Book Giveaway: SOAKED by Abi Cushman

Author/illustrator Abi Cushman debut picture book titled, SOAKED came out on July 14th and was published by Viking Books. Abi has agreed to share a book with one lucky winner. All you have to do to get in the running is to leave a comment. Reblog, tweet, or talk about it on Facebook with a link and you will get additional chances to win. Just let me know the other things you do to share the good news, so I can put in the right amount of tickets in my basket for you.

Sharing on Facebook, Twitter, reblogging really helps spread the word for a new book. Thanks for helping Abi!

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

A Hula-Hooping moose, a badger with a bumblebee umbrella, a rabbit in a cashmere sweater, and a very wet bear star in this unpredictable and laugh-out-loud picture book in which having fun gets the best of a grumpy bear.

It looks like a wet and dreary day for Bear and his trio of friends. How could he possibly have fun when he is soaked? But Badger, Rabbit, and Moose don’t seem to mind. In fact, Moose can still hula hoop! And it looks like so much fun. Might Bear like to try?

Here is a story that shows that fun is not dependent on sunshine and blue skies. In fact, it might be more fun to be soaked!

BOOK JOURNEY:

When I first had the idea for SOAKED!—when I was sopping wet from head to toe, walking back to my house in a rainstorm—I decided I was going to create a wordless picture book about an animal dancing in the rain. How beautiful and poignant it was going to be!

But then this fellow kept showing up in my sketchbook.

I brought the idea to my critique group. I was afraid of having a bear as a main character because bear books were so common. How was my bear book going to stand out? I had suffered from some pretty gut-wrenching near-miss rejections on my last dummy where editors
had questioned the strength of the hook.

So for this story, I was NOT going to make that same mistake. I was going to make sure the story had a strong hook and would stand out in the market BEFORE investing all my time and energy into it. And at this point, I could make the main character ANYTHING. But my critique group countered back, “But that’s who you keep drawing. There must be something there.”

Then that Eeyore-sounding Bear voice came into my head, and I started thumbnailing out a story… with words. The story was weird. And random. There was a dancing moose. Were people going to psychoanalyze me based on this weird, random stuff I was writing? Oh well! At that point what did I have to lose? After two years seriously trying to break into the industry, I had failed to sell two dummies to publishers. Maybe something weird was just what I needed.

[My braindumping session one evening where Moose made his first appearance… as did the mention of a cashmere sweater. Poor Squirrel with Cookie didn’t make it into the final story.]

I shared the story with my critique group. It featured a fox, a badger, a bunny, a hula-hooping moose, and of course our soggy bear friend. The middle and ending were quite different from the final story and basically was a series of splashy images where I tried to play around with the musicality of onomatopoeia words. The hula hooping moose was mostly in the background, far in the distance, doing his thing.

After I sent the story to my agent, she wrote back, “I’m concerned the only thing anyone will remember about this story is a hula-hooping moose.” She also pointed out that my dummy lacked any kind of tension or plot. (How inconvenient to have to add those things to a story, am I right?!)

After more revisions and brainstorming with my critique groups, I added Moose more prominently into the story and had him lose his hula-hoop. I cut the fox character and differentiated the personalities of Badger and Bunny better. I added more escalation to the story by hinting that Badger may have stolen Bear’s umbrella. The story ended with a joyous scene of all the friends splashing.

When Jim and Tracy, my editor and art director at Viking, had a look at the dummy, they provided notes on tightening things up so that I had room for a new ending. “Great. Great.” I thought. “All I need to do is come up with a completely new ending that everyone loves. No pressure.”

Jim also had one other note, which was that my drawing of Moose needed… work. He sent moose photos and pointed out their unusual physical traits. “Huh.” I thought, “What an incredibly kind way of telling me I don’t know how to draw a moose.” Here’s the evolution of Moose, and
well… he definitely had a point about the early sketches.

But once I had the moose design down, I was given the go-ahead to start on the final art. And it only took 9 more months of drawing, redrawing, agonizing self doubt, paralyzing anxiety, nachos, and tears to finish all the spreads in color.

Looking back at my path to publication, I can see it took lots of rejections, critique, hard work, and letting go of inhibitions to get me here. But I am so glad that this weird bear book with a hula-hooping moose that actually looks like a moose is my picture book debut!

ABI’S BIO:

Abi Cushman is a children’s book author-illustrator, a web designer, and a rabbit lover. Her debut picture book, Soaked!, comes out Summer 2020 from Viking Children’s Books, with a second book, Animals Go Vroom!, to follow in 2021.

When she’s not writing about sassy animals in her picture books, Abi writes about sassy animals on her two websites: My House Rabbit (yes, rabbits are verrry sassy) and Animal Fact Guide, which was named a “Great Website for Kids” by the American Library Association. Did you know that wombat poop is cube-shaped? You do now! (And no, you’ll never un-know that.)

Abi lives in a small Connecticut beach town with her family. In her spare time, she enjoys running, playing tennis, and eating nachos. (Yes, at the same time.)

She is represented by BookStop Literary Agency and is a proud member of the Soaring 20s, a group of picture book authors and illustrators debuting in 2020/21.

Abi, thank you for sharing your book, journey, and some sketches with us. Soaked looks like a very cute, fun book. I’m sure kids will identify with being grumpy while stuck inside on a dreary day. Your book should be able to bring a smile to their faces even if the weather outside is frightful. Good luck with the book. BTW, love your illustrations – good job!

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy