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MEET TERI SLOAT
by Bonnie O'Brian

What did you most like to do when you were a child?

Teri Sloat

When I was a child my favorite thing to do was read, draw, and daydream and camp at the beach. I never once realized I could be a writer, but I dreamed of being an artist.

When I grew up I became a teacher and found out that picture books were my favorite kinds of books.

What kinds of things inspire you to write?

My imagination has always worked overtime and is triggered by pictures in my head that start to tell a story FROM LETTER TO LETTER, FROM ONE TO ONE HUNDRED, PIECES OF CHRISTMAS, songs that I like THERE WAS AN OLD LADY WHO SWALLOWED A TROUT, and I design postage stamps for a hobby so that is why I have HARK! THE AARDVARK ANGELS SING!,and PIECES OF CHRISTMAS. I read and listen to folklore and to write it again just the way I want to hear it. While living in the bush in Alaska I heard many stories that I have been able to tell - BERRY MAGIC, THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE, THE HUNGRY GIANT OF THE TUNDRA. When I’m unhappy or frustrated I write.

My next book, THERE WAS AN OLD MAN WHO PAINTED THE SKY (2008) comes from wondering about creation and wanting to write my own story about how things happened. It is also written to praise the girl who found the first cave paintings. She was curious and looked up to see the oxen painted in the caves at Alta Mira. No one else noticed them.

I absolutely love making puns and telling jokes, and that is where RIB-TICKLERS and put some of them together in RIB-TICKLERS and THE REALLY, REALLY BAD BOOK OF MONSTER JOKES. There are many more joke books tucked away in the files.

Have any of your books earned special recognition?

BERRY MAGIC wears a Benjamin Franklin Award medal, several books are on state reading lists. My first book was one the NY Times Best Picture Books. Other awards have been ALA Notables, ABA Pick of the Lists, CBC notables and have been recorded for BBC, and have been recognized by Sesame Street, USA Today, Junior Library Guild, etc. I’m still waiting for the Caldecott! It’s fun to know that THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE was a float in the Fur Rendezvous parade in Anchorage, and has a musical written for it in the Anchorage schools, there are dolls in the Alaskan museums to go with BERRY MAGIC. The best recognition comes in letters from readers.

Have any of your fiction stories been about real people or events?

THIS IS THE HOUSE THAT WAS TIDY AND NEAT was written because I came home to a very messy house after leaving it clean and going on a trip. The first time I wrote it I was pretty mad, but the whole situation became funnier as I turned it into a story. FARMER BROWN is my husband and all of the FARMER BROWN books are based on his antics.

Which of your books did you most enjoy writing?

The book that I enjoyed writing the most was I’M A DUCK! It made me happy everytime I worked on it, and it was actually about a duck I met at a hotel when I was in a bad mood. I also loved weaving the life cycle of a duck into a totally fictional story about growing up and falling in love. Nature is my favorite thing to illustrate, so making the picture with pastel for the book was great fun. I was able to spend a lot of time watching ducks.

What are you working on now? When do you expect to start submitting it to publishers?

I hope to have a YA novel based on a young girl in Alaska finished in the next year, but I will take as much time as I need, ad part of that time will be reading a lot of other YA novels. I am also working on another folk tale with Betty Huffmon and another I’M A….story. We’ll see which one gets done first. I also have a story told in pictures that needs words. This summer I created a series of posters for the Boston Children’s Hospital and it’s time to put their story into words as well. So I’m working on several things and will not know the pub date of any of them for a while.

Do you write every day and do you have set hours that you work?

I do work creatively almost everyday. When I am writing, and can't do a lot of art work, I always save a little time to do some art during the day. When I'm illustrating and can’t do a lot of writing, I keep a notepad for ideas. I let myself work for an hour a day on my own writing that doesn’t usually get published…poetry, joke writing, journaling, etc. And one month a year or more, I work on fine art, then squeeze it in as often as possible the rest of the time.

When you do school visits, what question do children ask you most?

When I visit schools I want the kids to realize that imagination works the best when we write and draw for our own pleasure. But I also want them to know that the only way to get better is to keep writing, illustrating, even if they don’t like everything they do. So assignments or jobs are the thing that make us do things on time, develop and use our skills, and make our work good enough for others to enjoy as well. I show them the tools that I use and games that I play with words to loosen up and have fun. My stories have been called whimsical, and what I want the kids to understand is that it means I’ve combined real things with unreal situations and tried to see how far the imagination can stretch. I want them to play with their own ideas when I leave, whether they are in the form of art, or writing. These kids will someday rule our world and I want them to have great access to creative thinking when they do that.

And just for the record, I do a lot of teacher workshops as well. They need the time to have fun with their ideas as well, both in writing and art.

Here are some recent comments from fan letters--

“I’m so glad you came to visit our school. You are very good, and I thought all the good authors were dead people.”

“Mrs. Sloat, You’ve got style!” (we talked about style in art)

“Mrs. Sloat, I have been thinking a lot about you, and thank you for everything in your books. Your are my idol.”

“Dear Mrs. Sloat, Thank you for doing the art project with us. It was fun because you were doing a really good job because I thought you could do it.”

“Mrs. Sloat. I saw you draw the picture upside down. Can you write that way too?”

‘I enjoyed when you told us about waiting for the bus and a duck was saying “Yep’ I’m a duck! I’m a duck!” I thought it was amazing that a duck would talk to someone.”