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Questions and Answers with Douglas Florian
We asked 2006 Young People's Poetry Poet Douglas Florian to answer a few questions about her life and work. Please share feel free to print this page to share with your students.
Douglas Florian has spent most of his life in New York City where he currently lives with his wife and five children. He is the author and illustrator of numerous award-winning books for children. His work has garnered him the Gryphon Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Award for Poetry, and the Claudia Lewis Award for Poetry. Two of his books have been named New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books of the Year.
Q: Who is your favorite poet and why?
A: My favorite poet is Ogden Nash because his poems are so witty and intelligent, not to mention pithy. In fact they say he had to wear a pith helmet. By the way his ancestor, General Francis Nash gave his name to Nashville, Tennessee.
Q: What was your favorite book as a child?
A: One of my favorite books was How Big Is Big. This was a book about the size of things, both very big and very small. It inspired me to create A Pig Is Big (Greenwillow Books, 2000) many years later. When I was older I loved to read all the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Q: How old were you when you started to write poetry, and what was the subject matter of the first poem you ever wrote?
A: Although I wrote some poetry as a kid in school, I didn't really begin to do it professionally until I was about 40. Before that I did several non-fiction books—Discovering Trees (Scribner, 1986), for example, but once I got my poetic license, there was no turning back.
Q: Why do you enjoy writing poetry?
A: In poetry your imagination has free reign and you can break all the rules. You can invent words, shape your poems, and play with words to your heart's content. It's also usually fun, although some poems may take years to write (the Ladybugs went through many bad versions before the final one in zoo's who (Harcourt, 2005)).
Q: Is it harder to write a poem or a prose book? Does poetry offer you a chance to say things you can't say in prose?
A: I think writing poetry is easier because it can be so open-ended, playful and anything goes (wrong spelling or grammar) as long as it makes the poem better.
Q: Do you have illustrations in mind when you write a poem, or do you simply write the poems and then see what happens? In other words, how does being an artist reflect on your poetry and vice versa?
A: I don't usually have an illustration in mind when I write, but sometimes something I see or draw can inspire a poem. Sometimes I even change a poem after I have illustrated it.
Q: Which of your books are you most proud of, and why?
A: beast feast (Harcourt, 1994) was the first book in my animal poems series so it's dear to me. I also love the zany humor of insectlopedia (Harcourt, 1998). But my favorite books for artwork are lizards, frogs, and polliwogs (Harcourt, 2001), and my new book zoo's who (Harcourt, 2005), a barrage of collage, colored pencil, rubber stamps, watercolor, gouache, tin foil, candy wrappers, shredded papers, and stencils on paper bags.
Q: How do your own children influence your work?
A: My kids act as a test audience. If they don't like a poem or painting then I'm usually in trouble and it's back to the drawing board. I sometimes get ideas for poems from kids at school, or from teachers or librarians.
Q: What advice would you give to a young person who wants to be a poet?
A: Listen to everything you hear. Observe things about people and nature. Keep writing and reading. Open your eyes, open your ears, and open your mind! •