Kerry Madden Lunsford's ERNESTINE'S MILKY WAY

My friend Kerry Madden Lunsford has a new picture book out, illustrated by Emily Sutton, called ERNESTINE'S MILKY WAY. Once again, Kerry pulls us into the beauty and charm of the Appalachians, where my heart resides too. Both Kerry and Emily stopped by to talk about it...
e: What is your creative process/medium, can you walk us through it?
Kerry:
This is probably more of a question for Emily, but I have to say I loved hearing her talk to the students about using thick and thin brushes, toothbrushes, sponges etc - and showing them the early sketches, the smaller paintings, the sketchbook, and the way the Hundred Acre Wood inspired Ernestine's own journey through the Smoky Mountains. Earlier in this month in Southern California, we set up mini-galleries on our school visits so the students could see her work, and they loved it. She told them she's been drawing since she was old enough to hold a pencil, and this was very inspiring to them. My process/medium - long walks, listening, story-catching, interviewing, staring at landscapes, meditation.


e: What was your path to publication?
Kerry:
I wrote journalism and then plays, and then I began to write an autobiographical novel, OFFSIDES, about growing up a coach's daughter. After it was published, I wrote an American Girl book on catching stories and poems called WRITING SMARTS. I then wrote the Smoky Mountain Trilogy - GENTLE'S HOLLER, LOUISIANA'S SONG, JESSIE'S MOUNTAIN, and those books led me to meet Ernestine Edwards Upchurch and to return to the mountains again and again. (Note: CLICK HERE to see Kerry Madden featured for her other books on dulemba.com.) Those books also led me to write UP CLOSE HARPER, which is how I came to live in Alabama and California. While interviewing storyteller, Kathryn Tucker Windham for the Harper Lee biography, I was inspired to write NOTHING FANCY ABOUT KATHRYN & CHARLIE, which my daughter, Lucy, illustrated. Then I decided to write the story of Ernestine delivering milk to her neighbors and after about 100 drafts, I began to find the threads.

e: Is there a unique or funny story behind the creation of this story?
Kerry:
Ernestine said to me the first year I met her, "If you're going to write about our mountains your California family needs to learn to spare you! And I have a cabin you can use to write." So I took Norah to that cabin up on Johnson Gap in Maggie Valley and I wrote and I took pictures of Norah as a six-year-old in the mountains.
I also remembered how my daughter, Lucy, as a child, responded to me when I told her, "Be careful Lucy walking on that tall curb. You could fall and hurt yourself." She turned around and yelled, "Hey! Am I two or am I four? I'm a big girl!" And she kept right on going.
e: What do you think makes an illustration magical, what I call "Heart Art” - the sort that makes a reader want to come back to look again and again?
Kerry:
What a great question! Every page of Emily's gorgeous work contains "Heart Art." A little boy in Maggie Valley looked at Emily's painting of the Smoky Mountains right before Ernestine goes on her journey in the early morning, and he got so excited and said, "Hey! Those are our mountains. I know those mountains. They're our mountains!"
e: How do you advertise yourself?
Kerry:
I keep an active Facebook Page and Instagram page. My daughter, Lucy, created a new website for me and said, "Mom, you've to get out of 2005." I set up my tour with indie bookstores because I know they will hand-sell my book if it's right for them. I find self-promotion difficult, so I balance by trying to my promote and celebrate my author/illustrator friends too. I did make a trailer for Ernestine of kids making butter, and it was done with love from students and from Norah too.
e: What is your favorite or most challenging part of being a creator?
Kerry:
I struggle with my time and the many demands made on it. Some of my family members are facing serious illnesses, and I can sometimes allow worry eat up my energy. I also kind of have two lives - one in California and one in Alabama, so there is that juggle too. But when I just breathe and walk and do my own work first, no matter where I am, everything always falls into place.

e: Is there something in particular about this story you hope readers will take away with them, perhaps something that isn’t immediately obvious?
Kerry:
One editor said, "Ernestine is five and doing this job for her mother? I'm very nervous about that. Could she be older?" And I thought, but that's not the story. She really was five-years-old. And so I hope this story is one that celebrates kids exploring and finding their own journeys and discoveries without adults hovering (and I certainly did my fair share of hovering regarding my own kids).

e: What are you working on next or what would be your dream project?
Kerry:
I would love to write a book about my dog, Olive,
and have Emily illustrate it and perhaps write a sequel to ERNESTINE'S MILKY WAY and have Emily illustrate that too.

I hope we get to do more books together. I'm going to start playing with those picture book ideas this summer. I am also finishing the edits on an adult novel now, HOP THE POND, and two children's novels: MILLIE G & VULCAN and WEREWOLF HAMLET. One picture book is making the rounds and racking up rejections called GEORGIA IVY AND THE OLD PUMP ORGAN, a tall tale.
e: You know I can't wait to see them - I'm a fan!

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