Sydney Taylor Blog Tour: TWO NEW YEARS by Richard Ho and Lynn Scurfield

It’s the 2024 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour (click here for the full schedule) and I’m honored to talk with Richard Ho and Lynn Scurfield, author and illustrator of Sydney Taylor Picture Book award winner, Two New Years.

Travis Jonker: Hi Richard! How did you find out about winning a Sydney Taylor Medal for TWO NEW YEARS? What was your reaction?

Richard Ho: Our publicist at Chronicle, Caitlin Ek, had emailed both Lynn and me about receiving “a very interesting proposal” and asking if we could hop on a Zoom call to discuss. The lack of details seemed a bit mysterious, but I didn’t think too much of it. Of course, when we signed into the meeting and realized that the entire Sydney Taylor Book Award committee was joining us, along with our editor Naomi Kirsten, the pieces quickly came together!

Embarrassingly, though, I had a bit of a technical snafu at the beginning of that call – I couldn’t unmute or turn on my video! As I scrambled to troubleshoot, the committee chairperson, Aviva Rosenberg, revealed the wonderful news that Two New Years had won the Sydney Taylor. While everyone could see and hear Lynn’s exuberant reaction, all they got from me was a blank screen! I quickly typed in the chat: “I WISH EVERYONE COULD SEE MY OVERJOYED FACE!!!!!!” and after a few minutes I was finally able to turn on my camera and mike, and deliver a proper stunned, overjoyed, and grateful reaction.

Travis: What was the initial inspiration for the book?

Richard: As with so much in my writing, it all started with my kids. While I converted to Judaism as an adult and made the conscious choice to add Jewish customs and traditions to my Chinese ones, my kids were born into both. They’re growing up with a beautiful mix of influences that is perfectly natural, and I absolutely love that for them. With this book, I wanted to celebrate the diversity that’s possible within a family – and not only Chinese-Jewish families! I hope readers with any mix of backgrounds can see reflections of themselves and their experiences in these pages.

Travis: What was the most challenging part of writing TWO NEW YEARS? What was the most fun part?

Richard: The most challenging part was narrowing the focus to something manageable! Originally I envisioned a book that more generally explored the connections between Jewish and Chinese culture, across many holidays and life events. But I quickly realized that was too ambitious. There’s enough material there to fill an encyclopedia, let alone a picture book! Once I settled on new year celebrations, I was able to create a list of parallels that fit nicely into a picture book structure. And the fun part was fleshing out those parallels through the text, while looking for opportunities to include specific details from my own family!

Travis: Last question: What snack puts you in peak creativity mode?

Richard: My go-to writing food is a cup of coffee and a pastry of some sort – blueberry muffins, cheese danishes, or whatever is around the house!

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Travis: Hi Lynn! How did you find out about winning a Sydney Taylor Medal for TWO NEW YEARS? What was your reaction?

Lynn Scurfield: Richard and I were initially contacted by Caitlin over at Chronicle telling us there was an exciting opportunity that she wanted to tell us via zoom. When we went for the meeting there were a lot of people there and it was a chorus of “congratulations!” as they informed us we had won the Sydney Taylor award.

I was very honoured when I heard the news. I’m not as familiar with publishing awards (I’m a little embarrassed to admit it) so it didn’t sink in until later how big this award is. It’s pretty amazing to know that Two New Years will be a part of a long and ongoing history of amazing Jewish books and it still feels surreal to think about it. 

Travis: How did you come to illustrate the book?

Lynn: I was approached by Feather Flores back in 2021 with the manuscript and it was an immediate yes from me. It was a super easy process and I am still shocked that I was offered a book that felt so close to my family life. 

Travis: What were the most fun parts of illustrating TWO NEW YEARS? What were the most challenging parts?

Lynn: The most fun parts of illustrating Two New Years was definitely creating all the papercut moments and doing the research for the book. Back when I was illustrating Two New Years I was really into papercut art and to have a project where I could focus on making that type of work is quite special. It doesn’t happen all the time. Also I got to learn a lot about different Jewish holidays, customs, and I had a really nice chat with my Bubby Ann about her life which will always be a fond memory for me.

Some challenging parts were compositionally balancing the two celebrations on one page, you want to make sure they feel unique and complementary at the same time, and also portraying the tichel properly. It was important to Richard to have that representation in the book and if something is important to the author I always want to respect and honour that in the artwork. No one in my family wears one so I was doing a lot of online research watching tutorials on how to properly wrap a tichel and look at the different styles out there. I had a small sigh of relief when I got Richard’s stamp of approval and I had some positive feedback on how the tichels were drawn.

Travis: Last question: What snack puts you in peak creativity mode?

Lynn: Honestly, coffee and a little bit of chocolate are my favourite work snacks! My Bubby Ann often gives me a bag of Hershey kisses and they’re the perfect little in-between snacks while I’m working.

Travis: Thank you Richard and Lynn! You can check out the rest of the Sydney Taylor blog tour here.

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