{"id":338758,"date":"2025-12-11T04:56:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T04:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/uncategorized\/author-interview-irene-latham-only-picture-books\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T04:56:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T04:56:10","slug":"author-interview-irene-latham-only-picture-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=338758","title":{"rendered":"Author Interview: Irene Latham – Only Picture Books"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"IreneHere we go with another OPB<\/span> Author Interview! Today we\u2019re spotlighting Irene Latham, whose well-\u200bwrought picture books keep winning hearts (and awards). I had the joy of editing The Museum on the Moon: The Curious Objects on the Lunar Surface<\/em>, and I can confirm: Irene\u2019s writing ability shines.<\/p>\n

You may know her for Can I Touch Your Hair?<\/em> (with Charles Waters<\/a>), the Caldecott Honor book The Cat Man of Aleppo<\/em> (with Karim Shamsi-\u200bBasha<\/a>), the kindness-\u200bforward Be a Bridge<\/em> (with Charles Waters), and her anthologies like The Mistakes That Made Us<\/em>. Whether she\u2019s writing persona poems, curating other poets\u2019 voices, or sneaking science into verse, Irene\u2019s work invites kids to look closely, feel deeply, and live language out\u00a0loud.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s learn more about her and her work right\u00a0now!<\/p>\n\n

RVC<\/span>: When did you realize you were a\u00a0poet?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: Family legend says I\u2019ve been writing poems since I could wield a crayon\u2014love poems, for my mother. But I am a shy person by nature and didn\u2019t share my work with others or pursue publication until I was in my late twenties.<\/p>\n

\"Writer's<\/a>RVC<\/span>: What kind of training do you have that supports that writing interest?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: I\u2019m self-\u200btaught. Each day I\u2019m learning to be a poet through reading poems, of course, and also consuming craft books, podcasts, and articles. I spend part of each day in nature (we live on a lake), and I have attended many a conference and poetry reading. My first stop once I decided to try and get my work published was to join my state\u2019s poetry society. Also, for decades now, my sister has gifted me a subscription to Writer\u2019s Digest<\/em> magazine (where I have seen lots of your articles, Ryan!).<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: Aw, shucks. Thanks!
<\/em>IL<\/span>: Much of my writing education has come from those\u00a0pages!<\/p>\n

\"Leaving<\/a>RVC<\/span>: What\u2019s the story behind the first picture book you wrote and published?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: I started in the children\u2019s market as a middle grade novelist with Leaving Gee\u2019s Bend<\/em><\/a> (Penguin, 2010). I still love writing novels, but before anything else, I am a poet. So I started sending picture book poetry collection manuscripts to my agent Rosemary Stimola, and together we worked up a list of editors who might be interested. Several manuscripts got rounds of rejections before I wrote Dear Wandering Wildebeest: And Other Poems from the Water Hole<\/em><\/a>. Carol Hinz at Lerner acquired that book, and it was published with illustrations by Anna Wadham in 2014. Carol and I have worked together many times since then! The book received some starred reviews and awards, which was super encouraging. It, along with a companion title When the Sun Shines on Antarctica: And Other Poems About the Frozen Continent<\/em><\/a> (Lerner, 2016) will be released in paperback in\u00a02026.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: The biggest lesson that experience taught you?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: Dear Wandering Wildebeest<\/em> features poems with nonfiction text boxes. I learned pretty quickly that the text boxes are not simply \u201cextra\u201d information. These two pieces\u2014the poem and the text box\u2014should work in tandem. It\u2019s important to include information in the text box that readers may need to decode the poem, and\/\u200bor information that anticipates a question a reader may have after reading the poem. And keep it\u00a0SHORT<\/span>.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: This is GREAT<\/span> advice.<\/em>
IL<\/span>: In some ways, the text boxes are like prose poems, leaning heavily on poetic elements of economy and precision of language.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>RVC<\/span>: Love that, thanks. Now let\u2019s jump ahead to the book we worked on together\u2014<\/em>The Museum on the Moon<\/a>. When you realized \u201chey, there\u2019s a whole museum\u2019s worth of artifacts on the Moon,\u201d what clicked first\u2014the book concept or a specific poem?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: I was a \u201cspace\u201d kid who followed the NASA<\/span> program, and later my oldest son had a childhood obsession with space travel. We also live near the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Alabama. So I had been collecting moon facts for many years. One day, when reviewing my file of facts (I keep all sorts of files of potential book ideas that often arise from my general obsessions, and add to them over time.), I noticed quite a few things had been left on the moon. I jumped on the internet and found even MORE<\/span> things! Given the number and variety of items, the history and science connections, and the innate kid appeal, I thought, hmm, this could be fun\u2026and I started writing!<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: Craft nuts-\u200band-\u200bbolts question here. Museum pairs poems with tight prose sidebars. How did you balance music with accuracy?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: It\u2019s important to me that a poem be a poem. There should be a surprising image or word choice, some musicality, and it shouldn\u2019t be just a recitation of clunky facts. There are myriad of other factual space books available to readers, so I felt my job was to really focus, to \u201cexplode the moment.\u201d Which meant being ruthless when cutting and paring both the poems and text boxes. (Confession: there\u2019s one poem in the collection that still feels a bit clunky to me, and every time I read it, I wish I\u2019d spent a little more time unleashing its\u00a0music!)<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: Dear blog readers, that last comment is something all book creators feel at one time or another. It\u2019s okay\u2013truly. You do your best and move on to next projects. Trust me on this. Now, let\u2019s dig back into the book. It features a variety of poetry forms. What was the process for determining which poem formats got used in the book, and for which topics?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: The \u201cmatching\u201d of subject matter to poetry form is an intuitive process. Mostly it just takes time and trust, allowing oneself to sit with it, to experiment, and allow the answer to arise on the page. The opening poem, \u201cWelcome Earthlings!\u201d is a triolet, an 8\u2011line form which features one line that repeats 3 times, and a second line that repeats 2 times. This repetition felt \u201cright\u201d to me because the moon also repeats, returning each night\u2026and that became the focus of the poem, how even though you may see the moon every night, you don\u2019t know everything about the moon. It has secrets, and now it\u2019s here to share those secrets. It felt like a perfect marriage of form and content.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: Agree! What\u2019s your f<\/em>avorite spread to see illustrated by Myriam Wares, and why that\u00a0one?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: I loved seeing Myriam\u2019s rendering of the closing poem \u201cThis Poem is an Outpost.\u201d We don\u2019t know yet what a habitat on the Moon will actually look like, so I was super curious to get a glimpse into Myriam\u2019s imagination. Her moon habitat is so inviting\u2014who wouldn\u2019t want to stay there before cruising out to\u00a0Mars?<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: What\u2019s one object on the Moon that surprised even you once you researched it?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: It surprised me to learn that Charles Duke (Apollo 16) left a photograph of his family on the moon. There\u2019s something so tender and human about that\u2014it was his way of making his loved ones part of the experience. Beautiful! (Though the photo is likely faded beyond recognition at this\u00a0point.)<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: If UNESCO-\u200bstyle protections ever extended to lunar sites, which locations belong at the top of your \u201cheritage\u201d list?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: The first footprints, number one. Probably my number two would be the lunar rover that holds the one book on the Moon\u2014a red Bible. Truly, I could argue for them all! Perhaps there really does need to be a museum on the\u00a0Moon?!<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: Let\u2019s talk about collaboration. You and Charles Waters have built a true creative partnership. What\u2019s his writing\/\u200bcollaborating superpower?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: For fun, Charles and I named ourselves the I &<\/span> C Construction Co.: Building Books One Word at a Time Since\u00a02015.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: HAH<\/span>. Love\u00a0it.<\/em>
IL<\/span>: We are friends first, and collaborators second, and we\u2019ve been super fortunate to work on a variety of projects. Our current focus is on co-\u200bcurating poetry anthologies for children. Charles has multiple superpowers, but one that has really impacted me is how good he is at acknowledging all the others who help make a book. Our presentations always include slides of folks who helped along the way: from childhood teachers, to librarians who aided our research, to editors and book designers\u2026Charles is a great connector, and he makes it his business to really \u201csee\u201d people.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: How does your collaborative process work? And how\/\u200bwhen\/\u200bwhere\/\u200bwhy do the book ideas emerge?<\/em>
\"\"<\/a>IL<\/span>: Each project has been different, and our process continues to evolve. I\u2019m mostly the idea person, but our next book, a poetry anthology titled For the Win: Poems Celebrating Phenomenal Athletes<\/em><\/a> (Lerner, March 3,\u00a0 2026) evolved out of an idea Charles had many years ago to do a sports anthology. I\u2019m not a sports person, but when he came to me the idea, I pondered it for a while and eventually suggested we focus not on biography, but on moments in each athlete\u2019s life, from introduction to the sport, training, setbacks, achievements, and also what happens after the great achievement. Such inspiring subject matter, whether one likes sports or\u00a0not!<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: IT<\/span> sounds terrific.<\/em>
IL<\/span>: In terms of our day-\u200bto-\u200bday work together, we currently love Google Docs, because we can both be working inside a document simultaneously. Sometimes we have these marathon phone calls where we\u2019re talking through things and also making corrections in the document. Other times we work independently, and take turns responding or adding material. Some things we address through texting. We divvy tasks as best we can, allowing each of us to do the things we want to do, are best at, or feel called to do. I trust Charles, and he trusts me. Somehow it all works\u00a0out!<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: In <\/em>Be a Bridge<\/a>, you distilled big, bridge-\u200bbuilding ideas for very young readers. What did \u201cevery word counts\u201d look like in revision?<\/em>
\"\"<\/a>IL<\/span>: Be a Bridge<\/em> was a tough one! It emerged out of our efforts to bring the subject matter of Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship<\/em><\/a> to a younger audience. Carol Hinz rejected several of our manuscripts before we finally got to Bridge<\/em>, so we\u2019d already been revising and revising\u2026There\u2019s a didacticism inherent in the premise\u2014I mean, the title itself is instructive!\u2014and we wanted to \u201csoften\u201d that, but we were also hemmed in by these rhyming couplets. Taking out a single word seemed to unravel the whole thing! And then, after the book was illustrated, a sensitivity reader found some issues that needed further revising. It\u2019s all a bit of a blur in my memory, but what makes it all worthwhile is hearing from educators and families how meaningful the book has been to them. A LOT<\/span> of work goes into a picture book, that\u2019s for\u00a0sure!<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: <\/em>The Mistakes That Made Us<\/a> anthology invited poets to get autobiographical. What editorial promise did you and Charles make to contributors to help them go\u00a0brave?<\/em>
\"\"<\/a>IL<\/span>: We asked each poet to share a mistake from their own lives, write a poem about it, and then craft a nonfiction text box sharing how the mistake impacted their lives\u2014what did they learn from it? Charles and I shared our own responses to the prompt, and we leaned into what impact this kind of vulnerability may have on our child readers. Our goal was to inspire and normalize mistake-\u200bmaking. It\u2019s just part of life! Not surprisingly given the generosity of poets, our contributors really came through, from Allan Wolf sharing how embarrassing it was to score a soccer goal for the wrong team to Naomi Shihab Nye sharing an incident from First Grade involving a fellow student taking too long at the pencil sharpener, a pencil, and bloodshed! As editors, our job was to stay out of the way of this truth-\u200btelling as much as possible, stepping in only to help clarify or to eliminate unnecessary distractions on the\u00a0page.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: Speaking of collaborations, how do you handle art\u00a0notes?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: I use them as sparingly as possible. One of my most favorite things about creating picture books is seeing what magic the illustrator conjures, so I want to give a wide berth! However, I have worked on a few historical books, both fiction and nonfiction, and it\u2019s my responsibility to provide art notes, which can be links to historic photos or general research\u2014anything that will help ensure our book will reflect the story\u2019s time, place, people, and culture accurately.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: <\/em>This Poem Is a Nest<\/a> is such a fine idea\u2014turning one long poem into a ton of \u201cnestlings.\u201d What moment told you this wasn\u2019t just a poem experiment but a full\u00a0book?<\/em>
\"\"<\/a>IL<\/span>: Of all my books, This Poem Is a Nest<\/em> is probably the most joyful creative experience I\u2019ve had. I was fortunate to work with Rebecca Davis (WordSong), and she acquired it when I\u2019d only written about 30 nestlings. She believe in the book and invited me to have fun with it, so I did! Neither of us could have anticipated I would have had 161 poems worth of fun. As a creator, I\u2019m so grateful to have been given this kind of freedom.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: What\u2019s one simple way families or classrooms can try their own found poems at\u00a0home?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: You can find poems in the mail that arrives in your mailbox! Or on your bookshelf or magazine rack. Or you can download a pack of free poems from my website<\/a> designed for just this purpose:<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: Let\u2019s talk persona poems. What\u2019s your checklist for writing ethically and vividly in another voice\u2014especially for picture-\u200bbook readers?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: Do your research, of course. And not just about the person\/\u200banimal\/\u200bobject, but also about the place and time where\/\u200bwhen the person\/\u200banimal lives or lived. Imagination is the building block of empathy, so really, all persona work is an exercise in empathy. To make these (or any type poem) more vivid, aim to include not only the sense of sight, but other senses as well. I have a new poetry collection coming from Astra\/\u200bWordSong in 2026 called Come In! Come In! Wordspinners to Welcome You Home<\/a>,<\/em> and the very last revision pass I did was for the sense of smell. At last gasp, I realized smell was underrepresented in the collection, so I made it my aim to bring in some more scents.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: I\u2019ve read that you\u2019re a cellist. Has learning an instrument changed your line breaks or sound play on the\u00a0page?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: That\u2019s a great question. Playing the cello influences my writing in myriad ways! A musical phrase is not unlike a poetic one, and just as silence is a placeholder for emotion in music, white space serves the same purpose in poetry. More importantly, I\u2019ve learned to appreciate the process of music-\u200bmaking or poetry-\u200bmaking, to focus on creating a connection with my audience rather than impressing anyone. Music, and poetry, is a place for me to just be\u00a0me.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: What can you tell us about the importance of community in a writer\u2019s life?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: Truly this is a business of relationships. I love surrounding myself with book\/\u200bpoetry people, people who share the impulse to use language and stories to attempt to discover the world and share ourselves on the page. I\u2019ve learned community isn\u2019t about numbers\u2014so you can stop obsessing about growing your list of followers on social media! Community is about walking this world with kindness and openness and surrounding yourself with people who support what you\u2019re doing, lift you up, and listen to your dreams and disappointments. This can be as simple as one other person, or two. The most important thing is to be authentic, and to be the kind of person who invites others to be authentic, too.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: What\u2019s one museum (on Earth!) you\u2019d love to partner with for a poetry program, and what you do\u00a0there?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: Ooh, I can\u2019t think of a museum I wouldn\u2019t<\/em> want to partner with! I love museums\u2014the big, flashy ones and the labor-\u200bof-\u200blove, local ones. Art, history, science\u2026every trip I take includes a visit to one or more of these type of museums.<\/p>\n

Also, since 2015, I\u2019ve created a public art project on my blog called ArtSpeak!, in which I post an ekphrastic poem (poem inspired by art) to my blog. I love and have written on such a wide variety of art\u2014you can find hundreds of these free poems on my website, and I am still just as in love with the project as I was ten years ago. Once, long ago, I did partner with Birmingham artist Liz Reed, and we mounted two \u201cPoetry &<\/span> Paint\u201d shows in which she created art after I wrote, and I wrote poems after she painted. I\u2019d love to do that\u00a0again.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: Last question for this part of the interview. What\u2019s next in your picture-\u200bbook\/\u200bpoetry world that you can\u00a0tease?<\/em>
\"\"<\/a>IL<\/span>: I have three picture books releasing in 2026, and two of them are poetry. the (third) poetry anthology I\u2019ve co-\u200bcurated with Charles Waters, For the Win: Poems Celebrating Phenomenal Athlete<\/em> (Lerner); a narrative picture book titled A Good Morning for Giddo<\/em><\/a> (Penguin Random House), I wrote with my friend Dahlia Hamza Constantine, featuring a little girl and her giddo (grandfather) exploring Egyptian arts and culture at the Cairo market; and a solo collection of 66 poems called Come In! Come In! Wordspinners to Welcome You Home<\/em> (Astra Publishing). Imagine a Richard Scarry book, but instead of just words, readers get short\u00a0poems.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: Okay, Irene. It\u2019s time for the SPEED<\/span> ROUND<\/span>! Quick questions and fast answers please. Ready?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: Let\u2019s\u00a0go!<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: If you could only have one app on your\u00a0phone\u2026<\/em>
IL<\/span>: Music tuning app.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: Pick one: personal chef, house cleaner, or masseuse?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: Personal chef.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: What outdated slang do you use the\u00a0most?<\/em>
IL<\/span>: Is \u201cAwesome\u201d considered outdated? I say that and \u201cExcellent\u201d fairly often. As a Southerner, I also enjoy words like \u201cyonder,\u201d \u201creckon and \u201cpiddle, \u201d and I use \u201cy\u2019all\u201d and \u201cfixin\u2019 to\u201d pretty regularly\u2014but those words feel timeless to\u00a0me!<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: First line that pops into your head when someone says \u201cwrite a moon haiku\u2014go!\u201d<\/em>
IL<\/span>: The moon makes\u00a0music<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: A poet every picture-\u200bbook writer should read.<\/em>
IL<\/span>: Valerie Worth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: One word you want kids to feel after reading your picture books.<\/em>
IL<\/span>:\u00a0Loved.<\/p>\n

RVC<\/span>: Thanks so much,\u00a0Irene!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n