For Anyone with 'the Soul of an Artist'
‘Rhino Suit’ Author/Illustrator Colter Jackson Will Speak at Family Reading Night
By Karen Cernich Dickhut, Community Literacy Foundation
There’s a lot to be frightened of or sad about in the world today — earthquakes, war, death . . . It can feel like there’s tragedy and cruelty everywhere. How do you cope with that and still find a way to get out of bed in the morning? Would life be better if you could live inside a tough shell that shielded you from all of the sadness?
Children’s author/illustrator Colter Jackson says she felt exactly that way when she was growing up in Sedalia, Mo., but she learned an important lesson about what happens when you keep the world at bay — and she shares that lesson with the rest of us in her new book, “The Rhino Suit,” which she admits is sort of auto-biographical (although the little girl in the story is drawn to look like her daughter).
“The personality of the girl is me. I was very sensitive. And growing up in southern Missouri, I just don’t think people knew what to do with that,” Jackson said. “I was told a lot that I had to toughen up, get a thicker skin, and I internalized that to mean there was something wrong with me. I felt things so deeply and was just so crushed by the world.
“It took me a really long time to figure out that’s really a beautiful way to be and that’s often the soul of an artist. Being sort of porous and letting things flow through you so you can reflect it back is a big part of being an artist . . . So I wrote ‘The Rhino Suit’ for kids like me.
“I needed this kind of book when I was little.”
Jackson and “The Rhino Suit” will be the featured author and book at this year’s Family Reading Night Friday, March 3, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at Washington Middle School. The free event is sponsored by the Community Literacy Foundation in partnership with the School District of Washington and the Washington Optimist Club.
Jackson will give a brief presentation at 6 p.m. in the gymnasium, and afterward, children and families can visit their choice of reading rooms, where community leaders and local high school students will read books aloud, or they can make book-inspired crafts in a maker space, where a variety of materials will be available.
As a finale, members of the Washington Police Department will perform a skit based on a popular children’s story. Following the performance, children who visited two or more reading rooms will have the chance to win one of dozens of book baskets donated by local organizations, businesses and individuals.
‘A Note to My Extra Sensitive Friends’
“The Rhino Suit” tells the story of a young girl who feels everything so deeply that seeing things like litter in the street, an animal without a home, and a parent in pain is enough to make her want to hide. So she creates a rhino suit to wear and keep out the pain of the world — but she soon realizes it keeps her from seeing the good too.
Jackson ends the book with “A Note to My Extra Sensitive Friends” and a list of things kids can do when they feel overwhelmed by their feelings. It was important enough to her to include that she had to persuade the publisher to let her have more than the usual 32 pages. The way children’s book publishing works, she was granted 8 more pages, which allowed her to stretch out the story’s ending too. “We had a couple of extra pages, so I wanted to write that letter. That was important to me. I wanted kids to understand that I was exactly that way when I was young.”
‘I Wanted to Go Where the Books Were’
Today, Jackson lives in the East Village of Manhattan in New York City. She moved there in 2002 after earning a journalism degree (emphasis in advertising) from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her dream was to be an author, and advertising seemed like a creative enough path to make that happen.
“I had never known an author or an illustrator, but I was just in love with books always . . . so I wanted to go where the books were, which is New York . . . I don’t know if I thought I would always be in advertising, but I just sort of followed the books . . . I feel like I had this intense desire to be near the book world. I just wanted to go where people are talking about books and care about books.”
Jackson didn’t have a job lined up when she moved to New York. Initially, she worked at Macy’s and lived in Queens. But she couldn’t have been happier. Even as a child, she had always been drawn to big cities.
“I like the coming together of ideas, the diversity that cities offer,” Jackson said. “I really wanted to go to the biggest one.”
From 30-Second TV Spot to 32-Page Picture Books
Looking back, Jackson said a career in advertising was excellent preparation for being a picture book author.
“Your brain gets trained in coming up with ideas on the spot . . . and it’s not a long stretch from . . . the 30-second TV spot to the 32-page picture book, there’s something about what you can get, the amount of a narrative you can get into a commercial that you can get into a children’s book. They are very similar. It’s like a one-beat,” Jackson said.
‘There’s a Melancholy to My Illustrations’
You would never know it by looking at Jackson’s illustrations, especially because of the way people respond to them, but she is entirely self-taught; she never formally studied art. It had always been something she did on the side — as a present for a family member or a painting for a friend. So being able to create the illustrations for her children’s books has been extremely rewarding.
“I feel like (my art) has opened a lot of doors for me that so many years of writing didn’t. It’s been a really lovely surprise,” Jackson said.
These days, she creates each drawing with pencil, then scans them and adds color using Photoshop. Initially, though, she used watercolor (“not appropriately,” she stressed) to add color. “I used it almost as a wash over the pencil, which creates a really specific look . . . it helps me to have a style that’s my own. It doesn’t look like a lot of other people, because I’ve never learned from anyone.”
Jackson’s illustrations have been described as “soft and emotive,” because her artwork makes you feel something. That may include some sadness.
“There is a melancholy to my illustrations that made it a tough sell for children’s books for a while, especially with the sort of dreary colors, with the shading and the sad, downturned eyes on all my characters and the animals. That’s just sort of my touch,” Jackson explained. “I’ve always drawn that way.”
Jackson said that for years, she heard “No” a lot in regard to her artwork. “I think the problem was my illustrations don’t look like what a lot of illustrations look like in kids’ books — bright colors, open-mouthed smiles, movement. They are very staid. The characters are often heavy. There’s not a lot of whimsy. It’s a heavier feel . . . and that’s on purpose. I like that mood,” Jackson said. “That’s the mood I’m trying to strike, especially with the type of books I write, that are often metaphor books.”
The UN, Tina Fey, Fellowships & More
Jackson’s career has included many highlights. Among other things, her work in advertising led her to write a script for actress/comedian Tina Fey in an American Express TV commercial and a speech for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
“That started with a campaign to minimize discrimination against HIV and AIDS . . . somehow that got translated into, ‘You’re good at humanizing a voice, making something easy to understand,’ . . . why don’t you write this speech for him,” Jackson recalled.
She also has received several Fellowships over the years, and she has done a good number of Artist in Residencies. Both opportunities allowed her to travel around the world. She once did a residency in the Arctic Circle while she was working on a novel with an apocalyptic climate change theme. Jackson was quick to note that winning those opportunities likely is a direct result of her experience in advertising.
“Advertising gives you the gift for brevity. I would get art grants because I could concisely convey the idea that I’m trying to create.”
‘Librarians Saved My Life’
Looking back over her career, Jackson credits the librarians in Sedalia with feeding her love of books and helping her become the person she is today.
“I could talk for days about how much the librarians in my life have saved my life. They gave me a library card at 5 years old. I lived behind the library and would drag my wagon over to the library, fill it with books every single day. Even before I could read, the physical object of the book mattered to me. They felt like treasures. I felt like I could go over and get treasures from the library, and that is in me. It has lived in me my entire life.”
For adults who would like to learn more about how to create children’s books, Jackson will lead a two-hour class, "The Art of Making Kids Books," that will include an overview of the business, Saturday morning, March 4, from 9 to 11 a.m., in the lower level of the Washington Public Safety building, 301 Jefferson Street. The fee to attend is $25. Space is limited so please register today!