You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Where Does a Pirate Go Potty?’ tag.
Today we have debuts up the wazoo! (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
When Dawn Babb Prochovnic contacted me about debuting her new book trailer, I was intrigued because she collaborated with Annie Lynn, a songstress I knew from Twitter. (Which means today not only is there a trailer debut, but a musical debut as well. Yes, we are dropping music this week just like Taylor Swift!)
Of course, come on my blog! I said. But first, tell me about this awesome collaboration!
Dawn:
There is so much to love about the song that Annie and her team created for the WHERE DOES A PIRATE GO POTTY? book trailer.
When I first connected with Annie, my thought was that I would send her a copy of the book, and she would read it and magically be inspired to write a song. Instead, she nudged me to write the lyrics for the song before she ever saw the book.
Her feeling was that I knew the heart of the story better than she or others would or could. That nudge opened up a whole new creative channel for me—I’m so proud to have been involved in the making of this song, and I’m so grateful that Annie and her music came into my life. I sincerely feel like the song is an extension of the book, versus just a fun extra.
That said, the song is a work of art in its own right that could stand alone without the book’s scaffolding. It’s so kid-friendly and ridiculously catchy. I find myself humming it ALL THE TIME. Good thing I love it!
Well then, let’s hear it!
Annie, how did you get into writing songs for kidlit?
I was lead to kidlit the way I was lead to kindie music (kids + indie musician = kindie). By accident….OR WAS IT????
Sometimes life gives you signs, and if you pay attention, and put the pieces together there is often an exciting path open to you. I went from recording kids music with my son and the students I was working with at an elementary school, to kidlit, as a result of reading with kids.
My first kidlit song was 2 years ago. I gifted OLGA AND THE SMELLY THING FROM NOWHERE by Elise Gravel to my kid neighbor. We read it together out loud and I felt strongly that the words needed music (yes, I do that constantly, lol). I took 97% of her words, added music, made a demo, and ended up asking Elise for permission to share with the world and she said yes. She said she loved it and I could use it as I like. But that’s when I found out that songs are most valuable before the book comes out, especially for book trailers and value-added content for the book. Lesson learned. Completely different model from radio!
My next kidlit song was for Author Patrick Adams. He has this fun kidlit travel series LISA GOES TO… with this stuffed toy bear, Lisa, who can do amazing tricks and is guardian to 3 kids.
That brings me to our latest collaboration, with author Dawn Babb Prochovnic.
We were connected by mutual friends…one knew an author who wanted to write a song with a musician for a book trailer for her upcoming book, the other knew a children’s songwriter. See? THAT is the synchronicity I was just talking about.
However, that songwriter was tied up recording her next album, but had a friend who had been working a few years in kidlit, writing songs. We were introduced in a lovely email, and then began chatting on the phone about concepts and instruments. It quickly became apparent that I had been SENT one of the most lovely and kind people I had ever met. And she likes to talk and joke as much as I do, so we had some memorable, very funny conversations.
I lucked out with Dawn in that I gained a professional Author mentor, as well as learning about word pacing in picture books. I was used to being Free Range Annie, writing about whatever I wanted to, whenever the Muse visited. If you listen to the back and forth exchange between the Captain and his crew in the book trailer song for WHERE DOES A PIRATE GO POTTY? there’s a rhythm pattern that would not have occurred to me until Dawn wrote it out on paper. I kept thinking “Wow…she’s good. I just learned something new and useful.” I also gained a friend and mutual supporter for life.
I also appreciate Dawn’s enthusiasm and vision for music in kidlit, and she has wonderful educational ideas that send my creativity into overdrive. She revealed that she recognizes the power music has to pull all the different pieces together in putting out a kidlit book trailer. And I can’t wait to hear kids singing this song to her on School Author Visits. She can now send it ahead of time, to any school she is visiting. They can learn it and sing along with the video. Kids will love singing her song to her. I always love how excited kids get when they sing my songs for me. And they can see me beaming, which makes them feel good too. Get ready to beam, Dawn!
I also need to mention that this song taught me not to take myself so seriously….I was writing an environmental doomsday song for an enviro group when she called. I needed a little break from heavy subject matter, and a song about a Pirate needing to find a potty quickly sure did the trick. My son is the Captain in the song and my husband Walt and I are the crew. Chris Arms plays guitar & mixed. We laughed so much recording this song. We tried to vocally make seal and dolphin sounds, til we realized we needed to sample the real thing. Listening to samples of seals and dolphins for an hour will make you laugh your butts off! And from downstairs, it sounded like seals were in my studio. I wrote to Dawn in tears after that….the really happy kind. She brought us a memory that we will always cherish. And it got Alex off the darn PS4! He hasn’t been able to record with me since his voice changed. He’s really happy and proud of his performance; we are too.
Thank you, Dawn and Annie Lynn, for sharing your experience collaborating on kindie/kidlit music! I have a feeling Annie Lynn is about to be inundated with musical requests!
But first, a couple of giveaways!
From Dawn, you can win either a copy of WHERE DOES A PIRATE GO POTTY? or a picture book critique! Your choice!
From Annie Lynn, you can win a music CD: SONGS FOR SCHOOLS!
Just leave a comment below to enter. Random winners will be selected in September!
Good luck!
Follow these creative ladies on Twitter: @DawnProchovnic & @AnnieLynn215
When my high-school-aged son was a toddler, I recall a day when he was in a particularly silly mood, running through the house with a diaper on his bottom, a bandana on his head, and a pirate’s patch over one eye. He looked at me with an ornery twinkle in his uncovered eye, and asked, in his best, pirate-y gruff toddler voice, “Where Does a Pirate Go Potty?” I knew immediately this was the title for a book, and I started drafting a manuscript soon after.
Over the next couple of years, the manuscript went through many critiques and many revisions, but the core story about the universal childhood experience of, “I gotta go. Now!” told from the perspective of a pirate on a quest to find just the right spot to leave his…uh, treasure…remained consistent throughout.
In 2006/2007 I submitted the story for professional critiques and participated in opportunities to read the story aloud at various SCBWI events. The story was a crowd-pleaser, and several editors expressed interest and invited me to follow up with a submission. In 2007, one of those editors took the manuscript to her editorial meeting, and then to acquisitions. She was extremely enthusiastic about the story, and I felt confident a contract offer was on the horizon. But that was not to be.
I was thrown by the emotional roller coaster of being so close to making my first sale, then having it fall apart, but I refused to give up on the story. I continued submitting it and bringing it to conferences for awhile, but eventually my focus shifted to new stories and new submissions. After signing contracts for my STORY TIME WITH SIGNS AND RHYMES series, my attention shifted to editing and launching those books. Even so, every now and then, I’d re-read my Pirate Potty manuscript, and tinker around with it some. I never stopped loving it.
Fast forward to 2015. I was invited to write a story for Oregon Reads Aloud, a keepsake collection of read-aloud stories for children, published in celebration of SMART’s (Start Making a Reader Today) 25th anniversary (Graphic Arts Books, 2016). I was grateful for the opportunity. I gladly contributed a story for the project and actively participated in the promotional events for the book.
In October of 2016, I drove 3 ½ hours from Portland to Seattle to spend a couple of hours signing copies of Oregon Reads Aloud in the Graphic Arts Books booth during the Pacific NW Book Association conference. During my time in the booth, I got to know some of the folks at Graphic Arts and familiarized myself with their regionally-focused list. I remember thinking, “These are such nice people. I’d love to work with them on other books. I wish I had a manuscript with a regional theme that I could submit to them.”
Over the course of the next year, I continued wishing that I had a book that was a good fit for Graphic Arts. Not surprisingly, wishing did not make it so. One day, as I re-read and reflected on my beloved Pirate Potty story, I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could westernize this story?” That moment was a turning point.
I got all of the “feels” that you get when you have a good idea, and I started making notes. I challenged myself to replace the pirate character with a different character, and the idea of a cowboy soon came to mind. I tried plugging “Cowboy” elements into the story in place of “Pirate” elements, but I was not keen on the changes that came out of that exercise. I think there were a few different reasons the cowboy changes weren’t working, but the biggest issue was that during this phase of re-vision, I was essentially trying to insert a cowboy into the pirate’s story. The roots of my story were based on that memorable moment when my son posed the silly question, “Where Does a Pirate Go Potty?,” and I “saw” a very specific Pirate character in my mind every time I sat with the story. I couldn’t simply replace that character with a cowboy.
At one point, I pulled out my old files from back when the Pirate Potty story “almost sold,” and I re-read what the editor wrote to me. She had said, “…Everyone in our group just loved it and thought it’d be a slam dunk, but Sales thought that a pirate potty book would only appeal to boys, thus cutting our readership in half. I totally disagree with them…but without their support, we just can’t move forward…”
I, too, disagreed with the assessment that only boys would be interested in a Pirate Potty book, but this time as I re-read those words, a new question emerged: What about a cowgirl? I found myself immediately transported to a time when my college-aged daughter was in grade school, and her wardrobe included a bright pink pair of cowgirl boots. I paged through old photos and found the one I was looking for: A photo of my daughter dressed-up for her western-themed grade school carnival. I finally had the kernel of a new character in my mind’s eye. This character was unique and separate from the Pirate character that I couldn’t let go of, and she had her own story to tell.
WHERE DOES A COWGIRL GO POTTY? spilled onto the page with urgency.
And all of a sudden (and about a dozen years later) I had two potty stories I loved, one with a decidedly western theme. I identified several publishers that might be a good fit for Cowgirl, and I developed a submission plan. Graphic Arts Books was at the top of the list.
I submitted WHERE DOES A COWGIRL GO POTTY? to Graphic Arts Books in 2017, and I’m happy to share that it’s scheduled to hit bookshelves in the fall of 2019…along with WHERE DOES A PIRATE GO POTTY? Yarrr! They loved that story, too.
One key revision, and two new books. Yee-Ha!
Dawn Babb Prochovnic is the author of multiple picture books including Where Does a Cowgirl Go Potty? and Where Does a Pirate Go Potty? (forthcoming, 2019) and a frequent presenter at schools, libraries, and educational conferences. Dawn loves to travel and has visited thousands of potties across the Pacific Northwest and around the world. She is the founder of SmallTalk Learning based in Portland, Oregon. Learn more at dawnprochovnic.com.
Writing for Kids (While Raising Them) 