Laurie Zum Hofe and Seth Boggs, both professors at Concordia University, collaborated on a children's book. Zum Hofe was the author and Boggs the illustrator. The two held a session at the Plum Creek Literacy Festival on Sept. 20, the same day their book was first for sale.
Two Concordia University professors collaborated to create a children’s book.
Laurie Zum Hofe and Seth Boggs teach at Concordia. Zum Hofe is an English professor and Boggs is an art professor.
Boggs knew Zum Hofe from a committee they were both on at Concordia and asked her for some help with a children’s book.
“I just said ‘hey I need some help. Sometime I’d like you to help me get going writing a children’s book, because I want to illustrate,’” Boggs said. “And then through that conversation, Laurie was like ‘Well we should just collaborate.’ And I was like ‘yeah that sounds fantastic.’”
The two started their collaboration three years ago. “On a Tilt” is the result of that collaboration and was available to purchase starting Sept. 20.
“On a Tilt” was inspired by Seward Zum Hofe said.
“I don’t know if this birdhouse is there anymore, but it’s that house that is apartment buildings now across from Dairy Queen,” Zum Hofe said. “So it’s a Seward story. I saw a bird living in the house and I just thought to myself ‘OK, there’s something interesting there’ and I took a picture of it. We probably used this as our plot pretty quickly after that. Because I think I texted it to (Boggs) right away and I said ‘Here it is.’”
Boggs said at the time he had already been doing sketches of birds. The two decided the birds living in the tilted birdhouse would be sparrows. One sparrow was a little bit different than all the other sparrows, and they named him Gus.
“We secretly call him grumpy Gus,” Zum Hofe said.
Gus is the main character of “On a Tilt.” Boggs and Zum Hofe described Gus as being a little antisocial and introverted.
Through the collaborative process Boggs and Zum Hofe figured out how they work together and decided to continue with the books.
“I think we learned a lot about how this whole thing works but I wrote the next story,” Zum Hofe said. “There’s another character in this book that shows up in the second book and that story wrote itself in about four hours. So I can tell we figured something out together.”
The two plan to write and illustrate six books together. The first three Zum Hofe will write and Boggs will illustrate from the story. The next three Boggs will take the lead and illustrate while Zum Hofe writes the story based on the illustrations.
“Now we’re to the point where he’ll just text me sketches and I’m like ‘I wonder what the problem could be with this person’ so that’s been fun too,” Zum Hofe said.
Boggs said sometimes he needs to stop Zum Hofe from putting too much thought into what he sends her.
“Sometimes I have to rein that back in. I’m like ‘No this is not going to be the story. Don’t put too much time into it.’ It’s fun,” he said.
The timeline for the second book is not set yet. They first want to get a feel of the perception of the first book before starting a timeline for the second one.
“I think we’re curious to see what the reception of our friend Gus is to the world at large, and then maybe that will motivate us to do it a little bit faster,” Zum Hofe said. “Who knows what Gus will do.”
Zum Hofe and Boggs hope to get the books into local bookstores, but the books will also be available online through their website, titledpress.com.
