What Happens Next? A Guest Post by Dev Petty

Today we have a guest post from author Dev Petty, talking about CLAYDATE, a sequel almost 9 years in the making . . .

Stories are equipment for living.

-Kenneth Burke, American literary theorist, poet, essayist, and novelist.

My most recent book, CLAYDATE, illustrated by the incomparable dimensional illustrator Lauren Eldridge, is the long awaited followup to our 2017 book CLAYMATES about two balls of clay who can…and DO…become anything (and everything!). It remains a favorite of librarians and teachers who, to this day, send us pictures of their students’ clay creations. Creating CLAYMATES was an extraordinary experience. It was when I found my voice, my best friend, and where I engaged really authentically with the act of storytelling. It was made from whole cloth. A yarn. A flier. So welcoming its sibling into the world is quite a feeling.

It’s been almost nine years since CLAYMATES, but sometimes it takes a minute to make the book you want to make. I sure hope people respond to CLAYDATE. It’s a story about how playing and telling stories and interacting is more important than things being perfect or who’s better at doing different things. It’s about how we can riff on each other, add, twist, play, trust as we create life-stories together. It’s about a knight made of clay who looks like a potato with a sword shaped like a banana, who has an EPIC battle with a unicorn-dragon with a few twists and turns along the way. It also has…DEEP BREATH…a puppy dog, a bumble bee, a horse, another horse, an aardvark, a speedboat, a fancy rooster, some broccoli, a scepter, a lair, a few things I’m not sure exactly what they are, and a ton of colorful, crazy, creative, collaborative fun.

It came on out Tuesday, April 7, a day where we were all jointly distracted to the brim, collectively holding our breath about very adult-y geopolitical events. I will be honest and tell you it was hard to even post about a book release, to welcome accolades and congratulations, or go through even the most basic of motions one does when they welcome a book to the shelf. I will likewise be honest and tell you

I engaged in a bit of reflection about the relevance of a book about a couple of clay balls creating things and riffing on storytelling and playing together. Given everything…who cares? I gave myself twenty minutes or so to just kind of sit with that, let myself feel a bit glum…and then move on. But in those twenty minutes, I did some thinking. About this story. About stories in general. About storytelling. I came to the conclusion, apart from how self-serving it might be for my sometimes fragile ego, that storytelling is not just something that matters right now, it is everything right now. The end of the first book, CLAYMATES, is one character saying to the other, “What happens now?”

The end of the followup, CLAYDATE, ends with “I can’t wait to find out what happens.”

That’s it! Things happen, folks. There is a next! There is another page, a new chapter, another turn, one more twist. And not to be too deep and on-the-nose about it…just like life. When we tell stories to kids, even messy, difficult, complicated, confusing ones, we show the essence of stories is that there is a next. Things change and move, we are not stuck- even when it feels like we are. So in a very real way, as Burke says, stories are equipment for living. Because life can be bizarre and stranger than fiction. There are twists and turns and things you legit cannot make up.

When our kids were young, my husband and I would tell them “silly stories” before bed. They were anecdotes and silly remembrances of growing up. Water-fights, carnival prizes not won, vomiting on airplanes…you name it. My husband’s family had to dash across an airfield in Morocco because the king was coming! They loved the one about when my dad took our spherical golden retriever on a run much too long and she conked out at the furthest point and he had to carry her six miles. My girls would hang on each word and had a nightly request from our catalog. Sometimes two. Sometimes more.

The Dúchas Project in Ireland ( https://www.duchas.ie/en/info/about ) is a shining example of
committing to the importance of storytelling. It was an nationwide effort to understand the shared folklore and stories of the Irish people. The project resulted in almost 800k manuscript pages and 14k photographs as they surveyed the people of Ireland to describe what stories and folklore they knew. I guarantee you will enjoy a spin around their archives.

We have family stories, fictions, folktales, anecdotes from the cocktail party earlier this evening. All of this leads to our openness to the idea something happened and as such, something happens next. While I can’t say any of my books are “equipment for living” per se. But if they get kids to find stories weird and wonderful and messy and exciting and imperfect and to believe there is page turn after a still day waiting for bad news, sign me up.

I’m SO grateful I get to do this. It is literally the best job in the world. And to the librarians out there who light the fire of storytelling and reading for kids, thank you.

Dev Petty is the author of numerous picture books for children and their people including I DON’T WANT TO BE A FROG, the LIFE LESSONS FROM CHIP THE DOG BOOKS, HOW OLD IS MR.
TORTOISE, among many others. She likes to write books which make you laugh a lot and think a little, and sometimes the reverse.

Dev was a texture painter in film FX, working on The Matrix, Minority Report, Madagascar, and
dozens of other films but now is artistic enough only to be somewhat dangerous. She lives in her hometown, Berkeley, California with her husband, daughters, dogs, cats, and a cornsnake named “Boots.”

You can see more of Dev’s work in the upcoming books: BERRY AND THE MUSHROOMS (Illustrated by Jared Chapman, S&S), THE NIGHT THE BUILDINGS SWITCHED PLACES (Illustrated by Brian Biggs, LBYR), PUPPET & GEORGE and the ALL-NITE DINER (Illustrated by Andrea Tsurumi), and THE BOOK OF VARIOUS CHILDREN (Illustrated by Keiko Hayner, LBYR).

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