DRAWING FROM MEMORY

by author Alan Silberberg

I’m often asked which comes first, the words or the cartoons and my answer is always the same: The iced coffee.

I always knew that MILO: STICKY NOTES & BRAIN FREEZE was going to be a combination of my cartooning and my writing. There wasn’t a chicken/egg conundrum because I knew I would write. I would draw. And eventually the two would inter-mingle and I would have a book.

When I started the actual writing my goal was to create a funny junior high story. I imagined it as a Wimpy Kid-esque romp and I pictured that all the cartoons would be goofy and silly and I was just fine with that. But after writing the first chapter and including several cartoons that helped create punch lines or jokes for the text – I searched a little deeper to figure out who my main character Milo was. I thought back to what it was like for me to be 13 and feelings and memories bubbled up like sticky goo from the La Brea tar pits. It wasn’t until I reached the second chapter that I realized the tone had shifted. Milo wasn’t just a slightly anxious, funny 13 year old, but he was also a boy who had suffered a devastating loss – the death of his mother. I had lost my mom to brain cancer when I was 9 and I realized that was the emotional baggage that Milo was carrying. Milo’s story was becoming my story and opening that door and letting my “silly” book become something deeper and ultimately more personal, I learned that I had the opportunity to use my cartoons in a different way too.

I can remember being away on a long school visit for my first book, Pond Scum, and staying in a hotel in Houston. Milo was all of three chapters long and still finding its feet. I was going to be in that hotel room for two weeks and thought maybe I could start getting some sketches together that would help flesh out the project.

For those early chapters I had already known exactly where the cartoons would go. As I had done in the past, I had let the text drive the visuals. For example, the first lines of the book screamed for illustration: “Summer Goodman never knew what hit her. That’s because it was me….”

And when I wrote, “One possible problem is, I’ve never actually spoken to Summer, except the time I said “sorry”, which was after I sneezed on the back of her neck that first day in Science class”, I just knew there had to be a cartoon that followed.

But back to Houston: There I was with a personal story of junior high and parental loss percolating in my brain. Conceptually, I had decided that the book would contain cartoons of all sizes; single panel gags, comic strips, even full-page cartoons. I had already done the sketches for the text-dependent cartoons in the early chapters but now wanted to come up with some full-page ideas that would work independent of text. The first idea I sketched (while watching the Red Sox beat the Colorado Rockies in the World Series) was purely silly.

That one was totally in my comfort zone. The cartoon was kind of weird commentary on junior high life while also adding a bit of Milo character zest. This was the kind of page that could occur anywhere in the book and I felt pretty darn pleased that I was nailing down the concept.

I flipped to a new sheet of paper and then set out to make more magic. What happened really hit me for a loop because I started to doodle a memory about my father. I remembered how different he’d become after my mom died. I thought about how Milo would also sense that difference and would be suffering from the loss of not one, but two parents. And that’s when I drew the full-page cartoon “My Dad”.

To be honest, I had no idea where this cartoon would go in the book. But I immediately saw the power that a graphic like this had in the storytelling. I think this was the drawing that shifted the whole book for me because it really connected me with Milo’s sadness while also touching on the humor that is inherent in the cartoon lines that I drew.

For the first time since deciding the book was going to be more emotional I knew that I could use the cartoons to help tell some of the more uncomfortable parts of Milo’s story. And that was something I had not considered until the “My Dad” cartoon came to me.

Obviously I knew that the cartoons were going to add humorous (and hopeful commercial) appeal to Milo but I was surprised and equally pleased to discover the depth that these graphics would add to my book. As a cartoonist I felt I was pushing myself to draw from that same personal place that the writing was coming from, which ultimately gave the book the heart and emotional core I was going for.

Over the next six months Milo continued to grow and I have to admit that the deeper I got into the book the deeper I was getting into my own emotional healing. I hadn’t anticipated the catharsis I was to experience. And when I tell you that creating this book changed my life – I mean that in the most literal way.

The raw place I was writing from was also a place of healing for me and many of the cartoons helped me express some of the sadness and pain that I had been unable to let go of since I was young. In particular I was able to share one of the most painful memories I had been holding onto in a full-page sequence where Milo sees his mother for the last time.

This sequence exists in the book exactly how I remembered experiencing it and by letting Milo express these emotions I was able to externalize something very powerful for me. Again, the artwork was adding an important layer while also connecting me to a healing that I was not even conscious of.

I had not sold the book yet and so was finishing it independent of the editorial guidance that came later from the truly remarkable Liesa Abrams at Aladdin. With the text 90% written I was fortunate to be the recipient of the Children’s Author in Residence from the Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio. When July rolled around I loaded up the car and drove from Montreal to Ohio with not only my laptop but my larger Mac computer knowing I was going to use the month to start digitally illustrating the rest of the book.

Living in James Thurber’s house was an experience I will never forget. And drawing cartoons under the eaves of the Victorian attic roof where Thurber spent some of his youth writing and cartooning gave me great inspiration and joy.

By the end of the four-week Thurber residence I had assembled a finished draft of the book and completed roughly 80 of the 120 cartoons for the manuscript I would submit. I had gone for the funny and the sad with equal gusto and was really pleased with the amount of work I had accomplished. The book that a year earlier had only been an idea, was now almost fully formed and I had stretched as a writer and as a cartoonist.

That fall my agent, Jill Grinberg, felt we were ready to take the book to publishers and it was a match made in writer heaven when Liesa Abrams acquired Milo for Aladdin books.

I am happy to confess that the editorial process was charmed and (fairly) painless. Sure I had to redraw all of the cartoons because we changed the way the characters looked but that gave me the chance to revise the artwork and make it even better (that’s me trying to be positive…because it was a TON of work!)

With editorial guidance from Liesa and art director Karin Paprocki, Milo was slimmed down in length and beefed up with cartoons. We worked as a trio to strengthen the emotional depth told in pictures and words making sure to keep the humor that made Milo so endearing and likable and funny.

To close I’d like to share one of my favorite cartoons that works as a stand-alone funny joke as well as the set up to an emotional climax in the story. It appears at the head of a chapter near the end of the book, when Milo is finally close to being ready to say goodbye to his mother.

By starting the chapter with this cartoon I was able to make Milo’s goodbye even more powerful as he stares up at the night sky in his backyard.

“…in the stars my mom’s face is lit up by hundreds of connected dots, and then my face fills in next to her. And she isn’t sick. And I’m not sad. And I realize I can say goodbye any way I want to.
She is so pretty in the sky, and together we dance between the seconds that my heart beats under my sweatshirt. I don’t have to hang onto the sick image of her and let that be my goodbye. I decide this is the face I will hold on to, and then shooting stars are all that I see as I let the words skip out of my lips.
“Tuna fish, Mom.”
And her smile lights up my wet eyes. “Tuna fish.”

Alan Silberberg is a writer/cartoonist whose career started with the note he wrote in 2nd grade announcing his plans to run away from home. He has written numerous kids’ TV shows and is the author of POND SCUM (Hyperion). His second book, MILO: STICKY NOTES & BRAIN FREEZE (Aladdin) won the 2011 Sid Fleischman Humor Award and was just published in paperback. He has a B.A. in “Cartoon Communication Education” and a Master’s degree in Education from Harvard.

MILO: STICKY NOTES & BRAIN FREEZE by Alan Silberberg: Milo Cruikshank is a 13 year-old new kid, who has to find a way to hit the “restart” button all over again.

The truth is, ever since Milo’s mother died nothing has felt right. Now, instead of the kitchen being filled with music, the whole house is filled with Fog. Nothing’s the same. Not his Dad. Not his sister. And definitely not him. In love with the girl he sneezed on the first day of school and best pals with Marshall, the “One-Eyed Jack” of friends, Milo struggles to survive a school year that is filled with reminders of what his life “used to be”.