Author Interview with Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel

Between the Lines

Jackalope
Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel
Illustrated by Janet Stevens

Have you ever seen Jackalope? Are you sure? Well, how he came to be and how he ended up are all in this wild story by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel. You see, the Jackalope didn't start out with horns. First he was a plain old hare—the horns came later. And the trouble those horns brought—hoooo-wee! A gut-busting brew-ha-ha of sassy storytelling and outrageous art about Jackalope—an American legend.

Biography

Janet Stevens is the author and illustrator of many popular and award-winning books for children, including the Caldecott Honor Book Tops & Bottoms, the Texas Bluebonnet winner Cook-a-Doodle-Doo!, and the Texas Bluebonnet nominee And The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon. She also illustrated To Market, To Market by Anne Miranda, an ABBY Honor Book. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Susan Stevens Crummel has collaborated with Janet Stevens, her sister, on several picture books including And the Dish Ran Away with the Spoon, Cook-a-Doodle-Doo!, and Tumbleweed Stew. A former high school teacher, she now spends her time writing and doing author visits at schools. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas.

Interview with Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel

Q: The first paragraph of Jackalope—
"Ever seen a Jackalope?
Probably not, because they're gone.
Extinct. Like dinosaurs and go-go boots."
—immediately sets the tone and creates the expectation that this will be a humorous children's book. So, which came first, this line or the rest of the story? In general, how did the story unfold during its creation?
Susan: That line came later. The first time we talked about Jackalope was in a brainstorming session. Janet said, "Remember that Jackalope's head?" My cousins had it mounted on a wall and they always teased us that it was a real animal. The book is really a "payback" to our cousins. We started brainstorming on the story idea and it evolved from there to the armadillo storyteller and what he was going to say. Then we added the opening line.

Q: Did one of you actually wear wear those extinct go-go boots?
Susan: Me. I was in the go-go boot era. We all wore them. And yes, mine were white. I was in college in the 60's and we had little short dresses and white boots.
Janet: She's much older, you see. :)

Q: The storyteller—the armadillo narrator who waxes poetic and prances around in a cowboy hat, lawnchair at the ready—where did you come up with him? Have you seen this look before—perhaps in Texas?
Janet: I've been doing Christmas cards for my parents for about twenty years and the cards always include two armadillos. The one representing my Dad has cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. I don't think this one is really Dad.
Susan: As Janet said, it started out with both Mom and Dad being portrayed as two armadillos on the cards—they even have them on the front gate of their ranch down near Hunt, Texas. It's an iron cutout version of two armadillos dancing. She has on a skirt and he has on the cowboy boots. It's their "little thing" that turned into Christmas cards and then inspired this narrator—but he's different from Dad's armadillo.

Q: And the lawn chair?
Janet: Oh, I really like lawn chairs. I've put them into my books throughout the years. They are very American.

Q: On one page of the book you show Jackalope's family tree—and it is a Who's Who of hare history from Jack of All Trades to Hareball. . . .
Susan: That's my weird sister. That family tree! I had written the poem and then Janet just took off with all the silly Jacks that she could think of.

Q: Who's Jack the Carpenter?
Janet: Jack the Carpenter is from The House that Jack Built. If I put, "the house that Jack built" it wouldn't have worked so he ended up being the carpenter.
Susan: If you look back on Janet's books you'll find many Jacks. The House That Jack Built was also one of her picture books.
Janet: Jack is also in The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon that Susie and I did. And in Jack Be Nimble. My brother's name is Jack.

Q: He's your inspiration?
Janet: Yes, but in addition to my brother is my father whose name is Jack. And my grandfather's name is Jack, too. :)
Susan: And do you know want to know the name of my neighbor's little boy?

Q: Don't tell me—Jack?
Susan: Michael. :):):)
Janet: We have Jack on the brain.
Susan: Also there are Jackrabbits all over Texas. Even at the ranch there were two jackrabbits hanging around the house—and jackrabbits never come around people. It was as if they were telling Janet and me to hurry up and finish the book.

Q: But . . . . were they jackalopes?
Janet: Jackalopes are extinct.
Susan: They're extinct.
When I do school visits I bring out my stuffed jackalope and say, "How many of you have seen a real jackalope?" All the hands go up and the teachers start laughing. It's just a hoot. Then the kids start telling me where they've seen them. Once I told a group of second graders that the jackalope wasn't a real animal and a little boy said, "uh unhhhh. My Dad was bitten by a Jackalope." So I leave it open. With sixth graders I can discuss that more easily.

Q: As we find out in the book Jackalope wasn't around all that long. . . .
Susan: It's why the branch of the family tree is empty now—he was a flash in the pan.

Q: And yet he is famous across the country. He graces the walls of stores and is often seen in snapshots and on postcards. What made the two of you decide to write about him?
Janet: My uncle had a head of a rabbit with horns on it hanging in the room where I slept when visiting my cousins—I did a drawing of it for this book. While visiting I would sleep right under it in a twin bed. I was never really sure if it was a real animal or not. We were a Navy family and we moved all around so we weren't really savvy about Texas and ranches, and I didn't know if it was real.

Q: Until what age?
Susan: Until she was about forty. :)
Janet: It's still real to me and it stuck in my mind.
Susan: We had twenty-something first cousins and they were all ranchers—riding horses and doing all the things we wished we could do.
Janet: So, not being from there, we didn't know for sure if there was a jackalope. And it was scary. It was an unknown and I was embarrassed to ask my cousins if it was real—because then I would be "dumb."
Susan: When you look at Texas animals you see that many of them are frightening. Even a horned toad has horns all over it—and it sips blood. And there are tarantulas, scorpions, and rattlesnakes-there are beaks and claws everywhere. And the jackrabbit lived there long enough to wish that he too could be scary.
Janet: We were thinking about longing for something you don't have. "Everything will be fine if I'm scary." Many people long for "something" and then realize that they are better off without it. Also, jackrabbits are very fast and they are always running. This helped with one element of the story creation—why would this jackrabbit have horns? He wishes for horns because he is really a scaredy-cat. He wants the other role of being the tough guy.
Susan: And the book brings out that we all are what we are for a reason. Be happy with what you are.

Q: Speaking of being happy with who and what you are, let's talk about Fairy Godrabbit. She seems to be a bit—style-challenged. Did you pattern her after someone famous or is she just your garden-variety Fairy Godrabbit?
Janet: Janet: Creating Fairy Godrabbit was like a fashion show. She had a piece of lettuce on her head at one time and then I added the colander—a Carmen Miranda-type thing with vegetables instead of fruits. The vegetable pattern looked right so I tried on different things. By the way, Fairy Godrabbit didn't like her outfit much either—remember she said, "Dressing in this getup is for the birds!"

Also, at first she was Fairy Godhare. We went back and forth about whether it was a hare or a rabbit. She's really a hare and so is Jack. It's a little crazy because nothing is what it should be in this story. The antelope isn't really an antelope, and the rabbit isn't really a rabbit, and the jackalope—well, you just have to figure that one out for yourself.

Q: That's right, in your closing notes of the book you discuss the true nature of jackrabbits and antelopes. Tell us a little about that.
Susan: We grew up singing Home on the Range—where the deer and the antelope play. But when I started researching the book, it turned out that most of those animals were never part of Texas. My parents had antelope on the ranch but they were exotics which had originally been brought in for the big game hunters—they were imported from overseas. It wasn't even until the last thirty years that antelope were brought to Texas. What you were seeing in the old days were the Pronghorn. They aren't even antelope. And jackrabbits are not rabbits at all—they are hares. It's so wild.

Q: Before Jackalope got his horns, he referred to Longhorn as an "overgrown piece of beef jerky." That's refreshing because in these days one has to be careful to be politically correct. How appealing is this type of dialogue to kids in the targeted age group? Where do they first hear this "good-natured kidding?"
Susan: SWhen I read this book to kids, they really respond to that section. Neither adults nor kids should write down insults or say bad things about people. But I think the kids like hearing it in the book. It's a nod to say, "yes, we do this sometimes." I really thought our editor would take it out—that it would be considered too "mean." But it was never brought up. That's probably because Jackalope is only calling Longhorn "beef jerky" because he's jealous. He's been told that Longhorn is scarier than him and it's just his reaction.
Janet: If you were writing a book about how others should be treated, it wouldn't be right. This is just kidding around.
Susan: And I think kids hear this type of "kidding" from one another. They love the teasing. The kids know that the Longhorn is considerably larger and more frightening, and to see this tiny little jackrabbit cutting him down is funny to them. When I read the story at schools I generally bring kids up to the front to help, and I always pick someone who is a little timid. The kids laugh even harder because it emphasizes the underdog standing up to the big guy. And the timid kids think, "I'm going to be challenged—I can be like that." To me it's a victory for the underdog.

On the backside of this is that here in Texas we have the Longhorns as a sports team. I went down to speak in Austin and when I read that line I thought I was going to be tarred and feathered. And my mom has Longhorn T-shirts, sweatshirts, and paraphernalia all over her house. She hasn't seen this line yet—and we're going to wait on that!

Q: There's another incident of "kidding" in the book when the Armadillo thoroughly amuses himself by telling the reader a scary and tragic hoax ending. Tell us truthfully—did the two of you laugh as much as the Armadillo at the idea of little children going into eye-widening, tragic-ending shock?
Janet: :)That tragic ending was my idea. In the end of the book the three characters—Jackalope, Jill the Fairy Godrabbit, and the mirror—go off together. Susie wrote that the mirror "sparkled," and Fairy Godrabbit polished it with her fur, and I thought, "Yecch! That's just sick." :) So I said "we can't end it like that! What about having the coyote come back and eat everyone?" Susie gasped.
Susan: :) When I read the story at schools I show the picture of Jack and Jill and the mirror and say, "Now do you think it ends like this? Or . . ." And then I flip the page to the coyote in the lawnchair picking his teeth with the horn. The fifth graders say, "Yeah!" But when you are with the first graders the reaction is "Oohhhh."
Janet: The kids get really quiet when I say, "and the mirror was dessert. The end." And they clap a little bit—a few little claps, like "Oh, that was . . . . good. And they think, "I'm not buying that book—if the coyote eats them, I'm not buying that book." But then, when they get the final happy ending, it's alright again and they really like it.
Susan: You know, the storyteller (the armadillo) has the right to do that. He says in the beginning that "all of it's true, as best I recall, except for some parts here and there." It's the whole nature of pulling your leg—he's a prankster.

Q: Janet, how did you create the illustrations for the book?
Janet: It was so much fun to create both the story and the illustrations—an all out jamming session—we ride the wave until it becomes concrete. The background illustrations are all done on the sewing machine. They were all stitched and scanned into the computer, and then I painted the other parts. If I had just painted regular landscape scenes it wouldn't be funky enough. I wanted a world for Jackalope that was not quite real—realistic but a little "off." Susan sews too. She made the quilts that are in the illustrations of the The Dish Ran Away with Spoon.
Susan: Yes, that quilt is on the end papers and first and last couple pages. Our Mom made us learn how to sew.
Janet: I really like to sew. If you take the feed dog down you can actually draw. So I do that. It's just like drawing with stitches.
Susan: I have the original yucca plant that Janet made—the green plant with big broad leaves that sprouts up and blossoms out with branches in every direction—to show at schools. The stitches go up, down, and all over the fabric—I just love it! And the kids don't expect that the illustrations are created with fabric. There are other unknown and secret things about the illustrations in Jackalope—there's a fork in the road from The Dish Ran Away With the Spoon.
Janet: And there's something about the antelope—he's looking for his horns. "I don't have my horns. Where are my horns?"
Susan: And Jackrabbit has glasses. Did you notice? It's because he's a classic superhero—like Superman and Spiderman. Once he gets his powers (horns) he doesn't need the glasses anymore.
Janet: In the end he gets his glasses back. You may want to look closely at the Fairy Godrabbit too—you'll find another secret in the illustrations.

Q: Tell us about your tour—where are you going? What will you do and what and will you enjoy most?
Susan: We start April 19th in Denver and then we do Albuquerque and the West Coast up to Vancouver. It's a ten-day tour.
Janet: It will all be fun because we are together. We have a ball. If I was doing it alone it wouldn't be anything like having Susan along. It's great to see the kids and the parents and the others who come to our readings. It's great that people are interested in the literature and what we're doing.

Q: Were you always so close?
Janet & Susan: No.
Susan: I was four years older and five years ahead in grade because of the way our birthdays fell. And I was already out of school and living in Texas when she was in high school. But after Janet started college and I was out of college we started connecting. Before that it was difficult to be together. Now we see each other a lot—I go to Colorado to ski and she comes down here to Texas. But even those visits were not as often as during the last five years since we've been working together. It's been really wonderful.

Janet Stevens

Susan Stevens Crummel

Jackalope