>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington D.C.
>> Nora Krug: I am very excited
to be able to introduce one
of my children's and my
favorite illustrators,
Sophie Blackall, who I love.
There's so many books of hers that
I love that I didn't know which ones
to start with but certainly
the Ivy and Bean series,
The Big Red Lollipop, Ruby's Wish
and most recently Finding Winnie,
which won the 2016 Caldecott Medal.
It's a wonderful story and I can't
believe we're just learning now
about the true story of the real
bear that became Winnie The Pooh.
In addition to her books,
Sophie's art has appeared
in numerous publications
and as part of the Measles
and Rubella Initiative,
an international effort
to eliminate those two diseases.
But, anyway, now here
to tell you more
about herself is Sophie Blackall.
[ Applause ]
>> Sophie Blackall: Thank
you very, very much.
Before I even get started,
I have a magic microphone
so I don't even have to stand there,
which is very exciting and I'm going
to try not to fall
off on top of you.
I'm very excited to be here and
before I get started I just want
to thank all of the
thousands of volunteers
who have been here today
doing things like helping me
and bringing me water
and helping everybody.
It's been an extraordinary effort.
Somebody told me there were
100,000 people here today,
which is mind-boggling.
So, my name is Sophie Blackall
and I'm going to tell you mostly
about Finding Winnie today.
I grew up in Australia, which looks
like this so you can all understand,
obviously, why I left it to live
in New York, which looks like this.
Not yet, but it will soon enough.
I was once a child,
it's hard to believe,
I looked pretty much the same
except younger, and when I was
about seven my mother worked in an
antique shop and every afternoon
after school I had to go and
hang out in this antique shop
and I don't know about you
but when I was seven I was not
that interested in antiques,
especially furniture.
It was really boring.
So I had to spend all this time
in the shop and I was so bored
in the antique shop that I had
to pick up the only book that was
in there and it was a very dusty
looking book and I picked it up
and I started reading
it and do you know what?
It was fantastic.
It was this book.
I still have it.
It was Winnie the Pooh.
And I had never read
a book like this!
It was a book that meandered and
backtracked, that had digressions
and interjections,
that kind of pulled you
into the very forest itself
and also, at the same time,
kind of let you step back and see
what a book is actually made of
and I fell in love with the
characters in it and I never wanted
to leave them behind
and I kind of didn't
because it is still
my favorite book.
When I grew a little bit
older and I didn't have to go
to the antique shop anymore I was
allowed to walk home on my own
and I would walk the long way
home past the butcher shop
and I wasn't buying meat, you
know, I was seven or eight,
but the butcher, I would get to
the door and I would open the door
and he would see me and he
would roll up three sheets
of butchers paper, which is big,
white sheets of paper that he used
to wrap sausages up in and he would
roll that paper up for me to draw on
and he would also give
me a piece of boloney.
And in my memory he kind of threw
it to me and I caught it in my mouth
but I think I'm confusing
myself with my dog.
Anyway, I took the paper home
and ate the boloney on the way
and I would draw and I would
trace my favorite drawings,
which were Ernest Shepherd's
drawings in Winnie the Pooh
and I thought maybe one
day I might do this,
maybe one day I might
make pictures in books.
So I didn't do that for awhile
but I went to art schools
and I did paintings of butchers
because I have always loved butchers
and then to make money, because
it's really boring as a grown up
but you kind of have to make
money, I did paintings of things
like stain removal and
household tips for a magazine.
It was a high point in my career.
Around this time I had a baby and
then another baby and then I came
to live in New York when I won
a green card in the lottery.
I've been here for 16 years and
sometimes I inadvertently dress
as your flag because I love it so.
And in those 16 years I've
made about 35 books, I think,
and here are some of them
that you might've seen.
And around 2013 I received a
manuscript from the editor,
Susan Rich, at Little Brown, and
Susan Rich sends all her manuscripts
like this and it was the story
of the true bear, the true story
of the real bear that
inspired Winnie the Pooh.
And I talked to Susan; we had
an amazing breakfast with a lot
of pancakes and we talked
about Winnie the Pooh
and how it had been my first book
that I bought with my own money
because I think we all
remember the first book
that we bought with our own money.
Not the one that was given to us,
not the one that we chose ourself
from the library but had to
give back but the first one
that we bought with our
own money and got to keep.
And I bought this puppy from
my mother; she sold it to me.
She didn't give it to me she
sold it to me and I was seven
and I didn't have any money
because seven-year-olds are,
you know, not usually rich.
But it cost a dollar and I polished
the steps up to the antique shop,
10 cents a step until I earned it.
And I was so worried the whole time
that somebody else would buy it
and so I'd hide it in the shop
while I was polishing the steps.
So I have this book and it means
so much to me, this first book
that I bought and the drawing.
So Susan and I talked about all
of this and then I started work
on this book and it was such a joy.
The book, Finding Winnie, is
about Captain Harry Colebourn,
and it's written by his real-life
great granddaughter, Lindsey Mattick
and it's written as a story that
she's telling to her son, Cole,
who is a little boy
about 3 at the time.
And the story is about
Harry, who in the beginning
of World War I was a veterinarian.
He looked after horses and cows and
he joined the army to go and fight
in the war and he was going to be in
the Second Canadian Infantry Brigade
and he was going to take
care of horses on the front.
And he joined many other young
men and they went to train
in [inaudible] Canada and on the
train on the way there they stopped
at a station and Harry got out to
stretch his legs because they'd been
on the train for days
and on the station there
in White River he saw an
orphaned black bear cub
that was sitting there with a
trapper and he said to that trapper,
"I'll give you $20
for that bear cub."
Twenty dollars was all the money
he had, which was about $300
in our money and he just took it
out of his pocket and he gave it
to this trapper and
then he had a bear cub.
And what was he going
to do with a bear cub?
And what was he going
to do with a bear cub?
He was going to war.
But he took this bear and he
knew there was something special
about this bear and he
thought, what will we call her?
We all came from Winnipeg;
all the soldiers
that were together
came from Winnipeg.
So they decided to call her
Winnipeg, Winnie for short
so they would never
feel far from home.
So they went to train on the
green fields of [inaudible]
and that's the hospital where
he was looking after the horses
and so many other young men
trained with them and they were keen
and excited to get to war,
at least I imagine they were
and they had no idea
what was to come.
Harry and Winnie were inseparable
by this point and when it came time
to sail across the
Atlantic to England,
Harry had to make a
difficult decision.
His head argued one way but
his heart argued the other
and he took Winnie with him on what
was probably the greatest armada,
the greatest passage of
ships and horses and men ever
to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
I don't know if you can see
Winnie up there on the bow.
When they arrived in [inaudible]
it rained and rained and rained
and the men posed for
photographs with Winnie
so they could send them
back to their families
and then the order came to
fight in fronts and the trenches
and Harry knew he couldn't take
a bear really to war so he had,
for the second time, a
difficult decision to make
and he borrowed a car and
drove Winnie to the London Zoo
and he said goodbye to her
there knowing she would be safe.
And she was safe and she
charmed everyone who met her,
most notably a small boy
called Christopher Robbin,
whose father was A.A. Milne.
And A.A. Milne would go on to
write stories about boy and bear
that are some of the most
beloved books of all time.
When I set about making a book
I read the story and I think
about how the pictures are going
to go and how they're going to fit
with the words and I make a
kind of map of those drawings
and then I make each
drawing a little bit bigger
and a little bit neater and around
this time I show them to my editor,
Susan, and the art director
and we talk about them
and they tell me everything
that's wrong with them and I try
and fix all those things and then
I make neater, bigger drawing
and then eventually I paint
that once we've all decided
it's probably going in more
or less the right directly.
And you can see little differences
like Winnie was before she was
on the bench and then she
moved to be behind the bench
so there were still some little
changes to be made at that point.
Here's another pencil sketch
and here it is in color.
With a book like Finding
Winnie, which is a true story,
it's non-fiction, there's a lot
of research involved which is,
fortunately, one of my
favorite parts of making a book.
This is Captain Harry
Colebourne's real diary
that we kept during the war and
it's noted there on August 24th
that he bought a bear for $20.
Because the author is Lindsey
Mattick and she had all
of her family artifacts and
ephemera that I could actually touch
and look at, which was
an amazing experience
and made my job a whole lot easier,
photographs of Harry and Winnie.
This drawing was based
on this real photograph.
You can see Winnie up
there in the front.
I went looking for bears,
as you do, out in the woods
and I called them and,
you know, they never came,
which was very disappointing
and I not very wisely think
that bears would like me.
I have no foundation for this but
they still have not come so I looked
at photographs of bears and I flew
to London and went to the London zoo
and the archives in the London zoo,
which is like a library in the zoo
and the librarian showed me a
great big book called the daily
occurrences in which the zookeeper
would write everything that happened
that day in the zoo, everything
from when an animal got sick
to a new animal was born
or one arrived or departed
and this is the day, he brought
it out of a big box to show me,
the very day that Winnie
arrived at the London Zoo.
I looked at pictures of the
brand new [inaudible] terraces,
which was just built when
Winnie was put there,
it was where the bears lived,
and I looked at the zoo now
at the [inaudible]
terraces and oddly enough,
it's where they keep the
Australian marsupials.
So was able to visit my countrymen,
the wallabies and kangaroos.
This photograph, which I had seen
again and again in my research,
of Christopher Robbin feeding
Winnie condensed milk on a spoon,
the original photograph
was there in the archives
and when you saw the whole
photograph you could see,
a little blurry at
the top, A.A. Milne
and nanny looking down
into the enclosure.
And it just struck me, it actually
strikes me every single time I look
at this photograph, just how
odd it is to allow your child
into an enclosure with a wild bear.
But Winnie was no ordinary
bear, as we know.
I wanted to show the day that
Winnie is left at the zoo,
I wanted to show just that
parting and how profoundly full
of sorrow it was so I wanted to
show her tiny in this vast zoo
and I had an idea to make it
like an aerial photograph,
and this was the math, which
was closest in time period.
We were talking 1914 and this map
was 1913, but I wanted it to look
like this much earlier map, which
was more of a bird's eye view
so I had to research every
single building to see,
because they had all moved, to
see what they looked like in 3-D
so that I could draw them in the
correct space of the 1913 map,
which was, you know, I've
already lost you I'm sure.
It was weeks and weeks of dead
ends and backtracking but,
you know, that's what I live for.
It was fantastic fun and I put all
sorts of little secrets in there.
Like in 1913 they thought
it was a great idea to try
and make the enclosures a little
bit more like natural habitats
so they put the seals and the
penguins in together because,
you know, they coexist in real
life so that makes sense, except,
of course, that the penguins
were extremely delicious
and that their numbers
diminished day by day
so I just left one unsavory penguin
in the enclosure with the seals.
I went to the war museum in
London and read soldiers' diaries
and looked at maps where they
would have walked and learned
that the Canadian soldiers
had boots with cardboard soles
that disintegrated in the mud
and these details never went
into the book but I know that
they're there and it helped me
to really feel the story and
how Winnie and Harry and all
of the soldiers might have
felt in these conditions.
Looking at the maps I realized that
when Harry and Winnie went to London
from the [inaudible]
they passed Stonehenge
so I had the perfect excuse to put
Stonehenge in except, of course,
I had to find photographs of what
Stonehenge looked like in 1914
from the very direction I was going,
which is not as easy as it sounds
because people care
about these things.
A lot of people know a
lot about Stonehenge.
The crossing of the ships, another
thing that people know a lot about.
This is the only visual reference
that exists and it's a lovely,
patriotic painting
called Canada's answer
but it didn't give me a whole lot of
help of what each ship looked like
and I had a list of the
formation that they sailed in
and I knew what Winnie and
Harry's ship looked like,
which was the S.S. Manitou.
So I did a sketch and
then I looked at the list,
which was on the military
archives, and it was sort
of like a game of battleships.
I had to kind of figure out
by process of elimination
which ones I couldn't find, which
ones I could, how to show them
in the right order and
while I was thinking
about battleships I found this game
that I loved as a kid but clearly,
girls and their mothers are not
allowed to play battleships.
Their job is to enjoy from afar as
they do the washing up as the sons
and fathers have a
rousing game [laughter].
Ahh, back in the old days.
In the eleventh hour, somebody saved
my skin by noticing a terrible flaw,
a possibly fatal flaw
in this painting.
Can anybody see what it is?
It's 1914, we are crossing
the Atlantic.
The Canadian flag!
Thank you.
The Canadian flag, the beloved maple
leaf was designed I think in 1969,
67, something like
that, not in 1914.
So thankfully a Canadian person
in the post-production department,
the book was about to be
printed, it was all there,
he said, "wait a minute."
So thank goodness it
was changed [laughter].
The book would have been
a disaster otherwise.
I wanted very much
to show the context
of the war even though this book
doesn't really deal with the actual,
the actual war itself,
it skirts around it,
but I wanted to show something of
what was happening at this time.
And so I book ended Harry's
departure to war with the sort
of iconic image of families
parting with his arrival home
and if you look closely,
and children always notice these
details, it's the same families
and we see some of them
haven't returned at all and some
of them have returned with a
limb missing or otherwise kind
of showing the devastation
that was the Great War.
I painted [inaudible] papers, which
was one of the many joys of working
with Little Brown where they sort of
said yes to everything and hid all
of the animals in the woods, in
the idea that we're finding Winnie
and around this time Lindsay, the
author, was organizing an exhibition
in London for the centenary of
World War I and she said, "Um,
Prince Charles is opening
the exhibition and I wondered
if you could do a painting
for Prince George.
I'm leaving tomorrow but
if you do it really quickly
and send it we could
give it to him."
And so we did and she actually
handed it to Prince Charles,
and this was the painting and I
feel now that I can win any game
of six degrees of separation
because I have met someone
who has met Prince Charles
and he's met everybody.
So, the very last thing I did
on the book was a special treat,
partly because I didn't want
work on the book to end.
I had seen this photograph
in my research of soldiers
over the trenches and it
reminded me of something
and I couldn't quite shake what
that thing was until I remembered
that it was the end papers of
my edition of Winnie the Pooh
and so I combined them too, in my
nod to my beloved Ernest Shepherd,
and that's the case cover, that's
the secret answer inside the jacket.
When you make a book there's a
very strange lull when it goes off
to the printer and it has a long
gestation when you've done it
but it's not out yet and I took
to carrying the printed proofs
around with me like an expectant
parent carries a sonogram
and around this time
I did a school visit
and I did the usual things
I do in a school visit.
I painted with Chinese ink upside
down and I told the kids stories
about the terrible dog that lived
next door that ate all the artwork
from Ivy and Bean when
it was sent back;
the dog literally ate my homework.
I told them about travels I
had done recently with UNICEF
and Save The Children to schools
in Congo and India and Bhutan,
which is a country where
the mountains meet the sky
and monasteries are built
into the sides of rocks
and there are unicorns and
children dress like silk butterflies
when they go to school and every
morning they sit in the classroom
for a minute with their eyes
closed and they think in silence
about what they learned the day
before and what they're going
to learn the next day and it's the
most beautiful way I have ever seen
a school day beginning.
And I showed them a classroom in
Rwanda and this is what it looks
like when it's empty and then
I showed them what it looks
like when it's full and there are
80 kids can fit into a classroom
and there aren't desks or paper much
or books but how there's a program
with Save The Children where they're
bringing books by local authors
and artists into these classrooms
and I showed them a picture
of children opening the very
first book they had ever held
in their hands and these are
those children and they're making
out the words and they're
reading the story
and they're seeing the pictures
and it was so wonderful to be part
of that and I told the
kids all of these things
and how we drew together on paper
and how the world over it seems
that girls will draw girls and
boys will draw cars [laughter].
And how they drew until every
inch of that paper was full
and then I said, "Are
there are any questions?"
And a girl said, "Yes, yes, yes!"
And I said, "What is it?"
She said, "Can you read us a story?"
And I said, "After all
that you want a story?"
And she said yes and they all said
yes and so I pulled the proofs
of Finding Winnie out of my bag
and I read it to them and it was
so wonderful and the
teachers were all crying
and the kids weren't crying
but we got to this bit
where Harry leaves Winnie at the zoo
and Cole says, "Is that the end?"
And we learn that sometimes
you have to let one story
to end for another to begin.
And Cole says, "How do you
know when that will happen?"
And his mother says, "You don't,
which is why you should
always carry on."
And I think then you turn the page
and you see Christopher Robbin
and his bear and this new story
begins and I think this idea
of letting one store end so
another can begin is quite profound.
I think it's how, as human beings,
we deal with change whether it's
grief from the loss of a loved one,
whether it's moving house
or changing schools
or simply growing up.
But we tell these stories to
each other and we are part
of each others' stories
as they are part of ours
and we pass those stories down
from generation to generation
and the wonderful thing about
a book is that you can go back
to those stories and those
books are your friends
and they are there
whenever you want them
and you have only to open the cover.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
Do we have a few minutes
for questions?
We do. Are there any questions?
Do you have a question
for me, young man?
Yes, fantastic!
Don't make it too hard,
nothing about dinosaurs.
>> Speaker 3: Fine.
>> Sophia Blackall: Okay, go.
>> Speaker 3: What caught you about
the first book that you bought,
Winnie the Pooh book, that made
you so happy and so wanting to make
like the history about it?
>> Sophia Blackall: That's
such a great question.
Well, I was little at the time and
it was the first book that I read
that kind of told a story but also
talked to me at the same time.
It was sort of, the writer starts
telling the story and then sort
of says, you know, this is happening
right now and he kind of chats
to you like he's really talking to
you and you read it and it's funny
and it makes, it's the
first book I read as a kid
that made me feel grown up, even
though I was only 7, you know?
And I loved the characters so much.
Have you ever read
it, Winnie the Pooh?
You have, do you like it?
Ahh, we're friends you and I;
anyone who likes Winnie the Pooh.
Oh, over here, I'm sorry;
I'm blinded by this light.
Tell me, hello?
>> Speaker 4: How long
have you been writing?
>> Sophia Blackall: Um, well,
I've been writing for a long time
but most of the books, I've
written maybe three or four books,
and all of the other ones I've
done other people have written
and I draw the pictures for those.
And both ways are fun because do
you know the Ivy and Bean books?
>> Speaker 4: I've seen them
but I've never read them.
>> Sophia Blackall: Oh!
You should absolutely read
them, they're really funny.
And they're written by Annie
Barrows, who is amazing.
She's just so funny
and great and clever
and these books are really good
and so it's so much fun working
with an author who has great
ideas and great stories.
It's really fun; I recommend them.
Yes?
>> Speaker 6: You did a good
job on the book [laughter].
>> Sophia Blackall:
[applause] Thank you.
>> Speaker 7: How do you make books?
>> Sophia Blackall:
How do you make books?
You start with an idea and then you
tell a story and then if you want
to make pictures to go with
it you make those pictures
and then usually you have to send
them to someone like an editor
who is kind of like a teacher
who tells you if you need
to do some revising and then
it gets sent off to a printer
and then it comes back in boxes
and they go off to book shelves
and libraries and then
you have a real book.
It's easy, see?
Just easy, you could do it,
you could totally do it.
Oh, over here.
>> Speaker 8: I've always
loved the Ivy and Bean books
and I always love your drawings
and I can totally visualize what's
going on with your drawings.
>> Sophia Blackall: That's great!
Do you have a secret burning
question about Ivy and Bean?
I'll make it up if I
don't know the answer.
>> Speaker 8: How do you get
like, how do you like visualize?
>> Sophia Blackall: Well, that's
part of where Annie is so fantastic.
Because you know when
you're reading Ivy and Bean,
they are like they're real.
Annie and I sometimes
believe they're real.
Sometimes I feel like I'm not
even drawing Ivy and Bean,
that they just exist and I'm just
drawing these people who are real
and are actually doing these
things because her writing is so,
like the voices are so real.
They're like real kids, aren't they?
I think so, yeah.
That's a great question, thank you.
Yes?
>> Speaker 9: How do you feel
when you get, like commented
on your mistakes on your book?
>> Sophia Blackall: Oh,
that's a really good question.
Has that ever happened to you?
>> Speaker 9: No.
>> Sophia Blackall: No [laughter]?
Well, you're lucky.
You know what?
Sometimes when I first get
that comment I think, that,
you're wrong, you're
absolutely wrong.
And then, and then I
don't say that out loud
but that's what the voice
in my head is saying.
And then I think, ah, maybe there's
something in what you're saying
and then often the other person is
right, which is why it's so great
to work on something with
someone else who you really trust
and really love and their ideas are
great too and sometimes you're right
and sometimes they're right and
you make this thing that's better
because you make it together.
So a thick skin, I
think, is the answer.
Two minutes left, [inaudible]
over here.
>> Speaker 10: When you were little-
>> Sophia Blackall: Yeah.
>> Speaker 10: Have you always
been good at writing and drawing?
>> Sophia Blackall: You know what?
No, I was terrible at drawing
but I loved doing it so much
that I kept doing it even
though I was really bad
and I promise I'm not just saying
that because my mother
kept my drawings
and I can see them
and they're terrible.
You know, I would try and draw
an animal, have you ever had
that experience where you're trying
to draw something in your head
and you can see it so clearly
and it's amazing, right?
It's an amazing, beautiful drawing
and then you start putting it
on the page and that's
not what I can see
in my head, and it's so unfair.
It's just rotten but if you
keep doing it and keep doing it,
it eventually gets
to something else.
And it may not ever look as
good as it does in your head
but sometimes you kind
of embrace those,
I talk about embracing
my limitations.
I'm really bad at drawing things how
they actually look but I draw things
in my own weird way and now I'm
okay with that and I love doing it
and it's partly how much
you love doing it, I think.
That's a very nice
question, thank you.
Yes?
>> Speaker 11: How long did it
take you to write this book?
>> Sophia Blackall: Well, I did
not write it so it took me no time
at all, it was the
easiest book I ever wrote.
It was written by Lindsay Mattick,
who was Harry's real
life great-granddaughter.
So the story came to me
already written but sometimes
when I write a book it's much
quicker than when I do the pictures.
Sometimes I have an idea and
sometimes I write it really quickly
like maybe in a few hours but
then, usually, I spend months kind
of changing a word here
and a sentence there
and then rewriting the whole thing
but drawing usually takes
me about a whole year, so.
>> Speaker 11: So, yeah, it takes
you about a year to draw and like.
>> Sophia Blackall: And just a
few hours to write, which is why,
you know, authors, their job's,
pfft, really easy [laughter]
and illustrators have
the hard job, yeah.
>> Speaker 11: My mom's
an author, so [laughter].
>> Sophia Blackall:
Yeah, right, right?
So you probably see that at home.
She probably just lies around
eating cupcakes and just
like writing a little
book now and then,
it's no trouble at all [laughter].
Oh, we're all out of time, thank
you all so much, especially,
fantastic questions from
you guys [applause].
Thank you, thank you.
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of the Library of Congress.
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