Cover Reveal Q&A: THE TABLE by Wiley Blevins, Winsome Bingham, and Jason Griffin

The Table, written by Wiley Blevins and Winsome Bingham, and illustrated by Jason Griffin, is one of the most beautifully unique and affecting picture books of 2024. Arriving on October 1st, the story is about two families connected by a wooden dinner table.

Today, we’ll get a first look at the cover.

But before the reveal, I wanted to talk with the creators about the book.

Travis: Wiley, this story draws a lot from your real life – how did that affect the writing process?

Wiley Blevins: This was the easiest book I’ve ever written because it is so heavily drawn from my life experiences. It is rare to be able to be that autobiographical in your writing, especially if you are from a poor community since so few books are published about these children or in those settings. The backmatter in the book explains more about that. My goal was to show the decency and dignity in my home community—something many people are unaware of. There was only one line from my original manuscript that I had to change slightly due to the current lens through which people view the past. However, it didn’t change the intent of that sentence or make that scene less authentic. So, the writing was fast and freeing since I was so connected to the content.

Travis: How did your collaboration with Winsome work?

Wiley Blevins: Winsome and I are always brainstorming book ideas and have wanted to write something together for a long time. One night we were discussing all the books about family gatherings involving big meals and the conversation moved to the importance of the family table—how so much happens around that table. Our minds began sparking and that’s when we came up with the idea for the book. We decided that I would write the first half from the perspective of a poor, rural Caucasian family and Winsome would write the second half from the perspective of an African American family. We both quickly wrote our parts then shared them with each other for feedback. We have great respect for each other’s writing, so the revision process was pretty easy. Our focus was on the parallelism between the two families—how we could best highlight their commonalities while making each unique. We had no idea anyone would be interested in the story since books about poor families are rare. It was a great surprise when the book went to auction.

Travis: What’s your favorite thing to do at the kitchen table?

Wiley Blevins: I live in a small New York City apartment, so I’ve never had a table for eating on until recently (bought four months ago). However, currently my computer sits on it so it’s really just a round office table. Babysteps! As a child, meals were more about fuel than pleasure and the scene with the child being forced to eat peas was drawn from my life. As a result, I didn’t have a lot of positive memories at the dinner table since I was such a picky eater. I did enjoy coloring Easter eggs at the table and loved sitting at my grandmother’s table as she placed the breakfast foods on them—steaming buttery biscuits covered by a cloth, cornbread, fried potatoes, eggs, and crispy bacon. Both are scenes in the book and make me smile.

Travis: Winsome, where did this book begin for you?

Winsome Bingham: This book began one evening after receiving sketches for my debut Soul Food Sunday. Wiley and I were on Zoom checking out the sketches. In the book, there was a scene where a woman braided a child’s hair in the kitchen. Immediately, that caught our attention and we decided to speak on it. We talked about another book we published at Reycraft where the illustrator created a similar scene where they were doing hair in the kitchen. Both books were, to me, a representation of Black culture; and so, Wiley and I started talking about if the table in our kitchen could talk, what would it say.

We talked about the role a “table” played in the center of family lives. We spoke on numerous occasions about writing books together so I said to him, “This should be a book! You take the first seven spreads. And I’ll take the last seven spreads.” In like two days, Wiley sent me his text. And I remembered thinking, “Oh, he’s serious about this.”

It took me weeks to gather my thoughts because when I sat down to work, the story wasn’t coming out the way we discussed it. I let it sit until after my KidLit Dinner Party. The night after the party, when everyone left, I sat down with the manuscript. And the story flowed out of me. I needed to be around a table with food and friends to remind me the importance of the table’s true purpose – to bond friends’ and families’ ties.

Travis: How did the collaboration with Wiley work?

Winsome Bingham: The collaboration with Wiley worked fine because we are friends and would crack jokes all the time and talk about books and stories. Wiley wrote his spreads in two days. We met when I took his WRITING EARLY READERS class at The Highlights Foundation. (I tell people, if it wasn’t for him, Soul Food Sunday would not have made it to the bookstores. And if it wasn’t for that class, I wouldn’t have written and published The Fort Goode chapter book series.) 

Wiley has a vision for great story telling and he knows how to tell and structure heart felt stories. So, it was an honor working with him on this project. He is such an amazing storyteller and a professional. He can write everything and anything! And I hope people will buy his books and read his amazing stories. My favorite book is Trevor Lee and the Big Uh Oh! I suffer from Major Depressive Disorder and when I feel my season of sadness coming on, I go to the dog-eared pages of that book to try and trigger some laughter and joy.

Travis: What’s your favorite thing to do at the kitchen table?

Winsome Bingham: My favorite thing to do at the kitchen table is to feed my writing friends. For a while, Debbi Michiko Florence and Juana Martinez-Neal would stop by and we would sit at that glass table eating and talking. Once, I was sitting at the table and my front door opened and it was Jane Yolen and her husband Peter stopping by for lunch. They didn’t see that I had canceled. So, they sat there talking to me as I whipped up some pasta for lunch. I love when my writing friends come by in the summer and all the chairs at the table are full. And now, we are sitting at the island or standing around talking and eating. And two weeks ago, my aunt Lorna passed. And last year she visited me, and we sat at the table eating and reminiscing about being young on the island. (I should write a book about island life.) So, the table, is definitely a comfort spot for food, family, and friends.

Travis: Jason, you have a unique situation – you’ve already won a Caldecott Honor (Ain’t Burned All the Bright), but this is your first official “picture book” (in the traditional sense). What was the experience like? How was it different from your other illustration work?

Jason Griffin: Two weeks before receiving the manuscript for The Table, I was certain I would Never do a picture book. Haha. Then I received the manuscript from my agent, accompanied by a beautiful email from editor Taylor Norman, that basically said – we want you to do the Jason Griffin thing, with This story. I think that the email from Taylor, and the story itself, unlocked a way of seeing that I hadn’t allowed myself to do on my own. Just because it is a picture book for children, doesn’t mean it can’t be layered, and complex, and artful and and and… I began the process of creating art for this book in a similar way to Ain’t Burned… I call it mad scientist mode – where I try out a bunch of things. Mixing styles, throwing ideas at the wall, seeing what resonates over time, allowing the answer to present itself. So in that sense it was no different than other work. However, once the answer presented itself – which was rooted in a painterly but realistic style, I did venture out of my traditional “create a bunch of iterations of a thing and see which one matches best with text”, to a relatively more organized and direct approach to image making and matching. 

Travis: Since this book is such a personal story for Wiley and Winsome, did that change the way you approached the art for the book?

Jason Griffin: That’s a great question. Honestly, I don’t think I would have taken on this project if I couldn’t feel the personal connection. I need to feel to create. Both Wiley and Winsome do such an amazing job at creating a universal seat at the table through their personal experiences. So brilliant. Shout out to both of them!  

Travis: What’s your favorite thing to do at the kitchen table?

Jason Griffin: I love a good dinner with family and friends – when the conversation and personal connection feel as essential as the meal itself. The spread where we see hands of all colors around the table makes me think of my family. Every year my wife (who is mixed Japanese, Native American and Black) and I take our two sons to the blue ridge mountains of Virginia for a week of vacation. There, we meetup with my brother (who is also named Jason, and who posed for the hands in the 2nd half of the book with his daughter) and his wife and 5 children, my best friend Ivan (whose parents are from Ghana West Africa) and his family, and my Dad and Mum. We cover every shade of the skin spectrum, and until making this book, didn’t realize just how rare and special that is!

Travis: Thank you Wiley, Winsome, and Jason!

And now, for the first time, the cover for The Table, out October 1st from Neal Porter Books/Holiday House:

A bit about the book from the publisher:

For years, a mining family’s life revolves around their table. It’s where they eat, read, sew, laugh, and pay the bills; it’s stained with easter egg paint, warmed by fresh biscuits and the soft morning sun. 

Outside the house, though, Appalachia changes. The coal mine closes, and the bills keep coming. Eventually, there’s no choice but to move on— and to say goodbye to the table.

But then: When a young girl’s father sees the table by the road, he slams on the brakes. A lifelong carpenter, he can see it’s something special. They bring it home and clean it up; sitting around it, they eat and work and laugh. The girl wonders if another child once sat there, if they were anything like her. She’ll never know . . . but the table remembers. 

The Table is a stirring contemplation on the similarity between even people whose lives are entirely different. The details of these different lives take many forms, but the love underlying both of these families makes them much more similar than they are different. The center of this book is family love, and the many important connections we share with the family we live with. Even in strife, this book shows, love provides a literal support.

Expressively illustrated by Caldecott Honoree Jason Griffin, the story is deeply personal to coauthors Wiley Blevins, raised in West Virginia, and Winsome Bingham, who immigrated as a child from Jamaica to the U.S. South.

Filed under: Cover Reveal