>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. >> Kids [inaudible] devoted much of this summer to books that took kids on out-of-this-world adventures. So it's fitting that I'm here today to welcome Billy Collins and Karen Romagna to talk about their new book "Voyage". "Voyage" tells the story of a boy, a boat, and a book. The boat takes the boy away from the shore, but it's the book that transports him much farther. The story is told in just 18 lines by Billy Collins in his first picture book, but he's at home in a genre in which every word counts. He's the author of dozens of books of poetry, including his most recent titled "Aimless Love". Billy Collins is a former poet laureate of the United States, and in that capacity, he created the Poetry 180 program, which exposes high school students to a poem for each day of the school year. His partner in "Voyage" is Karen Romagna, a first-time illustrator who often paints seascapes near her New Jersey home. In "Voyage", her palette of blues and greens beckons the reader to turn the page. The faces that emerge from the clouds and the moon are a special delight. Billy Collins and Karen Romagna are here today with Carol Kitchul Bellu and [Inaudible] Bellu of Bunker Hill Publishing and John Cole, director of the Center for the Book. Please join me in welcoming them to the National Book Festival. [ Applause ] >> I'm John Cole from the Library of Congress Center for the Book, and I was fortunate enough to be involved in the very beginnings of this book, and I'm going to read you my very short preface from this beautiful book and then sit down. That this will give you the background for what you're about to enjoy today. In 2003, on my 25th anniversary as the director of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, I was surprised and honored to learn that US poet laureate Billy Collins had dedicated a poem to me. It was presented as a gift from the coordinators of the 50 Centers for the Book that are affiliated in the States, and you can visit those state centers in the Pavilion of the States today to learn what's happening about reading and literacy in states across the country. The creation of this book, "Voyage", was wholly in the spirit of the Center for the Book, which was created to stimulate public interest in books, reading, and literacy. As it has since its founding through public law in 1977, the Center relies on private funding from individuals, corporations, and foundations to support all of its activities. This publication is in the spirit of the Center for the book, and for the kids who are here, I want to mention something special that the Center for the Book administers. We are in charge of the first Young Readers Center in the Library of Congress. It's in the Jefferson Building. It's open Monday through Friday. It has programs and activities for kids of all ages 16 and under as long as they are accompanied by an adult. It's a wonderful place, and I invite you all to visit it, and I would like now to turn the program over to Billy Collins. Billy. >> Thank you. Thank you, John. Having five people on the podium here might remind you of the, you know, how many people it takes to change a light bulb. How many people does it take to write a children's book. So John is really the source. We, I start, we started with John Cole because he was the inspiration for the poem I wrote. I really didn't write a children's book. I wrote a poem that's been transformed into a children's book happily and beautifully illustrated by Karen. And you're going to see pages from the book. We're going to walk you through the entire book, which won't take long. If I had written a children's book, I think I would have had a cow in it or a monster or something, but this is a rather benign children's story, and it's really about transformation. And I remember, I was a child reader, which sounds like something on the cover of "National Inquirer". But as a child reader, I remember moments of absorption into the story of fantasy world of the book, and a sense of being in two places at once. You know, I'd be sitting in my room in my parents' house, but I'd also be in this elsewhere that fiction and stories take us to. And I think transformation is very basic. You'll see, I'm going to read the poem in a second, but you'll see how things morph into other things, and this is an ancient, as ancient as Ovid's "Metamorphosis" where, you know, Daphne is changed into a tree when she's being chased by Apollo and other more violent kinds of transformations that we won't even discuss here. But, and the popularity of transformers, right, the physical toys and the movies show us that there's a basic fascination with one thing turning into another thing. It's magic, and then sometimes turning back to the thing it was. So here's the poem, and then Karen and I are going to talk some more about it, and it's called "Voyage". "A boy climbs into a boat and pushes off to the open sea, and when he loses sight of the land, the boat becomes a book, which the boy begins to read as it carries him over the waves. And when he has finished reading, the boy becomes the book as well as the wind from an illustration in that book blown from the mouth of a cloud with puffed up cheeks as well as a rising moon drawn at the top of the page which looks down with such loving amusement on the night sea, on the boat, the book, and the boy." So they all come together at the end there. Thank you. One thing I like about it, and Karen, I turn this over to Karen very quickly, I like the fact that the boy is alone. I think, this is not a book about socialization. It's not about getting along with others or being part of a family unit. The magic starts when the boy loses sight of land, and it's really about how the childhood imagination is stimulated through solitude. I was an only child and remain an only child to this day. So I had a wealth of solitude to work with, and I think it's also these moments where children go off under the stairs or they, into a sofa, cushions, a fort made of those things, they go off by themselves, and that's where their imaginations become stimulated. And also this boy is, has no self-esteem issues. He's a capable sailor off by himself, and he gets back to land. So he's OK. And he's off on his own adventure, and then the book he reads becomes a kind of adventure inside the adventure. So those are some of the themes that were set into motion by the poem and that Karen illustrated so dramatically and beautifully. So I'm going to turn things over to Karen Romagna. [ Applause ] >> Good morning. It's incredible to be here. I'm so happy that I can share this book voyage with Billy and all of you. It was a very interesting book. I'm going to come down and walk over here so I can see the illustrations. It was a very interesting journey for me to a little voyage I went on. And so this is the cover, and whoop. What did I do? I'm going to step on the other side. See if that will help. Better. OK. Alright. So not too much better, but if I put that down. Oh. That good? OK. So this is the cover of the boy on his adventure voyage and the beginning of his book, and we start out with the boy climbing into a boat. And boys that, I had to come up with a clever way for a boy to climb into a boat, and I had him climbing in just a [inaudible] usual way, and I thought, you know, that's not going to really work. You have to really climb into a boat in a different way when you're a boy going off on an adventure like this. So then he pushes off to the open sea, and he's setting off on an adventure that I don't think he even knows where it's going. He's in this magical boat all of a sudden. And then all of a sudden he loses sight of land, and he's struck. He's just stuck out there in the middle of nowhere with this book, and this dolphin sees him and starts to follow him on his journey. And I wanted to show the big horizon. Oh, now we're under water. There we go. Nope. Back under water. There we go. I wanted to just show this vast horizon of where this boy might be going. He doesn't know yet. He's on his way, and he's going to find it. And so then he had to figure out, OK, so this boy's on an adventure. He's in a boat, and all of a sudden that boat is going to turn into a book. How do you do that? I don't know. It's, I know, that's all of a sudden it just happens, and he's caught up in the book, and the book, the boat he's in actually turns into a book, and this is where his adventure starts to take hold, and he goes off. And so then the boat becomes a book. And then as he comes up above water for air, the, he begins to read that book, and he gets completely lost, and he doesn't notice all of these fun things going on around him because they're actually inside of his little mind there I think. And so I had to make it seem, I don't know, completely dreamlike. I wanted everyone to know there was more of an adventure coming along. And so then he begins to read, and it carries him over the waves. And the story becomes more and more interesting, and he gets more and more drawn into the story. Then all of a sudden he finishes reading the book. No, wait a minute. Yeah, and when he finished reading. OK. And when he's finished reading, there's another magical transition, and he actually gets drawn into this book, into this story, into this. He becomes part of it, the magic that you get with being lost in a world of literature and of reading and just not knowing where it's going to take you next. And for this little boy, it took him on a pirate adventure, and he gets drawn into the book. The boy becomes the book, and all of a sudden he's faced with pirates and adventure and things that he never dreamed of. And then the wind from an illustration in that book just, things just, it's just like this wild adventure that's going on all around him, and he's blown by a cloud, from the mouth of a cloud with puffed up cheeks, and what's better than a cloud blowing a little boy across the ocean in a wave. As a pirate, and he's now. Yup. There we go. OK. Oop. There. From the mouth of a cloud with puffed up cheeks, and he's totally engulfed in this transition of being a pirate in a ship but now he's just off on different adventures. The book is just taking him even further until, finally, from the mouth of, as well as the rising moon drawn at the top of a page, the book is, the adventure is kind of winding down, and he's being drawn back into, I don't know, a calmness that's going to come over everything. The end of the day. Which looks down with such loving amusement. And there he is just thinking about what's been going on all day. And the moon's looking down on the boat, and there's his little friend the dolphin that's been following him along his journey. On the boat, the book, and the boy. And there he is back in his boat. His adventure's coming to an end, book is coming to a close, ah, and he's just enjoying the rest of his little journey there in the ocean. And that is the end. Thank you, and then we have the boat, the poem written out in the book for everybody to enjoy. But it was a fascinating book to, I'm going to go back [inaudible]. It was just a wonderful journey to just go on this adventure with this little boy. When I first received the poem and was offered this incredible opportunity to work on a book like this, I didn't know where to begin. I got a call from [inaudible] Bellu, and [inaudible]. >> Well, it's funny where a book comes from. One never knows when one's going to come across a good book or find a new story, but I was in John Cole's office just, we came in to visit, and there was this poem on the wall, "Voyage", and I started to read the poem, and as I'm reading the poem, I said this poem has to be a book. It just was so visual to me. I mean, the cloud blowing and the moon looking down. All these visions were coming to me to illustrate this poem into a book. And so John, we asked him if he would contact Billy and see if Billy was up for turning this poem into a children's book, and very nicely it happened, and then how do you, who do you find to illustrate it. And we had an idea, and Billy came up with Karen's name. So we sent her an e-mail, and when she got that e-mail would you be interested in offering a, the drawing to maybe draw a book with Billy Collins, illustrate a book, she thought it was spam. She almost threw it into her junk because she didn't - >> Oh sure. >> I mean. >> OK, Billy Collins, OK - >> And so luckily she didn't put it in her junk, and she, we had the two illustrators send in their version of one of the pages, and Karen's really said that she was, we all both felt that she was very strong and was gaining the, what we saw the book being, and so it was Karen who was chosen, and then came how do you illustrate a boy, a boat becoming a book. How do you illustrate a boy becoming a book? And Karen came up for a visit, and we spent a weekend trying to figure out how to make this work. How to take these words that very easily took you on a journey, but, visually, how do you go on that journey. And I think Karen came up perfectly and with the solution, and not only does it, the poem itself is so wonderful, but the illustration completes the journey, brings it all together. And in a sense, every book is a voyage. You know, when you go in, you don't know where you're going, and sometimes you, you're not too sure. A lot of times you're just taken so much into it, you're ready, you can't put the book down. And this sort of poem is, this is what it's all about. It is go off on that voyage. Disappear into that book. So - >> There are only 100 words that I had to work with, and I read the poem to myself a couple of times and just thought, OK. And then I finally read it out loud to someone, and all of a sudden I just went, of course, it's plain as day. There it is. There's a little boy in a boat, and he runs into pirates and a dolphin, and. So it's funny how the mind works, and reading, really reading and understanding and going on that voyage and that journey becomes so clear when you really read and understand what you're reading and love what you're reading - >> Yes - >> So. >> [Inaudible] Internet as well. The, Billy spotted Karen's picture on the Internet, and we sent her a note, and it turns out that she was about to take the picture down. So 24 hours later, this book would never have happened. Which means don't take your picture down from the Internet. >> Now before I, I had to submit a sample to Bunker Hill Publishing, and I said, you know, before I do this sample, would you please tell me what illustration it is that Billy liked that would make him choose me over every other illustrator in the world, and they said, oh, sure, it's the one of the boy in the boat, and I said, OK, thank you very much. Goodbye. I get off the phone, and that's not even one of my illustrations. That was a painting I had done of my son when he was three, and Billy Collins found it. So it was just this, right from the start, it was an incredible journey. So - >> So that's the reason we have five people on stage is that the book is the result of an amazing set of synchronicities and coincidences, and I couldn't be more delighted that Karen found a way, it's a very complicated story because of all this morphing and changing of things, one thing into another. But she also got the simplicity of it, and I think largely, visually through the horizon line. Because every, just about every page splits the page with the horizon line, and that's a very basic line in all landscape paintings or a seascape paintings, and that stabilizes the whole book, and it's against that very stable visual background that all these rather bizarre changes and morphings can take place. And I also, there's some subtleties in the book that I'm just noticing because the boy starts out with a very simple sailboat, and after he reads the pirate story, his boat has turned into a kind of a pirate boat with a skull and crossbones on the sail. So he is in a state of kind of aft, a reading afterglow. You know, when you finish reading something, it stays with you for a bit. And so he's still kind of symbolically back in the pirate world as well as the world of his own adventures, but the book, and I think it's so critical that John Cole was the ultimate inspiration for the book because the book is really, the voyage is about reading. You know, Emily Dickinson had this very early. She said, "There is no frigate like a book." Right. There is no ship or vehicle like a book to transport you places. So I'm very glad to be part of this collaboration. And thank you for coming. I think we're just about out of time. OK, thank you. Well, we have two minutes. >> [Inaudible] percentage of the book going to, percentage is going to the Center for the Book. Some of the money is going to the Center for the Book. >> Oh, some of the money is going to the Center for the Book. Well, Ed should say that [multiple speakers] - >> I can say that in my turn. Part of the royalties of the book are going to the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress. So you're doing good work as well as enjoying yourselves when you buy the book. >> Buy this book. >> Yeah. Several copies - >> Really great. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc dot gov.