Award-winning author-illustrator Tomie dePaola’s loss of life in 2020 was an infinite loss for all who knew him, for the world of youngsters’s books, and for the numerous followers of his art work. But it surely turns on the market was one other present nonetheless to be added to his legacy. On the time of his loss of life, dePaola had accomplished a manuscript—and had begun conceptualizing illustrations—for a challenge very close to to his coronary heart. Seen right here for the primary time is the quilt for The place Are You, Brontë?, a young image e-book about love and loss that includes dePaola’s beloved pet Airedale, Brontë, and illustrated by Barbara McClintock. Simon & Schuster Books for Younger Readers will launch the e-book on Might 6, 2025.
The roots of the challenge run deep. In response to S&S artwork director Laurent Linn, additionally an in depth good friend of dePaola’s, the author-illustrator had grown fairly reflective about his personal life in his later years. For example, he meditated day by day and wished to create a e-book for youngsters about meditation and mindfulness. “I’ve by no means recognized anybody like Tomie who may know the thoughts of a kid, and never in a didactic means, convey difficult, even onerous, ideas to a narrative and make it accessible,” Linn mentioned. The consequence was the image e-book Quiet, revealed in 2018. After that, Linn famous that dePaola was considering quite a bit about loss and learn how to take care of that idea in a e-book for very younger kids. His eventual method was “to make it very private,” Linn mentioned. “Kristin [Ostby, then dePaola’s editor] and I’d go as much as his home and focus on this, and he determined it might be the story of Brontë’s life with Tomie, and would actually give attention to the place Brontë is now, as a result of Brontë is gone.”
Brontë, who died in 2016 at age 12, had been dePaola’s devoted and fixed companion. “He was Tomie’s household,” Linn mentioned. “The bond that they had was so clear and the way in which Tomie cared for him was very particular,” he added, noting that most of the rhythms of the Brontë-Tomie dynamic are rigorously detailed within the e-book. “And in order that it wouldn’t be horrifying or scary, however on the identical time very practical that Brontë has handed away, with out saying it within the textual content, it’s proven within the artwork,” he mentioned.
DePaola had accomplished a spare, poetic textual content and was about to start work on the illustrations in early 2020, however the course of turned harder for him as he confronted well being challenges. All the things then got here to a halt when he died of problems from surgical procedure following a fall.
“It was past devastating,” Linn recalled, “and it was proper once we had been all in lockdown after the pandemic hit. It was actually a tough time for the world, for everybody, and we thought, ‘Let’s simply not take into consideration this e-book and simply get by means of what we’ve got to get by means of.’ ” After a little bit of time had handed, Linn mentioned that numerous conversations amongst dePaola’s interior circle—Bob Hechtel, his good friend and supervisor of his studio and property; Doug Whiteman, his agent and former writer at S&S; Ostby, and different S&S colleagues—led in a single course. “Everybody agreed that it might be such a tribute to Tomie to have this e-book on this planet,” Linn mentioned. “And since it’s extraordinarily private, it’s a means of celebrating Tomie’s life in addition to the very last thing he wrote.”
The core group got here to a different consensus in deciding that Barbara McClintock needs to be the artist to select up the mantle and illustrate his e-book. “There was nobody higher than Barbara,” Linn mentioned. “She has the sensibility, like Tomie did, to point out a story with deep emotional reference to the concept of loss, and take one thing that’s very private and that includes Tomie, however make it common too. And so they knew one another a bit. Tomie actually admired her and thought she was an exceptional illustrator.”
McClintock remembers the second she first discovered in regards to the e-book. It was just a little greater than two years in the past, and he or she was sitting exterior whereas attending an occasion on the Highlights Basis in Pennsylvania. “I obtained a cellphone name from Laurent Linn asking me if I’d be excited by doing a challenge,” she recalled. “He mentioned it was the final manuscript that Tomie dePaola had written.”
As Linn proceeded to explain the story, he couldn’t have recognized that McClintock’s much-loved 16-year-old Siamese cat had simply died the week prior. “I used to be very a lot coping with the method of grief and loss, so the timing of this was fairly extraordinary,” she mentioned. “Laurent and I talked—about pets and household and loss [Linn had also just lost a cherished cat]—for perhaps 20 minutes as I used to be sitting on this porch looking over a subject. We had been laughing, we had been crying. All the things in regards to the e-book resonated with me, and it was such an honor for Laurent to think about me illustrating it. I used to be simply greatly surprised.”
She felt one other degree of appreciation for the invitation as properly. “I wished to honor the reminiscence of Tomie and the communal grief that all of us had been experiencing over his sudden departure from this mortal coil,” she mentioned. “It was one thing I very a lot wished to do; it appeared virtually meant to be.”
McClintock’s enthusiasm for the challenge solely grew as soon as she had the manuscript in hand. Readers will see Brontë develop from puppyhood into outdated age and expertise blindness, however “the story then is basically about Tomie coming to grips along with his grief and coming to know that Brontë remains to be with him and can at all times be with him,” she famous. “The manuscript is breathtaking—simply the simplicity and frankness of the way it’s written could be very inspiring.”
By the point McClintock started engaged on the e-book in earnest, Ostby had left Simon & Schuster for Greenhouse Literary Company and govt editor Celia Lee had come aboard as editor of The place Are You, Brontë? Lee, Linn, and McClintock went backwards and forwards on learn how to method the art work. “It was crucial to all of us that Barbara was capable of make this her e-book, too,” Linn mentioned. “I instructed her she had the entire freedom to make it her imaginative and prescient and never attempt to assume what would Tomie have finished.”
DePaola’s presence nonetheless loomed giant within the collaboration. “I actually endeavored to mix my fashion with Tomie’s,” McClintock mentioned. “It virtually felt like he was within the studio with me as I used to be engaged on issues, as a result of I turned so deeply embedded in investigating and exploring interviews with him and images of him, and Laurent was an enormous assist.”
Along with referencing his longtime friendship with dePaola, Linn may additionally depend on a treasure trove of images of dePaola’s house, studio, and artwork that Linn had taken for the up to date biography The Worlds of Tomie dePaola by Barbara Elleman (S&S, 2021). “What’s depicted in The place Are You, Brontë? relies in actuality,” Linn mentioned. “It’s [McClintock’s] interpretation of what his house and studio seem like, nevertheless it has that specificity that makes it very actual,” he added, pointing to a type of bits of analysis. “Tomie had a beautiful drawer of scarves and a beautiful field of glasses—and people actually had been his signature. Barbara had numerous enjoyable with all types of scarves that he would put on.”
DePaola’s style signatures are showcased on the e-book’s jacket. “It made excellent sense to point out how Tomie, as an artist, was coping with what had occurred by drawing an image,” McClintock mentioned. “So we see Tomie on the drafting board, and he’s within the technique of drawing an image of Brontë. And you then see Brontë’s mattress empty close to the drafting board. That is Tomie in his pure aspect, doing what he cherished to do and what he did greatest.”
McClintock says that there’s additionally an inside picture of the e-book that could be very particular to her. At one level, dePaola and Brontë are proven driving off to a cocktail party after which a double web page unfold on the middle of the e-book depicts a desk with Tomie sitting on the head and characters from his books gathered round. Among the many friends are Mrs. Beulah Bowers, Tomie’s elementary faculty artwork instructor; Andy and Sandy, Oliver Button, Strega Nona—and the e-book’s editor Lee, and artwork director, Linn. “Serving all of them a humongous bowl of spaghetti is, in fact, Large Anthony,” McClintock mentioned with fun. “I actually wished to rejoice a number of the many, many characters that Tomie delivered to life and created.”
The strands of emotional connection woven into the challenge have made it memorable for Linn as properly. “It has been extremely therapeutic for me,” he mentioned. “I did have Tomie in my head a bit as I used to be designing it, due to the typefaces, the font selection, deciding how a lot of a spare white web page to have with the artwork—all of the issues that I had labored with him on, questioning if he’d be proud of it, too. When individuals see The place Are You, Brontë?, it’s going to present that it was made with love in each side.”
The place Are You, Brontë? by Tomie dePaola, illus. by Barbara McClintock. Simon & Schuster, $19.99 Might 6, 2025 ISBN 978-1-5344-1850-9
