Cool Mom Picks readers, we are so excited to launch a new series for you. We’re obsessed book lovers over here at the CMP headquarters, and we have a particular soft spot for children’s books (even though we’re moving our kids into college this week, sniff sniff). This new series will introduce amazing new books from the best children’s authors in the biz, as well as help you get to know them a little better.
This week, we had the incredible opportunity to have a little Q&A sesh with the award-winning, incredible, celebrated, and just downright cool children’s book author Sophie Blackall. I mean, look at her—don’t you just want to be her best friend?
If you search Sophie’s name on our site, she consistently appears in our “best children’s books of the year” posts, and that’s no coincidence. Her work is whimsical, meaningful, and classic. They are the kind of books that, when you clean out all the “junk” from your kids’ bookshelf, hers are the books you keep to read to grandkids one day.
Sophie’s newest book with illustrator Phoebe Wahl is Story Rug. If you’ve ever repurposed something meaningful—grandma’s quilt, an old sentimental t-shirt, your baby’s onesie—into a special keepsake, this book will speak to you.
In Story Rug, kids in a school classroom are learning how to braid, and their scrap fabric inspires stories and a gift for their teacher. The cool thing is, your kids (or grandkids) will be able to learn how to braid their own craft projects right alongside the kids in the book. How cute is that?
We highly recommend this for back to school reading, teacher gifts (it would make an amazing donation to a teacher’s classroom library!), or adding to your holiday shopping list.
So we had a chance to ask Sophie a few questions, and we’re delighted to share her answers with you.
CMP: What book have you given as a gift more than once, and why?
SOPHIE: I have lost count of the number of copies I have given away of Maira Kalman’s Principles of Uncertainty. It is a picture book for grown ups, an ode to curiosity, a manual for how to relish the absurd, how to pay attention to our fellow human beings, and how to be alive in the world.
CMP: What place do you most want to visit (or return to)?
SOPHIE: I am very excited to visit Sardinia for the first time, for the Tuttestorie Book Festival this October. In preparation, I am reading about the turquoise waters and pink sand, Bronze Age ruins and flamingo colonies, crispy flatbreads drizzled in rosemary-scented olive oil and fried pasta drenched in lemon and honey…
CMP: Wow, that sounds amazing. What’s something that has brought your family closer together lately?
SOPHIE: From May to October, my husband, Ed and I run Milkwood, a creative retreat for the children’s book community in the Catskill Mountains. We have four kids between us in our blended family, all in their twenties now, who come back to work with us for stretches at Milkwood. Not only that, but their friends come too, a bunch of delightful young people we’ve know since they were in elementary school. So for the summer months, our house is teeming. We work really hard, but on our off nights we cook out, go swimming in the river, and sit around a campfire with guitars. It’s heaven.
CMP: We’ve been admiring Milkwood from Instagram—it does look like heaven. And to have your whole family there? Wow. OK, next question: What is something totally ordinary that has brought you a lot of joy lately?
SOPHIE: Mrs. Meyers Clean Day Tomato Vine scent. It transports me back to childhood, to wandering through my great uncle and aunt’s garden on summer visits, the intoxicating experience of gobbling warm cherry tomatoes straight off the vine, rubbing the leaves between my fingers. It’s not always easy to find so I buy it in bulk online. That’s how much I love it.
CMP: That’s so perfect! Last question (before the speed round): What is one thing you own that, if you lost it, you’d immediately buy it again?
SOPHIE: I wear two kinds of shoes, Blundstone boots with red elastic and VIBAe Zumas. Both last for years and get better with age, but I worry they’ll stop making them, so I have a pair of each in reserve.
Speed round!
Favorite Drink: Coffee. Union Market Prospect Park Blend coffee. We can’t get it upstate, so we buy ten bags every time we’re back in Brooklyn.
Favorite Cookbook: Bill’s Food. Bill Granger was a legendary Australian chef, a Sydney icon. My copy of this book, bought when I first moved out of home, is splattered with olive oil and cake batter. I cook mostly from online recipes these days but I will never part with Bill’s Food.
Favorite Art Supply: I have illustrated around 60 books for children and most of them I’ve painted with Chinese ink and watercolor. I have had the same $7 stick of ink for twenty five years and probably won’t finish it in my lifetime! I love buying fresh watercolors, though, and there are some wonderful women-owned small businesses making hand made paints in incredibly seductive colors. Two of my favorites are Case for Making in San Francisco and Beam Paintson M’Chigeeng First Nation land, Ontario.
Favorite Children’s Book: You want me to just pick one??? You put this question in the speed round? Ha! Okay, this is the best I can do:
Favorite children’s book from childhood: Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne and E. H. Shepherd
Favorite book I read to my own children: Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran and Barbara Cooney
Favorite picture book out this year: Rosie Gets Ready by Sergio Ruzzier
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