in conceptions of people and place that we’d all do well to reflect upon:
everyone is part of history and every place has a story worthy of telling.
story should be told in all its aspects, joyful and sad.
just as the Earth has layers, so do our histories.
if we are to grow beyond our worst instincts, those histories must be told and read and talked about.
I'm delighted to welcome Karen Krossing to Writing With a Broken Tusk.
Guest Post: Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow, Picture Books and the Playfulness of Children
Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow knew she wanted to be a writer at the age of seven when she wrote a story called “Little Ballerina” and wasn’t satisfied with it when she finished it. She added a sequel and then more, until she had “an impossibly long series.” More from her web site:
I wrote stories and poetry all through grade school and even college, but as an adult, I suppressed my dreams of pursuing professional writing.
This pathway so closely mirrors my own childhood writing experiences and my own reluctance to honor them as an adult that I thought I’d reach out to Jamilah for a guest post. I meant to, but got sidetracked by the daily shuffle.
Rules, Rights, and Duties: the World’s Longest Constitution Distilled for Kids
From its mango-yellow endpapers with letters scribbled across them in multiple Indian language scripts to its freshly voiced text and the colourful, energetic illustrations by Ashok Rajagopalan, 5 Fantastic Facts About the Indian Constitution is a charming invitation from the writer-editors of Tulika Books to young readers.
I emailed Radhika Menon about the book and this is what she wrote:
It really was a challenge to do a picture book on the Constitution for five and six year olds as their first introduction to the Constitution. It is personally a very important book for me to have our children - and grandchildren - grow up with the knowledge that we have a fantastic constitution…and why it is fantastic. The idea had to be introduced visually with humour and affection for it to stay with them. Ashok was the perfect illustrator.
Process Talk: Taraneh Matloob on Dear New Friend
Taraneh Matloob’s new picture book, Dear New Friend, feels like an invitation to step into its pages ro meet the Persian family she portrays. Many little touches set this up—a secret knock, a grandmother humming a tune, and watermelon!
Oh, and watermelon seeds—and you can tell what comes after that, can’t you? Taraneh’s path has crossed mine in other ways in the past, in her capacity as a translator (she translated my friend Susan Fletcher’s Shadow Spinner into Farsi) and a children’s literature scholar. I’m delighted to have this conversation with her here.
Shape, Space and Scansion in Picture Book Text—Part 2
As a picture book writer who is not also an illustrator, I only have my mind to work with, so when people ask me how my process works, it’s easy to freeze, to default to not knowing. Not knowing makes me inclined to wonder if the art and craft of it all might be purely instinctive. Or worse, perhaps a fluke. So while I was looking at my own book, Look! Look! in this context, I thought I’d ask a couple of writers in my critique group (affectionately dubbed The Autodidacts) to weigh in: Vaunda Micheaux Nelson and Caroline Starr Rose.
I asked each of them to think about one of her picture books to find something that changed between the early draft and the final book.
Vaunda wrote about Almost to Freedom (2004 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book):
I was working on the final phase of Almost to Freedom. The story is historical — about a family trying to escape slavery — and I am always concerned about getting the history correct.
Shape, Space, and Scansion in Picture Book Text—Part 1
I’ve always been fascinated by writing picture book text, which is in effect, the work of writing what feels like half a book. Only the words, but we know the book won’t be complete until pictures arrive to fill in most of the spread that our words get sprinkled over. So I thought it might be fun and maybe informative as well, to take a look at how I did this, exactly, with one of my picture books. What did I put in? What did I leave out?
To start with, here’s the final draft of the first manuscript page of Look! Look! that I submitted to Groundwood Books in 2023.
Process Talk: Nicola Davies on Ride the Wind
I read Ride the Wind by Nicola Davies in an e-galley, which isn’t the ideal way to read a picture book. Still, even with the limitations of the format, there was something moving and engaging about this book. I enjoyed its depth and scope, and loved how Davies uses the boy’s story to access the albatross’s plight. She also doesn’t shy away from the complexity of human relationships—a representation that’s difficult to pull off in the small container of a picture book. Finally I loved that the child secures his place in his world and finds healing through bearing witness to something larger than himself. So I invited Nicola to tell me more. Here’s the result of our exchange of emails.
Process Talk with Jen: Kim Rogers on I Am Osage
[Posted by Jen Breach for Writing With a Broken Tusk]
Kim Rogers (Wichita and Affiliated Tribes) comes from a military family. Many of her family members served at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, named for Clarence Tinker, the first Native American Major General in the US Military, and the subject of Kim’s recent picture book biography I Am Osage.
Finding Clarence’s story was a surprise to Kim–she stumbled across a record of him in the Oklahoma Historical Society while researching something else entirely–and the process of writing the biography was likewise unexpected.
Process Talk: Sarah Aronson on Abzuglutely: Battling, Bellowing Bella Abzug
You know you’ve heard this quip before: “This Woman’s Place is in the House — The House of Representatives.” But do you know who said it? Bella Abzug (1920-1998) was a lawyer, politician, social activist, and pioneer in women’s rights. Here’s Abzuglutely: Battling, Bellowing Bella Abzug, a loving picture book portrait by Sarah Aronson, illustrated by Andrea D’Aquino. I asked Sarah to tell me more about the making of this book.