Floca, Brian

Brian Floca Makes Tracks

Brian Floca’s career in picture books started because of a conversation between Avi, Dick Jackson of Simon and Schuster, and David Macaulay. Think about it—if you wanted three godfathers present at your launch into the children’s book world, could you conceive of a more auspicious triumvirate?

The versatile and vastly talented Avi wanted to do a graphic novel. This was not yesterday or even last year when graphic novels were on several of the media awards lists for ALA—this was nearly twenty years ago. He pitched the idea and his script to Simon & Schuster’s Jackson, who wasn’t sure what such a beast would look like. Avi contacted his friend David Macaulay, who was teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design, and asked him if he could suggest a cartoonist to help him give shape to a bit of the script and create some sample chapters. The creator of The Way Things Work knew just whom to tap for the project that would become City of Light, City of Dark.

“I got to work with Avi to put together four chapters and I also got some independent study with David Macaulay,” recalls Caldecott Medal-winner Brian Floca. Locomotive, Brian’s brilliant melding of science and history, was dedicated to Avi.

The track to Locomotive was not without its twists and turns, or even its curves and gradients. The author/illustrator had proven his facility with modes of transport with Lightship and Moonshot. “I became enchanted by them,” he remembers. “They are driven by such basic elemental things.” He was also drawn to the inherent juxtapositions of steam power in that something as simple as steam could be harnessed to tame a continent. He first made a pitch for a book on how a steam locomotive works but the project grew until it included the story of the transcontinental railroad. “Steam annihilates time and space and this was the first time people could move across land faster than an animal could carry them.”

In addition to being enchanted about the early days of the steam trains, Brian Floca was also entranced by the American West. “Avi and Dick and I were having dinner together in Washington D.C. after the National Book Festival and Avi told stories about his big old dog that looked like a wolf.” Avi lives near Steamboat Springs, Colorado and is surrounded by wilderness. Old Wolf grew from that casual conversation. “Wolves and ravens have this mysterious relationship in the wild,” notes Brian, who points out that both wolves and ravens benefit when a wolf makes a kill. “In Old Wolf, three characters each have a need to prove something to themselves.”

With many admired books and numerous awards behind him, Brian Floca may not need to prove anything to himself at this point. He’s not divulging his next project however. All he would state was that it is to be released in Spring of 2017. Maybe we should ask Avi and Dick Jackson.

Brian Floca has had many influential mentors and teachers in his life. “My Mom was a teacher and took my sister and me to the library so that I learned the importance and validity of books,” begins Brian. He was encouraged in his drawing and names Richard Scarry’s books as an early influence. “They are so full of things to see and there is such a rich and full world within those pages.” He adds that he especially enjoyed their “cheerfulness and curiosity.”

Brian was also lucky to go to a school where teachers regularly read to their students. From his fourth grade teacher whose rendering of James and the Giant Peach bewitched Brian with the image of floating on a peach through the clouds to his sixth grade teacher sharing The Hobbit and The Princess Bride, the wonder of books was ever-present. Except on the day when the teacher was absent and the eager students decided to read some of William Goldman’s classic for themselves and realized she had been editing as she read. But that’s another story.

While his teachers read to him and his art teacher gave him the freedom to draw whatever he wanted, Brian was given the tools and the opportunity to find his path for himself, even if they were train tracks leading to a remote corner of the continent.

Interviewed by Ellen Myrick, December 2015

 

 

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