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ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: Nice Try, Charlie!
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: www.mattjames.ca/
CITY: Tornoto
STATE:
COUNTRY: Canada
NATIONALITY: Canadian
LAST VOLUME: SATA 342
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1973, in Ontario, Canada; has children.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Painter, illustrator, musician, actor, and writer. Performer with Wayne Omaha (band) and The Keep on Keepin’ Ons. Actor in films, including (as Stoner Guy Number 1) Goldirocks, 2003, and (as Right Side Guy) Face Off, 2005. Exhibitions: Work exhibited at galleries, including at Katherine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects and BusGallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Art Gallery of Nova Scotia—Arena, and Harbourfront Centre, Nova Scotia, Canada, both 2008. Work included in private collections.
AWARDS:New Mexico Book Award, for Yellow Moon, Apple Moon by Pamela Porter; Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for picture book, 2010, for I Know Here by Laurel Croza; Governor General’s Award for Children’s Illustration, 2013, for Northwest Passage by Stan Rogers; Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, for When the Moon Comes by Paul Harbridge, 2018.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Outpost, Explore, and Utne.
SIDELIGHTS
Matt James is an award-winning Canadian illustrator of picture books who made his self-illustrated debut a decade into his career. One of James’s earliest artistic inspirations as a child was a light box that projected characters from DC Comics, allowing him to get lost in the details of tracing Shazam, Wonder Woman, and other superheroes. Late in elementary school, he took a cartooning course at the local YMCA led by a man who was trying to get his own comic strip syndicated; his carefully packed boxes of enough daily strips to last several months, consummately lined and inked, left the young James in awe. James’s high-school art department was fully stocked with equipment and materials for printmaking, photography, pottery, and other mediums, and the teachers—including multiple former commercial artists—guided his natural artistic talents into graphic design and illustration.
James made his illustration debut with the award-winning Yellow Moon, Apple Moon, by Pamela Porter, which follows a young girl’s nighttime ritual as she settles in for sleep. A Kirkus Reviews writer took note of the “primitive acrylic illustrations” set in “a fantastical landscape where the house and tree wear smiling faces.” James illustrated a pair of books for Laurel Croza, I Know Here and From There to Here. In I Know Here, a little girl says goodbye to her beloved home in rural Saskatchewan as she adjusts to the idea of her family moving to Toronto. A Kirkus Reviews writer admired how James’s “vividly colored, naïve-style scenes capture the bright intensity of the child’s inner and outer landscapes.” In From There to Here, the girl finds plenty to appreciate in the new urban Toronto landscape, with a Kirkus Reviews writer noting how James used “thickly daubed brushwork and roughly drawn figures to give his illustrations a childlike atmosphere.”
For his picture book Northwest Passage, which won Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Award for Children’s Illustration, James illustrated the lyrics from Stan Rogers’s well-known 1981 song about the search for a sea route through Canada’s arctic reaches. The pictures follow the failed expedition of Sir John Franklin as well as the singer’s modern-day travels in the region, and James added a time line and supplementary text to explain the references in Rogers’s song. A Kirkus Reviews writer praised the “glorious illustrations.” The writer considered Northwest Passage to be, “for U.S. readers, an illumination of a little-known history; for all Americans, a treasure.”
James’s first self-illustrated title is The Funeral, which was inspired partly by the death of one of his uncles and observations of how his children approached the experience of the funeral. In the book, Norma’s great-uncle Frank has died, and though her mother is duly grieved, Norma takes the event in stride, appreciating that she will miss a day of school and get to see her cousin Ray. She sits through a church service, does cartwheels with Ray afterward, and feels warmth upon seeing a picture of Uncle Frank smiling. In Resource Links, Tanya Boudreau described the illustrations: “The acrylic and ink illustrations have dimensional elements. … The colours are sombre but contain images of stained glass and blossoming flowers.”
A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted that The Funeral, which is more about Norma’s day than the heavy topic of death, “traces with a big heart the way she makes sense of this puzzling event.” Booklist reviewer Sarah Hunter commented, “The thickly painted, pleasantly busy multimedia artwork … has a childlike, freewheeling quality that perfectly matches Norma and Ray’s guilelessness.” A Kirkus Reviews writer concluded, “Enveloping and original, James’ authorial debut offers an honest exploration of a difficult and delicate subject. Exceptional.”
[open new]With his next self-illustrated title, Nice Try, Charlie!, James hoped to deliver messages about trying to keep the world clean, getting to know your neighbors, and realizing that adults do not always have the answers. The book’s hero is Charlie, a humble man who traverses his urban neighborhood collecting discarded objects and chatting with everyone he meets. When wheelchair-bound Aunt Myrtle notices on a box that happens to have a pie in it, Charlie devotedly seeks out the owner, trying to help people along the way. When no one claims the pie, he, Aunt Myrtle, and friends share the delicious dessert.
Writing for School Library Journal, Melanie Kletter praised the illustrations, which vary in size and format, as “full of texture” and “lively and engaging.” She did express concern over the fact that eating food found on the street is generally not a good thing to encourage children to do. A Kirkus Reviews writer, while expressing the same concern, observed that the narrative “meanders with Charlie; seemingly, its point is to keep trying.” The reviewer concluded of the book, “Nice try, but there’s not much here to encourage repeat reads, even with pie.” An Open Book writer was inspired by Nice Try, Charlie! to laud James’s “unique talent for smart, funny storytelling that helps kids understand the world.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 1, 2018, Sarah Hunter, review of The Funeral, p. 60.
Horn Book, January-February, 2011, review of I Know Here, p. 25.
Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2008, review of Yellow Moon, Apple Moon; May 1, 2010, review of I Know Here; September 1, 2013, review of Northwest Passage; March 1, 2014, review of From There to Here; March 15, 2016, review of The Stone Thrower; July 15, 2017, review of When the Moon Comes; February 15, 2018, review of The Funeral; June 1, 2020, review of Nice Try, Charlie!
Publishers Weekly, February 12, 2018, review of The Funeral, p. 76; November 27, 2018, review of The Funeral, p. 17.
Resource Links, April, 2018, Tanya Boudreau, review of The Funeral, p. 7.
School Library Journal, May, 2008, Susan Weitz, review of Yellow Moon, Apple Moon, p. 106; September, 2020, Melanie Kletter, review of Nice Try, Charlie!, p. 60.
ONLINE
Groundwood Books website, https://groundwoodbooks.com/ (January 24, 2019), “In the Studio with Matt James,” author interview.
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ (April 12, 2018), Julie Danielson, “Finding Life in Loss with Matt James.”
Matt James website, http://www.mattjamesillustration.ca (April 27, 2021).
Open Book, http://open-book.ca/ (September 29, 2020), “Matt James on Last Minute Edits, a Kitchen Table Studio, & How to Get the Most Out of Picture Books.”
MATT JAMES is a painter, author, illustrator and musician. His books have won many prestigious awards including the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, the New Mexico Book Award and the Governor General's Award for Illustration.
For appearances and interviews related to Groundwood Books publications, please contact Matt James’s publicist, Kirsten Brassard, at kbrassard@groundwoodbooks.com.
For appearances and interviews related to Tundra Books publications, please contact Matt James’s publicist, Evan Munday, at emunday@penguinrandomhouse.com
Matt James on Last Minute Edits, a Kitchen Table Studio, & How to Get the Most Out of Picture Books
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September 29, 2020
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author_Matt James
Governor General’s Literary Award winner Matt James is well known for illustrating Northwest Passage (an acclaimed tribute to the Stan Rogers song of the same name) and writing and illustrating The Funeral, which deals sensitively and intelligently with a child's view of grief and death.
His new picture book Nice Try, Charlie! (Groundwood Books) shows more of James' unique talent for smart, funny storytelling that helps kids understand the world.
A story of cooperation and community, Nice Try, Charlie! is both funny and sweet as it follows the title character in his quest to track down the owner of a pie he's found. Neighbours come together and get to know each other during Charlie's adventure, making a busy urban neighbourhood suddenly feel a lot more welcoming.
We're excited to welcome Matt to Open Book to talk about his new book as part of our Kids Club interview series. He tells us about a very last minute edit, describes how his writing and illustrating process has changed during this unusual year, and makes us laugh when he explains why his loved ones are motivated to help him through moments of artistic blockage.
Open Book:
Is there a message you hope kids might take away from reading your book?
Matt James:
Like, you mean one really clear message? No, not really. I’m hoping that my book says a lot of different things. For example:
I think it says that life can be hard sometimes and that adults don’t necessarily have all the answers to every problem and that that can be ok.
It says, learn your neighbours' names!
It says hey look, there is a lot of garbage everywhere in this whole wide world, to the extent that there is garbage orbiting the earth, garbage floating in space and that that is sort of sad and that we should maybe try to solve that problem somehow (even if we can only play a very small part in that solution).
OB:
Did the book look the same in the end as your originally envisioned it when you started working, or did it change through the writing process?
MJ:
I say this honestly and with very little exaggeration: I changed the title five minutes before this book went to print.
OB:
What do you need in order to write – in terms of space, food, rituals, writing instruments?
MJ:
The writing process and the illustration process have sort of gotten woven together, intersecting and overlapping each other in a way that makes sticking to a serious routine difficult for me. I do keep regular hours but outside of that time, which is consistent, there is a lot of room to move. I suspect that I’m a person whose routine will never be actually routine, and that change is what I thrive on, but I’m slow to draw conclusions.
But... I need sketchbooks and my pencil case (which tends to be bursting with pens, charcoal, ink, pencils, and X-actos.) I like to have my iPad Pro with me too. Often, I sketch really small but I also mix it up and do thumbnail illustrations on big newsprint pads using up the entire page for one "thumbnail".
I used to go to the library to write, in the morning on my way to my studio. I would grab coffee and a pile of picture books from the children’s section and head up to this little loft, where, with any luck, there would be room to spread out. I’d read for a while and think about the library books and then see if I had any new ideas to shake out onto paper.
Lately my studio has a different feel (my studio mates sand I are alternating when we use our space so my new scene is that I’m always here alone) and I’ve been enjoying that.
This year has been different (of course) and I’ve been learning new ways to work. I often worked on my stuff at the kitchen table with my kids while they were doing their homework—it was inspiring. I love and miss the energy of a classroom, especially when everyone is really focused on what they are doing and you can almost hear their brains working.
OB:
How do you cope with setbacks or tough points during the writing process? Do you have any strategies that are your go-to responses to difficult points in the process?
MJ:
When I hit a snag I usually become totally insufferable to the point that my family have no choice but to help me out of whatever quagmire I have landed myself in.
Usually for me, when I find myself stuck in the aforementioned swamp it’s because I haven’t been watching where I was going and I’ve gotten hyper focused on something that isn’t working (you can’t win 'em all). So almost always the best thing for me is to find a way to get a fresh perspective and just to see more of the world (and react to it) rather than trying to invent everything. That might mean going for a walk or hitting a museum (olden days etc.) or finding a tree to sit under somewhere.
This book was a really long and winding road with a lot of setbacks and strange turns. At times it was tricky to know when to walk away for a little while and when it was time to dig in and work though. It’s easy to feel insecure as a writer and that is a difficult thing to work around. As my dad used to say to my kids when they were struggling with something or other: It’s hard to be a person!
OB:
Do you feel like there are any misconceptions about writing for young people? What do you wish people knew about what you do?
MJ:
I’m not sure that this is an actual honest to goodness misconception or not but it seems to me, that a lot of people think that writing for young people = writing that is lightweight and not worth adult attention.
I think picture books (which probably suffer even more from this bias) are often taken at face value, judged purely on the beauty of the illustrations and the design or conversely, on the merits of the text. My favourite books are the ones where you have to read the images as much as read the words. It is my wish that people would not simply flip through a picture book (often from back to front) the first time that they read it. I wish more people would sit down and try actively to engage in the story that they are reading/seeing, that they might try to wonder why the words and images were put together in this way or that way. I mean I hate to tell someone how to enjoy a book and truly, whatever floats your boat—read it backwards or forwards or just look at the pictures if that is the way you like to do it, but I do think that people miss out on some amazing literature!
OB:
How would you describe the writing community in Canada in terms of authors writing for young people? What strengths and weaknesses do you observe within?
MJ:
I’d say that we have a pretty beautiful scene that includes many amazing and caring characters. We tend to be a community of hermits and are thus not naturally inclined to congregate or to organize ourselves but these are small shortcomings to my eyes. I see this community as one that is very open and supportive; it is seemingly and hopefully growing and getting stronger.
________________________________________________
Matt James is a painter, author/illustrator, and musician whose many highly acclaimed children’s books include Yellow Moon, Apple Moon by Pamela Porter (New Mexico Book Award); I Know Here by Laurel Croza (Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award) and its companion volume, From There to Here; and The Stone Thrower by Jael Ealey Richardson. Matt’s illustrations for Northwest Passage, a stunning tribute to the iconic Stan Rogers song, won the Governor General’s Literary Award. He also wrote and illustrated the highly acclaimed book The Funeral. Matt lives in Toronto.
JAMES, Matt. Nice Try, Charlie! illus. by Matt James. 48p. House of Anansi/ Groundwood. Sept. 2020. Tr $18.95. ISBN 9781773061801.
PreS-Gr 2--Charlie, a white adult, collects discarded items in his urban neighborhood and looks for things to do with them. As he makes his way through the streets wearing a large green hat and yellow boots and pushing a cart full of found objects, Charlie interacts with a diverse cast of community members. His neighbor, Aunt Myrtle, an older Black woman who uses a motorized wheelchair, notices a box on the street that happens to have a large pie inside, and much of the story-focuses on Charlie's quest to find out who the pie belongs to. Eventually, neighbors come together and eat the pie (ignoring the fact that it's probably not a good idea to dine on food found on the street). The colorful illustrations depict a lively city setting filled with apartment buildings, a tuba player, birds, and kind neighbors. The pictures are full of texture and are presented in different ways: two-page spreads, small comics-style panels, and cut-outs layered over other illustrations or photos of city backgrounds. The text is small and sometimes set off to the side in colored boxes, making it difficult to read. The goal of this book isn't clear. The implication is that Charlie is homeless, but that is never explained and could confuse young readers. Charlie is kind and helpful to others, but despite the title of this book, it's not really clear what he is trying to do or accomplish. VERDICT The illustrations of an energetic urban neighborhood are lively and engaging, but the story falls flat.--Melanie Kletter, School Library Journal
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
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Kletter, Melanie. "JAMES, Matt. Nice Try, Charlie!" School Library Journal, vol. 66, no. 9, 2020, p. 60. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A634531968/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e469d214. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
James, Matt NICE TRY CHARLIE! Groundwood (Children's None) $18.95 9, 1 ISBN: 978-1-77306-180-1
Repeated attempts yield enjoyable rewards.
That’s apparently the moral of this Canadian import, in which Charlie, an itinerant collector, gathers stuff into his cart in his urban neighborhood and tries to reuse it. From her window, Aunt Myrtle spots a pie in a box on the sidewalk. Charlie wants to eat it but, reminded by Aunt Myrtle the pie’s not his, instead attempts to find the owner on his rounds. Charlie tries to help a girl retrieve her ball; he can’t, though he learns the pie isn’t hers. He fashions a birdbath from a tire—but the pie doesn’t belong to the birds nor to a kid who plays the tuba badly. Having failed to locate the pie’s owner, Charlie returns home. In a pat conclusion, Aunt Myrtle invites the community to gather for a pastry feast. This tale, narrated in present tense, meanders with Charlie; seemingly, its point is to keep trying. Fair enough, but some may feel it should also have strongly tried to dissuade readers from eating food found on streets, boxed or not. Loose, quirky, colorful illustrations, some in panels, depict broad overviews of a city; some are superimposed on photos of urban backgrounds. Dialogue is often set in colored boxes. Brown-bearded Charlie presents white and is casually attired in a green ten-gallon hat and yellow boots; other characters are racially diverse. Aunt Myrtle is a black woman who uses a motorized wheelchair. (This book was reviewed digitally with 12-by-17.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 75% of actual size.)
Nice try, but there’s not much here to encourage repeat reads, even with pie. (Picture book. 4-7)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"James, Matt: NICE TRY CHARLIE!" Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2020, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A625183268/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=171bd00b. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.