Author Interview: David Keyes

With the launch of his debut book, “What If My Nana Was a Banana?” I thought you’d enjoy learning a little bit about children’s book author, David Keyes. After working with David over the last year on his book, I’ve learned that he is equal parts hard-working and silly, but he’s also thought a lot about what makes a good children’s book. Combine that with the incredible talent of our illustrator, Lauren Lowen, and you have the Nana Banana dream team!

Read on to learn more about the author and what he discovered about the publishing process.

Christa Fletcher: What inspired you to write, "What If My Nana Was a Banana?"

David Keyes: After reading a lot of Mo Willems' books to my kids, I dreamed that one day I would write a book that was 1% as good as Elephant and Piggie. This book comes real close.

CF: Do you like writing books for kids?

DK: I really like writing educational content for kids, which is why this book has a creative writing educational slant to it. I used to write math curriculum for kids as young as 4 years old, and have always been interested in framing information in a fun and digestible way. That's the type of mental exercise I could work on solving for the rest of my life and never get bored.

CF: What was the writing process like for you?

DK: I actually see a bit of myself in the kid character from the story. When my mind wanders, I sometimes think of silly situations and then play them out in my head to see where they lead. So most of my writing process was honestly just pre-thinking and day-dreaming in my head about the story. Once I started writing, the words came out pretty fast since I had been thinking about it for over 2 years at that point!

CF: What are some of your favorite children's books? And what about "grownup" books?

DK: My all time favorite children's books are by Roald Dahl, specifically Matilda. I love how the kids in his stories are so much more mature, patient, and thoughtful than the grownups. This paradigm holds true in real life as well, especially when the grownups are politicians.

My favorite "grownup" books are not novels, but books that explore the history of a particular topic that seems commonplace now, but wasn't always. For example, I'm reading this book now called "The Grid" about the history of America's energy grid and how electricity finds its way into our homes. It's terrifying how many problems there are with it and how daunting any solution would be to implement, but fascinating all the same. A key takeaway of the book is to make sure to have some candles.

CF: What advice do you have to kids who want to be authors?

DK: Go write something down. Look, now you're an author! What's great about writing is that all you need is a pencil, paper, and your brain; limited materials to create endless possibilities.

CF: Do you have any tips for grownups who want to write children's books?

DK: Yes, definitely! Read a lot of them out loud to your kids and think about what you like and don't like about them. Also think about what your kids like and don't like about them. Make a Venn Diagram of what you and your kids like, and write a book based on the intersection. QED.

CF: What was the most surprising thing you learned about writing a book?

DK: How much thought needs to go into the storyboard and text placement. It's such an important part of telling the story, and one that I really had to think hard about post writing.

CF: What was it like working with your illustrator Lauren Lowen?

DK: Um, totally amazing! Lauren is so talented - she completely picked up on my silly/wild adventure and ran with it in all the right ways. Her illustrations really matched the energy and purpose of the words and truly brought the book to life. She is fantastic.

CF: Can you share a little bit about how we found your illustrator?

DK: You asked me what type of illustration style I was going for then researched a list of illustrators that fit that style. We reached out to a couple, and ultimately decided to work with Lauren, which was the best decision we could have made!

CF: Is your Nana a Banana?

DK: Naw, she's an orange.