Working with Brian Floca

I was liv­ing in Los Ange­les, so nat­u­ral­ly, I wrote a fan­ta­sy set in New York City. It had much to do with sub­ways, the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, and shad­owy crea­tures called Kerbs. Since I had just bought my first com­put­er it was a long and com­plex story.

I offered it to a pub­lish­er who took it. But as I con­sid­ered the book, the thought came to me: It’s about NYC, so it must (in today’s lan­guage) have diver­si­ty. I told my edi­tor I need­ed to rewrite the book. She said: “I’ll have to talk to my mar­ket­ing peo­ple to see if we can still do the book.”

Long sto­ry short, I took the book back and offered it else­where, receiv­ing one of the most mem­o­rable rejec­tion lines I’ve ever received: “It has no salt.”

I moved back east, to Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island.  When there, still brood­ing over my book, I read an essay by Will Eis­ner, the great com­ic book artist. As a lover of com­ic books, I had read his work, in par­tic­u­lar The Spir­it.

In his essay, Eis­ner argued that com­ic books (what we would today call graph­ic nov­els) were a legit­i­mate nar­ra­tive form.

“Ah,” I thought, “that’s what my book should be: a com­ic book.”

I talked to my edi­tor Richard Jack­son.  He wasn’t sure what I had in mind.  I sent him Maus, the com­ic book mas­ter­piece by Art Spiegel­man.

“I get it,” said Richard. “But where can we find an artist?”

Liv­ing in Prov­i­dence I had become acquaint­ed with David Macaulay, who taught illus­tra­tion at the Rhode Island School of Design. “Can you sug­gest an artist?” I asked him.

“One of my stu­dents does a com­ic strip for Brown University’s stu­dent news­pa­per. Get in touch with him.  His name is Bri­an Flo­ca.” (Being a stu­dent at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty meant you could take cours­es at RISD.)

Bri­an and I met, I looked at his work, he looked at mine, we talked over the project, and it was a fit. I intro­duced him to Mr. Jack­son and off we start­ed on our first collaboration.

Bri­an and I met every two weeks and, slow­ly, the book came into being.

That book, City of Light, City of Dark, was pub­lished in 1993 and is still in print, per­haps the first graph­ic nov­el cre­at­ed for young readers.

A cou­ple of years lat­er I wrote Pop­py, and Dick Jack­son was again the edi­tor. I sug­gest­ed the book have illus­tra­tions. “Who?” asked Dick.

“Bri­an,” I urged.

And so it was.  That book was pub­lished in 1995.

Over the years Bri­an has illus­trat­ed oth­er books of mine, The May­or of Cen­tral Park, The Secret School, and Old Wolf.  But it is the Pop­py series, all sev­en books, by which we have been most connected.

When it was sug­gest­ed that I write anoth­er Pop­py book, one which filled a gap in the over-arch­ing sto­ry, I said I was will­ing to do so as long as Bri­an was will­ing to do the art. As far as I am con­cerned, the Pop­py books are a fusion of my text and his art.  They func­tion as one cre­ation. When I think of my char­ac­ters, I see his images.

Now he has illus­trat­ed the newest (and I assume the last) Pop­py book, Rag­weed and Pop­py.

We have worked togeth­er then, for almost thir­ty years. The work­ing rela­tion­ship has always been pro­duc­tive, easy, and mem­o­rable. We have become good friends. His name has graced the ded­i­ca­tion pages of my books, and I’ve been hon­ored by hav­ing the same from him.

When I’ve writ­ten the books—unlike the usu­al arrange­ment in publishing—he has seen the text before my edi­tors do. I ask for, and get, use­ful cri­tiques. I have seen ear­ly art, and respond in kind. The books are col­lab­o­ra­tive. An exam­ple: In one of the cur­rent book’s illus­tra­tions depict­ing a man read­ing a news­pa­per, we dis­cussed the name of the news­pa­per, and the head­line.  If you look care­ful­ly (very care­ful­ly) at the cup on the man’s desk, you’ll see it has the logo of Brown University.

Brian’s pen­cil work for the Pop­py books is quite won­der­ful: metic­u­lous­ly detailed, full of life and ener­gy, and when called for, rich in wry humor. More­over, if you line up the Pop­py books in the order they were pub­lished (not the sto­ry sequence) you’ll see how he has evolved over the years. Oth­er books of Bri­an’s have won a Calde­cott and a host of oth­er impor­tant awards.

He’s smart, fun to be with, has a big-heart­ed laugh, is full of life, and sees life with an artist’s eye and mind. Curi­ous­ly, he was raised in the west (Texas) and I in New York City.  Nowa­days he lives in the Big Apple, and I live in a Col­orado log cabin.

The Pop­py books have kept us work­ing togeth­er. And now, for your plea­sure, Rag­weed and Pop­py.