{"id":12086,"date":"2016-06-15T06:33:18","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T13:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=12086"},"modified":"2016-06-28T09:35:51","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T16:35:51","slug":"camosun-writing-prof-gets-childrens-book-published","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/06\/15\/camosun-writing-prof-gets-childrens-book-published\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun writing prof gets children\u2019s book published"},"content":{"rendered":"

Camosun Creative Writing professor Laurie Elmquist\u2019s children\u2019s book Beach Baby<\/i> was recently published, and, much like the book\u2019s protagonist, she learned a lot through the process.<\/p>\n

As the title suggests, the book is about a baby who is coming to terms with the world around them by observing the things they see on a beach. Elmquist says that the key for her was realizing that board\u00a0books are actually read by adults.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018Who am I writing this for? Who is the audience?\u2019 The audience is not the baby, the audience is reading the words, and so I just wrote it for an adult.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elmquist says that many of the animals in the illustrations in her book were inspired from her time spent travelling in California.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018I\u2019m so lucky to live in a time where we are still seeing all these animals from the shore in their natural state,\u2019 and then my wish was that the next generation of babies would also have that privilege of seeing that. So that kind of pulled it all together with what I thought was a sophisticated enough idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Camosun\u2019s<\/a>
Camosun\u2019s Laurie Elmquist holding her recently published book (photo by Adam Marsh\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The opening line of Elmquist\u2019s book is \u201cEverything will be here when you wake.\u201d Elmquist says that one reviewer of her book said it was good but backwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe baby fell asleep right at the beginning,\u201d says Elmquist with a laugh. \u201cAnd I guess the normal progression is that, you know, you see all these things,\u201d she says, pointing to the illustrations in the book, \u201cand then the baby falls asleep. My idea was that you just imagine the baby falling asleep and the promise that all these things will be here when they wake up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elmquist says she didn\u2019t know there was a \u201cwrong\u201d way to do things in the eyes of the publisher, but it didn\u2019t stop her. Quite the opposite, in fact.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really like that way of writing when you\u2019re kind of stepping into new territory and you don\u2019t even know you\u2019re breaking the rules,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Elmquist has another book coming out in 2017 called Forest Baby<\/i>. Orca, the publishing house releasing her work, came up with the name.<\/p>\n

\u201cOrca brings a lot to the table. I had called it something like Backpacking with Your Baby<\/i>, and they said, \u2018Let\u2019s keep the theme going here.\u2019 And we also did more editing on that one, because what I didn\u2019t realize was that they sell into the States a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where Elmquist\u2019s experience in California became the perfect selling point.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis one worked because it had our local animals from the beach, but also the pelicans and the whales and things that I was seeing in California,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

But when Elmquist took the book that is due to come out next year to her editor, she says they asked for \u201ca bigger scope.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was hilarious how I was just doing that by accident,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd then I had to sort of re-jig some of those images so that they spoke to an American audience. So that\u2019s the marketing side, and it\u2019s really fascinating and I loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elmquist says that her favourite part of writing children\u2019s literature is the fun. It began when she saw her friends writing for seven- to nine-year-olds, which Elmquist also does. One of the tools she uses the most in her writing for children, she says, is humour.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so excited about it because I\u2019ve kind of moved into this new audience, this new narrator,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause, you know, that age you can say so much to with humour and you can really tackle serious subjects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elmquist says that the biggest challenge in writing for children as opposed to writing essays or short stories for adults\u2014which she has also done\u2014is having an ostensibly simple idea be more than it initially seems to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always thinking, \u2018Okay, how can I take this complex dynamic and put it in a way that kids will understand?\u2019 I know that kids are going through complex things just as much as adults, because we\u2019re all living in the same world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Update: a previous version of this story said that Elmquist had told us “children’s books are actually written for adults.” She was actually referring to baby’s board books being read by adults. We apologize for the mistake.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Camosun Creative Writing professor Laurie Elmquist\u2019s children\u2019s book Beach Baby was recently published, and, much like the book\u2019s protagonist, she learned a lot through the process. As the title suggests, the book is about a baby who is coming to terms with the world around them by observing the things they see on a beach. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12087,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,166],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-june-15-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12086"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12129,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12086\/revisions\/12129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}