>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> John Kelly: Their new
book is about how a beam
from the World Trade Center was
turned into the bow of a naval ship.
But it's really about more
than that as you'll hear today.
It's a very sensitive book that
in the end is quite inspiring.
Janet Nolan lives outside
of Chicago.
She's the author of five books
including "PB and J Hooray" which is
about building something
slightly smaller than a ship.
A peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Thomas Gonzalez was
born in Havana, Cuba,
and now lives outside of Atlanta.
He worked for more than 20
years as a design principle
and creative development manager at
Coca-Cola and has directed campaigns
for such clients as Delta
Airlines, Nascar, and McDonald's.
He has illustrated a number of
books; the first of which sort
of [inaudible] this book.
It was called "14 Cows
for America" and it's
about Wilson Kimeli Naiyomah, a
massai from Kenya who had gone
to the United States to study
and was in New York City on 9/11
and he was moved to show his
feelings for his adoptive country
and he did it by donating cows
blessed by his village elders
to the American ambassador to Kenya.
Janet Nolan has written
that it isn't hard for her
to find interesting
topics to write about.
The hard part she says,
"Is determining
if the topic will make
an interesting book."
Facts are great but what
matters is the heart
of the story within those facts.
Our next speakers are very
good at finding that heart
and illustrating those stories.
So, please join me in welcoming
Janet Nolan and Thomas Gonzalez.
[ Applause ]
>> Janet Nolan: So, I'm Janet
Nolan and this is our book,
"Seven and a Half Tons of Steel"
and I'm so happy to be here today
to talk to you about my new book.
I'm the author and Thomas
Gonzalez is the illustrator
and we're both going
to be discussing how this
book came into being.
So, "Seven and a Half Tons of
Steel" is a non-fiction picture book
about building a navy ship, the USS
New York whose bow contains seven
and a half tons of steel
that came from a beam
in the World Trade Center towers.
And this is the actual ship -- so
what happened is after the events
of September 11th, 2001, a
decision was made to give metal
from the World Trade
Center towers to the Navy.
The metal was taken to a foundry
in Louisiana where it was melted
down at a really, really high heat.
So hot that it turned into liquid
metal and it was poured into a mold
into the shape of a navy
ship's bow and it was
so hot it took four days to cool.
And then the bow, what was a
beam but now a bow was then taken
to a shipyard near New Orleans,
and while the ship was being built,
Hurricane Katrina hit the city and
it was a devastating storm and many
of the shipbuilders lost
their homes and were homeless,
and temporary housing was built
called Kamp Katrina, K and K,
which gave the shipbuilders a
place to live and food to eat
so that work could
continue on the ship.
The ship's motto is strength
forged through sacrifice.
Never forget.
And I think it's personally really
powerful that they put the metal
in the bow of the ship because
the bow is what cuts the water
and it's what leads the way.
So, I wanted to talk for a moment
about why I love writing
non-fiction.
One of the reasons is I
love learning new things.
Whenever I want to
learn something new,
my first stop is always
the children's section
of my local public library.
The tables are a little short and
the chairs are a little small for me
but since I write for children, I
think it's really important to learn
at a child's perspective.
I think it informs my writing
if I start with picture books.
I can always obviously go up to
adult levels, interview adults,
read adult literature, read adult
magazines, any kind of resource,
but I think that that's
the place for me to start,
and I also think personally
that anything you'd ever want
to know is in a picture book.
I also enjoy writing non-fiction
because I do love going
beyond the facts
to find what I call
the heart of the story.
We all live in the digital age
with amazing access to information.
We can Google anything at
any time and know something
about something we may have known
nothing about just moments before.
But what does all that
information mean
and does knowing a fact
equate with understanding?
So, I knew a fact.
I knew a beam had been used
in building a Navy ship's
bow, but what did that mean?
What did that mean for the men
and women who built the ship?
What did that mean for the men
and women who serve on the ship?
And what does that mean
for us as a nation?
Those are some of the
questions I was asking myself
as I began researching and
writing this book and it was
through my research that I began
to find the answers and the answers
as they often are were
found in stories.
I heard stories of people
who delayed retirement
so that they could continue working
so that they could
help build the ship.
I heard stories about people
who requested transfers
within the military so that they
could serve on the ship, and again
and again and again, I heard stories
about people who serve in honor
of someone that they knew, in honor
of New York, in honor of our nation.
The first page of the book
reads, "There is a ship.
A Navy ship.
It is called the USS New York.
It is big like other Navy ships
and it sails like other Navy ships
but there is something different,
something special about
the USS New York."
I believe that is true because
that ship is part of our history
and it embodies our stories.
I consider it -- it was
my honor and privilege
to write this picture book.
So, what is a picture book?
It's a story told in two
ways, in words and in images.
So, when you read a middle grade or
young adult or even an adult novel,
the author has described
everything with words.
Language is what they use for
the setting, the characters,
and the character's emotional state.
But picture book authors,
we have a different job.
We have to tell a complete
story while still leaving room
for illustrations, but
the interesting thing is
that we have no -- at least
I don't, I have no idea
who the illustrator will be
so I have no idea what the
pictures will actually look like.
So, it isn't until after
I've finished a manuscript,
sent it off to an editor, an editor
has decided to take on that project
that the illustrator is chosen.
So, it's a little -- the
writing for a picture book author
without the illustrator is a little
like learning a dance
without a dance partner.
But --
-- when it all comes together, the
words and the images, the author
and the illustrator, that's
when the magic happens,
and I think picture
books are truly magical
and I certainly think the work of
Thomas Gonzalez was beyond magical.
It was inspirational.
All right, so you're up.
[ Applause ]
>> Thomas Gonzalez: So, I'm Tom
Gonzalez and I was fortunate enough
to do this book with Janet,
and I have done this before.
I did the "14 Cows For
America" so I knew a little bit
about the whole world of 9/11.
It's a very difficult
book to do visually
because usually the
illustrator relies on visuals.
So, you do the research
and you see things
that you just don't
want to see again.
But I'm going to walk
through really quickly kind
of how the process works.
I'll get the manuscript and
I read it and I put it away,
and I actually try to do a
picture book without words.
I try to make sure I can communicate
if you cannot really read the word
but you can kind of put it
together by what you're looking
at which is difficult to do
because you really can't do
that without the words
to begin with.
So, my name -- and basically,
I had some thoughts about it.
This really kind of goes through
what was the mindset of people
in the morning before 9/11?
You know, there was
the World Series.
It's a totally different world,
and I find it interesting every
time I do something about 9/11
that the 10th of September
was so different.
It was just so different
in so many ways and a lot
of kids don't realize
how it was before.
I basically start with
a gut feeling.
I'll do sketches really
quick to capture the space.
Make sure that the person
looking at this doesn't get tired
of the same image and so forth.
And I brought -- this is the actual
-- this is how I start a book.
I spend about a couple of
weeks on this or a week maybe
and I just kind of lay it out.
I swap it around.
It's like making a movie but
this is exactly the one I used
for this book.
Now, from here, I'll start
developing what I like.
I'll make notes, thoughts.
I'll even listen to certain music
to kind of conjure up some ideas
and things that were
happening at the time.
It just -- you know,
frame of reference.
So, an example would be, there
is the sketch over there.
There's an intermediate sketch
I do that it gets very tight
and it really helps me kind of
spread the page out a little bit
so that one eye doesn't
really land somewhere.
It's just the way of the flow.
It's just a gut feeling.
And then, that's a
really tight sketch.
I usually do it in pencil
and then I'll color it.
I'll start playing with the
color and that's the final.
Now the final had a rainbow
and when we [inaudible]
for press we decided to take it out.
There's some things that
comes through discussion
that are infinite amount of
discussions about little details,
but we do think about
a lot of things.
We think very carefully.
So, if you look at the book,
you're not going to see the rainbow
but you will see this
image right here
and these are some other examples.
So, some of the illustrations
in the book.
I wanted to play off the fire of
9/11 and the coolness of the ocean
in the ship and there
are some more images too.
One thing to note here,
originally when the book was --
the way I wanted to do the book
was actually a lot of pages
where there was no text
and it was really scenes
in New York before
the planes struck.
So, for example, there is a picture
of New York City with the cabs
and you can see the reflection
in a mirror of this plane.
That is not supposed to be there.
The only reason why those
planes were not supposed to be
where they're at but
nobody noticed them.
So, some of the pages you see
the plane somewhere in the plane,
in the corner somewhere and
everybody is oblivious to that
and there's the ship right there.
And I think that was it.
Any questions?
[ Inaudible comment ]
>> Thomas Gonzalez: Oh, she
asked if anyone visited the ship.
I actually had an opportunity to
do that years ago before the --
when you go buy this
book, I did not.
So, I did a lot of research.
I watched a lot of film
over and over again.
You find stuff that you never
knew you would know but we didn't.
I made the best effort to learn.
I had a model of it, the whole
bit just to, and the reason it was
so important because there was two
or three ships although very similar
but they're very different.
So, I didn't want some expert
to say you got the wrong ship
because it was just so
confusing when I was doing that.
>> Janet Nolan: Can
I answer that too?
>> Thomas Gonzalez: Oh, yeah.
Sure.
>> Janet Nolan: I haven't seen
the ship either but I know
that the book has just gotten to the
man who's going to become captain
of the ship shortly and
he sent a personal note
which was really touching to me that
just how much this book meant to him
and to the people who serve on
the boat, and he actually said,
"Thank you for writing this story."
So, that was really
powerful to receive
that from the captain of the ship.
>> I happen to read this book
with my daughter and I found
that your style, your painting
style is like oil painting
and also the picture
is like movie-like.
So, I'm wondering where
you designed the book.
Do you have such kind of
idea before you design
that it should be a movie-like
or an oil painting like?
And so, this is my question.
>> Thomas Gonzalez: I usually --
I don't do oil paintings
because they take too long to dry
and I decided that it's
best to just do pastels.
Usually the way I work,
I'll sketch it out.
I'll get tighter and I'll
either get pictures reference
or I'll even shoot my own
reference or even object
and then I'll start
putting together --
then I work very hard
with the light.
I do a pastel.
I do airbrush.
I do ink on top of it.
I mean, it's just a bunch of stuff
and basically I found myself
retouching the illustration
to make it look realistic.
I want the reader to
be there in a way.
Yes, I hope that answers
your question.
>> Janet, the tone of the book
is perfect in my opinion as far
as how you present this really
awful event in a way that --
and master the illustration.
In the beginning there's some
very jarring not a gratuitous
illustration but you show the plane.
You show a building.
How did you arrive on the right
tone or voice and what was going
through your mind as
you developed that tone?
>> Janet Nolan: I think
for the tone of the book,
what I did is I never
told myself in my mind
that I was writing a 9/11 book.
I always thought I was writing
a book about a piece of metal,
and I stayed pretty close to that
piece of metal that left New York
and went to the foundry
and then to the shipyard
and became the bow of a ship.
The book has a silent
beginning, three pages,
and I think that that's really
brilliant because it puts you --
there are no words for 9/11.
There are no words to
describe really what happened
but those three pages puts
you in the proper mindset
to approach the book and
then my language stays very,
very close to the metal.
So, the echo is there and
the sentiment is there,
but I didn't have to use the
language to describe 9/11,
and I was able to describe something
I think more transformative
which was about building a ship.
Thank you so much.
This was great.
Thank you.
>> Thomas Gonzalez: Thanks.
>> Janet Nolan: Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.