Speaker 1: Arrow dot net isn't just a podcast, it's twenty different
podcasts a r r oe dot net something for every
flavor and need, such as view from the Writing Instrument.
It's all about those of us that have been chosen
to write, to hear from the authors, to go into
your deep way of thinking, to understand your paths, situations
as well as you're healing. It's called view from the
Writing Instrument on ero dot net aar r oe dot net.
Enjoy your exploration. Wow, what an amazing journey that the
two of you have been on. And I gotta tell you,
I have sat with more teachers over the past couple
of weeks talking about this because I mean, it's like
you're taking something that was so amazingly effective and you've
planted in a world right now that needs this story. Again.
I mean, it's so amazing how you have figured out
this plan on how to put it in the center
of where we are currently growing.
Speaker 2: Oh, thanks so much, Erro. We're proud of our book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agreed, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Does it go beyond a book because I mean, it's
got like a legacy attached to it because the stories
that I have of Rumpel Steel skin. If I were
to sit down with somebody from Alpha or Beto, the generations,
they would look at me and go, wow, you've got
a different interpretation of what I've got in this present day.
So I mean, it's almost like you're taking something from
the past and you're saying, here, hold onto this for
a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a very old story.
Speaker 2: Rumpel steel Skin is a fairy tale.
Speaker 4: It's a folk tale, which means the story that's been
told for hundreds of years, and at first it was
told out loud through generations. Then it was set down
by the brothers Grim and different writers different versions of it.
That's what we do with fairy tales, right We passed
them between generations, and their meanings change depending on who's
telling the story and who's listening to it too.
Speaker 5: See.
Speaker 1: And what I love about this is that you're showing
that up and coming author right now, they're just readers,
but we all know that it's the authors that inspire
tomorrow's writers. And the thing is is that you're allowing
them to understand. It doesn't have to be a love
song that broke your heart. It can be a Rumpel
steel Skin. It can be something that affects us in
different ways. Just right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's something, Carson that I both love
about this story.
Speaker 2: It's just the super turbo story.
Speaker 6: Like, it's got revenge, riddles, magic, danger, tricks.
Speaker 4: It's got so many emotional movements in it.
Speaker 2: What makes it so fun?
Speaker 1: Now, Carson, what's interesting about what you have done with
this book is you have stayed very authentic to it,
to its quality of the past. It's almost like you
are saluting where this story originates from. And I just
and the coleren and everything. Here is why we want
a picture book in our lives, so we can read
what is coming from Mac and then we step into
that photo and go, I understand, I get it. Oh
my god, there's such a collaboration between the two of you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, Mac and I are old friends. We've
been friends for almost twenty years. Oh And unlike the
case with many picture books, where the author and illustrator
have no interaction, don't speak throughout the process, and maybe
never even communicate or meet each other, we feel really
lucky that we get to make books together because we
are such good friends and we're able to kind of
figure out what we both love about the story and
what we want to do with it. And yeah, I
think Mac had a big part in me figuring out
what the illustrations for this book would look like, partly
because we both loved medieval stuff, and so I think
we had this idea that it would be a very
medieval and that's a very classic fairy tale stealing book.
Speaker 1: One of the things that sticks out so much, and
it's going on in today's world, and I think what's
really interesting about making the connection with what's going on
wise cracks. I mean, it just seems like that we're
all getting in trouble for wisecracks, but it's okay for
Rumpel steel Skin to have them. And it's almost like
you're opening up that door saying, have a great wise crack.
Don't make it hurtful, just make it a wise crack
to where we can all go hmm or go WHOA,
what was that? So you almost reintroduced us to the
legalization of a good wise crack.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: I'm a bit of a wisecracker, so I like to
put those in books.
Speaker 2: And I do think that Rumbel still.
Speaker 5: Skin is a funny guy, and I guess he's not
although he is punished severely at the end of the story.
Speaker 2: It's not for his wisecrack, it's for his baby's stealing.
And I think as it should be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because I've always my entire life, and I
swear to you that I always thought that Rumpel Steelskin
was Don Rickles because of the way that he was
able to move from travel to travel, to travel to
travel to say a wise crack and move on. And
I kept sitting there going, is he trying to figure
out if somebody's gonna spin some gold from for him
inside some bales of hay, Because I mean, it really
does fit into what's going on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, And to be honest, I don't know
that I ever saw Don Rickles and Rumpelstilskin in the
same place.
Speaker 3: Ah, that's some of the Max's famous wife.
Speaker 1: Now with you, Carson, when you do your illustrating because
I mean, you're inviting people to step into your interpretation.
What is that like for you as a creative mind
in order to do that? Because you're not just getting
the YA readers right now, You're gonna get the attention
of the gray haired people as well, because we all
have a connection to this storyline.
Speaker 4: You know, I just I wanted to tell, uh, the
best version of the story that I could me. What
was interesting was returning to what I think the soul
of this story is. And of course what I think
the soul of the story is is going to be
different from you know, what you might think it is,
but that's that's what you do when you tell the
story out loud. And that was just like I felt
like I was sort of tapping back into that old
oral tradition here and just figuring out, like, how would
I tell that?
Speaker 2: What do I think is important?
Speaker 1: Yeah, please do not move. Mac Barnett and Carson Ellis
are coming up next. The name of the book Rumpels
still Skin. We are back with Mac Barnett and Carson Ellis.
You know what's so interesting about what you just shared,
Mac is the fact that just on iHeartRadio a few
minutes ago, I put a story like that up there. Now,
bet it's because you inspired me to do this. Is
that what we write down on paper through interpretation is
in fact what you know, that's the way we were
supposed to receive the story. And it's almost like that's
that's what you've done. You have received this story. This
is your interpretation, and we're all sitting there going, oh
my god, I am moved by what he has put
on this page.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm very happy about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say like the being moved, especially by
some of the more somber moments. I think that was
something that was really important for Carson and me too.
The story contains so much emotions, so many moods, and Carson,
that was a big thing that you were trying to
unlock when you were approaching the pictures.
Speaker 3: Right. Yeah, it's such a beautiful retelling by Mac that
really does move from very funny, very desperate, to very funny,
to very somber and desolate to scary back to funny.
I think that's so hard to do with a story.
I think mostly people are trying to tell a funny
story or a scary story, or a sad story. And
the fact that it very gracefully he does all these
things one after another, I think makes it just a
great book to read to kids, because it's just seeing
there's so much that you go through in the process
of reading the story, and it also made it really
fun to.
Speaker 1: Illustrate well the way that you depict Ruppel steel Skin himself,
you know, with the red jacket, which to me shows power,
and then you've got the kind of hardened, chiseled face,
which to me gives me that little bit of scare.
But I'm going to listen to him because he seems
to be so playful, because he's so tiny and cute.
But yet you have to sit there and say, but
can I trust Rumpel steel Skin.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I actually was very strategic about that.
Speaker 3: I thought a lot of ways about of a lot
of ways I could have made that character, design that character,
and then I decided he should be ambiguous in the beginning.
So when he first walks onto the scene, he's sort
of waving hello.
Speaker 2: He has a hood over his.
Speaker 3: Face, so you can't see what he's all about. It's
kind of hard to tell if he's a good guy
or a bad guy. But then when he makes the
deal with the girl for her baby, then that's the
first time he pulls back his hood and you see
that he has these kind of sinister, glowing yellow cat eyes.
That's meant to be everybody's cue that he's actually like
a pretty bad, bad dude.
Speaker 1: But we need that challenge in the anxiety for us
to be able to look at the real world. That's
what I love about this. You can't trust everything that
you see that's in front of you, and that's what
I love about this. It's almost like you're giving a
sight of the insight that we need to focus in on,
if you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's really right. I think that's one
of the most powerful things about fairy.
Speaker 4: Tales is that they do contain some of those darker
rhythms of life.
Speaker 2: And kids are attuned to that. We of course want.
Speaker 4: To shield them from those things, but they feel it
every day, and I think they really respond to stories
that acknowledge that those rhythms are in the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a story like this where you do where
there is an ambiguous character and you have to look
for clues and the story is kind of what his
deal is is like, I don't know, it's it's a
really cool critical thinking exercise for kids, and they're so good.
Speaker 1: Why is it though? Why is it?
Speaker 4: Though?
Speaker 1: When we know the ending of the story, we still
go back to the beginning and start it all over again.
I mean, it's not going to change, but yet we
just feel like start all over do it again, and
we do it again, and you're doing the same thing
with your version of it. It's like, okay, so that's
the ending, go to the beginning. Let's do it again.
Speaker 2: M yeah, I mean I think that that hopefully.
Speaker 4: You know, we spent a lot of time on these
words and these pictures, and we're trying to make something
that holds up to rereadings, both because.
Speaker 2: We know that that is how kids read, but also.
Speaker 4: Because we want to just make something that's the best
we can for our audience. And you know, this is
a story that's been told over and over again, so
even you know, you can reread ours. But also we're
just tapping into such a long tradition of telling a
story that everybody already knows.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to walk in to imagine on here
in Charlotte, which is the Children's Library, they believe so
much in children and it's books like this that they
are I mean, when they sit down with those little
imaginations and they read a book like this, you have
no idea what it does to the adults. The adults
are embracing what you authors are planting for us to
have today.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much. We feel very lucky to
have this job. We have the best audience in the world.
Speaker 4: Are such smart readers of stories so true?
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find out more about the
two of you? Because ten minutes with either of you
is just not enough?
Speaker 2: Ah?
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 4: I have a website.
Speaker 3: It's Carson Ellis dot com.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my website is mac Barnett dot com. I also
have a news letter that I write for adults about
picture books. It's called Looking at picture Books. I write
that with my friend, the illustrator John Clawson.
Speaker 1: Oh see, you guys are so connected. Please come back
to this show anytime in the future. The door is
always going to be open for you, you know.
Speaker 4: And just like Rumble Stilsk and we don't even need
a doorp up.
Speaker 1: Listen. All I want is I want this to be
a twelve part series on Netflix or Hulu. And it
has to start Al Fanning. That's all. That's my biggest request.
It's got to start Al Fanning.
Speaker 2: All right, let's put it out there.
Speaker 1: Be brilliant today, you two, Okay, thank.
Speaker 3: You, thanks for having us.
Speaker 2: Thank you