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Children’s Ballet Book: The Furry Princess

December 16, 2018 by 4dancers

Furry Princess

Today we have a special guest – Vicki Crain, author of the new children’s book The Furry Princess. This book is centered around dance, and because of her background and experience in the field, she was the perfect person to write it. Vicki was kind enough to take the time to share some thoughts about the book, the illustrations, and the process of bringing everything together with us here today.


Can you tell readers a little bit about your background in both dance and writing?

I’ve been a dancer and writer for as long as I can remember. I was a dancer and teacher for a regional ballet company in Central Illinois. I also danced with a small modern company in Chicago for a season and performed for many years with a Chicago-based production company. In 2009, I started a dance blog – Rogue Ballerina – which covered dancers and performances in Chicago. That led to freelance writing opportunities with CS Magazine, TimeOut Chicago, Front Desk Chicago, SeeChicagoDance, and Dance Magazine, among others and eventually lead to my current job as Marketing Manager at The Joffrey Ballet.

What made you want to write this book? How did the idea present itself to you?

I was talking with my friend (and boss at the time) and he asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I thought for a second and said, “Write children’s books.” I think I’ve always wanted to, but never realized it as a real possibility until that moment. He wrote “furry princess” on a post-it (that was a nickname for his dog) and said, “OK then, do it.” I went home and wrote the original manuscript that night and gave it to him the next day.

The storyline is a very inspirational one. Can you give our readers the basic idea of the plot?

Princess Sasha is a tiger about to receive her royal tiara. She’s got big feet, she’s shy and clumsy, and is nervous about being presented to the kingdom. Her best friend and her Mom convince her to take ballet classes where she finds self-confidence, becomes more graceful, and falls in love with ballet. She meets many new friends (all animals) and learns a big lesson by the end of the book.

What do you hope children will take away from this book?

The main theme is Believe in yourself. If you fall down, get up and try again. Of course, I hope they fall in love with Sasha and find inspiration in her personal journey.

You have a very talented illustrator for this book. Would you share a bit about him and how you two met?

Chris (Christopher Scott Bell Illustrations) is so talented! We met at a restaurant where he was working. I was a former employee and came in for dinner and the bartender introduced us and said he was an artist. We immediately became friends and started discussing making the book. Chris was so enthusiastic and had so many great ideas to add – it was a perfect match! He went to art school and received a degree from the American Academy of Art, fine tuning concepts and the artwork for the book along the way.

What was your process for creating the characters? Were any of them based on people you know, or how did you form their personalities?

Sasha just came out of me. Her family and some of the other characters were initially named after and had some characteristics of my friends and family, but much of the original manuscript got cut once we started the illustration process where we decided what could be shown verses what we needed to say in words. The original story would have been a huge book if we kept everything in. Chris added some new characters and really built the world Sasha lives in. The three main characters – Sasha, Cami the Crane, and Mona the Monkey – all have different little bits of my personality.

Vicki Crain
Author Vicki Crain, photo by Cheryl Mann

Every creative project has a few magical moments. Special things that happen along the way. Can you share one or two of these?

The biggest magical moment was when Chris finally found Sasha. He had been revising and tweaking her style for a while. I loved all of them, but one day, he said “I found her!” He was so excited, and she was perfect.

Another is the addition of Cami and Mona to the story. One of Chris’s school projects was to create a cover for a book. He added in a monkey (he just likes monkeys) and a crane as a nod to my last name. They were so cute that we had to add them to the story. Honestly, I initially wasn’t thrilled about going back and adding to the story, but we are so happy with the final product. I can’t imagine the book without them.

Of course, the most magical moment was when we opened the first box and held the finished product in our hands.

It’s often challenging to collaborate with another artist. How did you stay on the same page for this project? 

Luckily, most of the time we were on the same page. There were a few instances when we had to talk through a change or addition. Chris can visualize what he wants, but I need to see it finished and then take time to think about it. For years, we met at least weekly (that’s how #tigertuesday started) and talked through every aspect of the story, the design, the text…everything! We took the book apart and put it back together to make it better many times. We really trusted each other and our talents and instincts.

What was the easiest part of this book project? What was the most difficult?

The easiest part, by far, was writing the story. The editing process was challenging mainly because it was so time consuming. Everything took much longer than we anticipated, but we wanted to take the time and make sure the final product was exactly what we wanted. That is the main perk of being self-published.

Can we expect another book from you? 

Yes! We are planning to publish three books in this series. We are tossing around plot ideas and hope to begin working on the second book in 2019.


If you’d like to purchase a copy of this lovely book, please visit the website for The Furry Princess.

Filed Under: Books & Magazines Tagged With: #tigertuesday, American Academy of Art, ballet book, chicago dance, Chidren's Dance Books, Christopher Scott Bell Illustrations, dance books, dance writer, dance writing, Princess Sasha, Rogue ballerina, The Furry Princess, vicki crain

Grier Cooper’s WISH: The Writing Process

December 3, 2014 by Rachel Hellwig

by Grier Cooper

The first advice I ever heard about writing was to write what you know. This made a lot of sense to me, particularly with fiction, because it’s much easier to describe things we’ve experienced ourselves. WISH is a book I’d been wanting to write for a long time, because I wanted to share things that have shaped who I am. Ballet and other forms of dance have always been a part of my life so it felt very natural to use ballet as a setting for my story. Almost every little girl (and many adults too!) dreams of becoming a ballerina and for those who never experience it firsthand it’s an absolutely fascinating world and a dramatic contrast to another major theme of my life: growing up in an alcoholic family. I wanted to find a way to weave the two themes together to create a story of empowerment.

deskI’m a very visual person so I always begin a project by creating a vision board. I find pictures in magazines that resemble the characters and settings I imagine and put them together in a giant collage. These vision boards hang right next to my desk so I can look at them when I need to. It really helps to have that visual cue; it may sound weird but I swear I hear my characters talking. I also write character sketches for all of my characters before I begin writing. I think it’s important to figure out your characters’ motivations, likes, and dislikes before putting them in action.

I began writing WISH many years ago, in between writing a bunch of other things. The first draft took me a little over a year to write. I wasn’t working with an outline; more of a vague sketch of where I wanted the story to go. I’ve since learned how helpful it is to outline first – I could have saved myself a lot of time and headache. A good, solid outline makes it much easier to look at things from a big picture perspective before you start writing. For instance, you can tell beforehand if the transitions between the chapters flow well.

WisheBookCoverSmThe actual process of writing a story is a sort of indescribable magic. I don’t think it’s the same for everyone. The only way I can describe it is it’s as if I am watching a movie in my mind. I see and hear everything going on and create the narration. The words flow from somewhere inside of me (my head, my heart, both?) and I write them down as they come. It’s incredibly exciting to have a story take form, even more so if you reach a state where the words just flow. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to that flowing state…some days things flow, other days they trickle or drip.

Once the first draft was done it felt good to have a finished project, but a first draft is nothing close to polished (although I’ve heard that John Irving gets pretty close). I knew my story needed a lot of work so I spent several months editing it and patching up holes in the plot. Then I put it away in a drawer.

It helps to give a manuscript time and space before you work on it again. It’s as if you see it all with fresh eyes. It was actually kind of painful to read the book at that point—all I could think was oh my God! This is terrible! I have to fix it! It’s incredible to see how much we grow as writers over time—even in just a few short months. That’s one of the things I love best about writing…not only do we keep improving the longer we do it, we can keep at it for the rest of our lives (unlike dancing professionally).

I was also lucky enough to work with a group of local writers – a stellar critique group I found through the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). It’s important to get feedback from other people about your work, especially people who know the craft of writing and write in your genre (in my case, young adult). For the next year and a half, we worked together, pounding out the chinks in our books, one piece at a time. It was fun to meet with other writers around a big table, share yummy treats and give and receive advice about how we could improve our work. My critique partners asked a lot of questions, often about things that I hadn’t thought about.

Even after the work I’d done revising and implementing some of their suggestions, my novel still didn’t feel finished. That was a little hard to sit with, but I wanted the book to be as good as it could possibly be. I tinkered more, focusing on a few last pieces that weren’t quite there. This is going to sound counterintuitive, but I wrote the beginning last and it was the hardest part! I read about what makes a good beginning; I found a lot of helpful tips online, mostly from agents and editors. I reworked it lots of times until it finally felt right. I gave the entire book a final pass by reading it out loud, word by word. Errors or clumsy language are much more obvious when you say them out loud.

CocoOf course, finishing a novel is just the beginning; there’s still a lot of work to do! I decided to shoot my own cover photo (I’ve worked as a commercial photographer for many years). Even creating the photo required a lot of planning in terms of costumes, makeup, hair, and lighting. I also do my own marketing and PR, which means – you guessed it – a whole lot more writing!

I’m now busy writing HOPE, the next book in the Indigo Dreams series. You can find me most days sitting at my desk working on it…after I walk the dog.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Grier Cooper
Grier Cooper

 

Grier Cooper has performed on three out of seven continents with companies such as San Francisco Ballet, Miami City Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet, totaling more than thirty years of experience as a dancer, teacher and performer.

She blogs about dance in the San Francisco Bay Area and has interviewed and photographed a diverse collection dancers and performers including Clive Owen, Nicole Kidman, Glen Allen Sims and Jessica Sutta. She is the author of Build a Ballerina Body and the new ballet-based young adult novel, WISH. Visit Grier online at http://www.griercooper.com

Filed Under: Books & Magazines Tagged With: Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, dance book, dance books, grier cooper, Grier Cooper WISH, Indigo Dreams series, SCBWI, vision boards, WISH, Writing Process

Review: “Dance Class” Novels

September 25, 2012 by Ashley David

by Emily Kate Long

“Dance Class” Graphic Novels by Beka and Crip (Papercutz)

#1 “So You Think You Can Hip-Hop?”

#2 “Romeo and Juliets”

These two graphic novels are a charming romp into the world of middle-school-aged dance friends Julie, Alia, and Lucie. Some of the content is geared towards that age group, but the stories are easy enough reads to appeal to a younger audience, too.

Each book is a set of 46 page-long episodes. Dance “inside jokes” abound, from the girls using their horoscopes as an excuse to visit the local bakery, to failing a math quiz by forgetting what comes after number 8. Romance and rivalry are present too, as in the life of any preteen.

I found some of the scenarios in the “Dance Class” series far too silly to be realistic, but the girls’ sincere love of dance is at the heart of it all. Every scene ends with a note of humor, even when things go absurdly wrong—Murphy’s Law seems to govern everything that goes on in the world of “Dance Class!” If anything, these two stories set a positive tone for discussion about obstacles dance students face. The lively artwork is a visual treat.

Filed Under: Books & Magazines, Reviews Tagged With: dance books, dance class graphic novels, papercutz

A Few Fun Dance Gifts…

August 19, 2011 by 4dancers

Today I’d just like to share a few cute dance gifts with you…two darling dance books and a fun mug. Gwendolyn The Graceful Pig is a sweet book for kids–it’s hardcover–something they’ll read again and again.

This site also offers a mug to go with it…Gwendolyn appears on an unbreakable, lightweight, 11 oz. plastic cup. It’s dishwasher and microwave safe.

Finally, Soldiers of Beauty combines poetry and dance artwork–extremely pretty!

Do you know of any dance gifts out there that you can share with 4dancers readers? Please do tell…

Filed Under: Dance Gifts, FOR SALE Tagged With: dance books, dance gifts, dance mug

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