Storybook Success

Vashti Harrison (Col class of ’10)

Becoming a “big kid” is something little kids aspire to. But particularly for girls, anti-fat bias can quickly twist the meaning of “big,” turning it into something to be ashamed of. It’s that contrast that Vashti Harrison’s book, Big, centers on, telling the story of a little girl who is proud to be big—until she isn’t.

“I had been thinking a lot about my body and my relationship with my body, especially as a child, and my journey toward self-love. And it’s been a long one for me,” Harrison says of the genesis of the idea. “I wanted to engage in this dynamic of the word ‘big,’ especially as it related to children.”

When Big came out in the spring of 2023, Harrison had already been a successful illustrator of picture books and a writer of nonfiction children’s books. Big is Harrison’s debut fiction picture book as both author and illustrator—and it took home major honors, including the 2024 Caldecott Medal for the year’s most distinguished picture book. She is the first Black woman to win the award and joins the likes of Robert McCloskey (Make Way for Ducklings) and Chris Van Allsburg (The Polar Express).

Big is a continuation of a theme underlying Harrison’s Little Leaders series, which celebrates famous women and men of color, whom she depicts as children. That concept is informed by Georgetown University research that found that Black girls regularly experience “adultification bias.” In other words, adults of all races believe Black girls need less nurturing, comfort and support than white girls of the same age, researchers found.

“That was a thread that I wanted to continue on into the story and talk about adultification bias as related to Black girls,” Harrison says. It’s why, in Big, the young girl is the only rendered character. “We’re following her through this journey and fully within her perspective. We’re seeing how the words and bias of adults are affecting her and how she’s internalizing them.”

Winning the Caldecott was “shocking and overwhelming,” Harrison says, joking that it was “a little too big.” Big also was a Coretta Scott King Award Author and Illustrator Honor book and a National Book Award finalist. Winning the Caldecott will be life-changing for Harrison. The book will likely never go out of print, and cash-strapped schools and libraries often make their buying decisions based on
books that win the award.

“If it means that my book will now be in small-town libraries like the one that I grew up going to, and a kid like me could find this book and hopefully see a version of herself in that story, then that means everything to me,” she says. “I absolutely cherish every opportunity to get this book in the hands of somebody who wants it.”

Jen Fier Jasinski (Col class of ’09, Educ class of ’09)

Jen Fier Jasinski lives with a grand piano and a professional pianist, her husband. But she’d never really thought much about the instrument’s strings and hammers until a piano technician came over to work on it. That moment was the inspiration for My Piano, her first picture book, published in 2023, which tells the story of a young girl who describes the inner workings of the piano as she grapples with her own internal feelings while preparing for a recital.

For Jasinski, a former teacher, storytime was her favorite time of the day with her students—a cozy moment when they could relax together. She loved seeing the kids react as they made connections between the words and illustrations, and she enjoyed the opportunity to tie a story to the curriculum in an unexpected way. My Piano has plenty of learning opportunities—from the technical aspects of how a piano works to the lessons learned as the girl works through her nerves and plays her first notes. Jasinski has a busy couple of years ahead.

Her second picture book, Sidewalk Chalk, is slated to come out in 2025. And My Violin, the sequel to My Piano, is scheduled to publish in 2026.

“Publishing is just a wild roller coaster—you really have to hold on for a while sometimes,” says Jasinski, who started writing in earnest in 2016. “But right now it’s sped up for me the past few months. I’m just hoping to keep up, and I’m trying to enjoy it.”

Anne Marie Pace (Educ class of ’89)

Anne Marie Pace doesn’t usually favor Halloween themes, but when the idea of a ballerina who happens to be a vampire popped into her head, she saw potential. “What I tell kids is that stories have to have problems, and so you have to have a conflict,” Pace says. “Opposites are a really good way to build a conflict.”

The result was Vampirina Ballerina, a four-book series that inspired Disney Junior’s Vampirina animated series, which ran from 2017 to 2021 and is still streaming. “It was exciting,” Pace says of seeing her character on the little screen (she’s quick to add that although she inspired its title character, she was not involved in the TV series’ creation).

Mouse Calls is Pace’s latest work. The sparsely worded rhyming picture book, which came out in 2022, tells the story of a mouse who helps to protect his animal friends from a bad storm. These days Pace, a former high school English teacher, is working on a novel for readers ages 8 to 12 and sometimes teaching other children’s book writers how to refine their craft.

On the surface, it might seem easy to write a picture book. But there’s an art and science to it that includes input from illustrators, who most often work separately from authors, and careful consideration of the pace and rhythm of the words to ensure that it’s fun to read and listen to. Says Pace: “I have friends who will say, ‘I wrote three words today, but they were the right three words.’”

Paul DuBois Jacobs (Grad class of ’94)

The Lost Lost-and-Found Case—the fourth book in the Mack Rhino, Private Eye, series—begins with the familiar clipped and fast-paced rhythm common in detective fiction. Our hero, Mack, has a problem to solve, and the case quickly unfolds as he prepares to speak at an elementary school.

“I had that [idea] for at least 10 years, if not earlier, and had been pitching it,” Jacobs says of the Mack Rhino character. But so it goes in children’s literature. It can take years for even prolific authors like Jacobs and his co-author and wife Jennifer Swender to see a work to fruition. “You’ve got to come with a sense of humor,” says Jacobs, whose first children’s book was published 20 years ago. “It’s just slow-moving.”

Jacobs found children’s literature in a roundabout way. He’d worked as a carpenter for eight years when he arrived at UVA to earn a master’s degree in creative writing with a specialty in poetry. Studying with the likes of then–U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove and Charles Wright, now professor emeritus of UVA’s Creative Writing Program, he discovered the power and wonder of storytelling through poetry. Many of his picture books are written in rhyming text.

Through a series of connections, he linked up with folk musician Pete Seeger, co-writing four books with him, including the picture books Abiyoyo Returns and The Deaf Musicians. And he’s collaborated on multiple books with Swender, including another early reader series called Animal Inn. “Jen and I work great together,” he says. “She’s great at getting things from point A to B. … I love revision. I love finding the right word, and I can go over something over and over.”

Linsey Davis (Col class of ’99)

It was the day after Iowa women’s basketball superstar Caitlin Clark was the WNBA’s No. 1 draft pick, and ABC anchor Linsey Davis was on the set of Good Morning America with her colleagues asking Clark questions. How does she handle the pressure? How early does she remember having that spirit of competition?

In many ways, Clark is living the dream that Davis envisions in her latest picture book, Girls of the World: Doing More Than Ever Before. The book, which Davis wrote with co-author Michael Tyler, encourages girls to be brave, use their voices and claim their place in the world.

Clark “has really become the face of driving this new excitement, enthusiasm about women’s basketball, and I’m really happy to see that,” Davis says. “For so long, only the men were getting the attention, and now she has really single-handedly caused this shift. … We need to be encouraging young girls that, yes, we are strong, we are bold, we are brave, we are ambitious.”

Davis’ day job includes serving as anchor for ABC News Live Prime, World News Tonight on Sundays and filling in for Good Morning America and other ABC shows. Writing picture books provides some respite from the tough topics she’s often covering on the news. It’s also an opportunity to connect with her 10-year-old son, Ayden, whose questions and comments have sparked the ideas for each book. Girls of the World is her sixth and a New York Times bestseller.

What’s next for Davis is a busy few months of news coverage, including the presidential elections this fall. But she’s hopeful that the messages from Girls of the World will take root, she says. “I really want to plant the seeds of positivity and what’s possible for young girls as far as what they can do and who they can be.”

Kelsey Johnson, UVA astronomy professor

Kelsey Johnson spent formative childhood moments staring up at the stars in Minnesota, but the impact of light pollution over the years has made it much more difficult for all of us to notice what’s up there. Some 80 percent of the world now lives under light-polluted skies, says Johnson, a UVA astronomy professor.

“Because of this framing in our lives, it’s easy for us to go through our daily lives forgetting … that we’re part of something much bigger,” she says. “I worry about what that does to our worldview. … I think it’s a real problem for humanity that we’re losing touch with the universe.”

That’s a big reason the astrophysicist penned Constellations for Kids: An Easy Guide to Discovering the Stars. The book, which came out in 2020, features easy-to-understand descriptions aimed at getting young readers—and their adults—curious about stars and constellations.

“The whole point of writing this book was to get kids to want to go outside and get permission to stay up late to go outside at night—and to get their adults with them,” says Johnson, who also is founding director of the Dark Skies, Bright Kids outreach program for Virginia elementary school students.

Johnson’s academic research includes a focus on ancient star formations, and she’s currently president of the American Astronomical Society. But her work with young people and families has been particularly rewarding. “It’s doing what I wanted it to do,” she says of the book. “It’s getting people to go outside with their kids, and it’s getting kids excited to go outside.”

Debbie Levy (Col class of ’78)

Award-winning and bestselling children’s author Debbie Levy is known for documenting historical people and events. Her latest book, Change Is in the Air: Carbon, Climate, Earth, and Us, is a bit of a departure.

But the inspiration comes from her own experiences watching as the tidal river on Maryland’s Eastern Shore—where she’s fished, kayaked and birded over the past 25 years—has changed. And while news of climate change can feel gloomy, the book, released in March, points out the “superpowers” of both nature and people to make for a cleaner, better world, Levy says. “I was interested in presenting something that was both hopeful and realistic.”

While the out-of-doors is the focus of Change Is in the Air, outsiders are the theme of most of her earlier books. I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark, for example, covers the life of the Supreme Court justice who started her work for women’s rights from the outside.

This Promise of Change: One Girl’s Story in the Fight for School Equality highlights 12 students who integrated a Tennessee high school a year before Little Rock students did the same; it’s co-written with Jo Ann Allen Boyce, one of those students.

And there’s The Year of Goodbyes, the true story of Levy’s own mother as a 12-year-old Jewish girl in 1938, attempting to live normally as antisemitism grew in Germany.

Levy hopes her books cultivate a love of reading and a sense of connection. “I hope that they appreciate seeing something familiar, like seeing themselves, in a way, or something they know,” she says. “And if it’s unfamiliar to them … then I hope there’s a sense of, ‘oh, discovery’ and maybe empathy for somebody who’s different.”

Wendy Wan-Long Shang (Col class of ’90, Law class of ’94)

Drama—in drama class. That’s how one of Wendy Wan-Long Shang’s latest chapter books, Bubble Trouble, opens. And for a book aimed at middle schoolers, who are known for their occasional flair for the dramatic, it seems entirely appropriate. Scholastic approached Shang to write the book, part of the publisher’s food-themed romance series for third- to seventh-graders. A boba tea shop plays a central role in Shang’s book.

Bubble Trouble doesn’t just dive into boba tea and young crushes. Like most of Shang’s books, it also showcases main characters of Asian descent. Her books include two about doll brand American Girl’s fictional 2022 Girl of the Year, Corinne Tan, its first character of Chinese descent. Other books, such as The Great Wall of Lucy Wu and The Secret Battle of Evan Pao, feature storylines and characters of her own creation.

Shang grew up mostly in Northern Virginia as the child of Chinese immigrants, and the library was one of the few places where her strict parents gave her free rein. “I have very rarely come across an adult novel that gets imprinted on my heart the way books I read as a child did,” says Shang, who as a law student took a break from her complex readings by picking up Harriet the Spy.

As a child, she didn’t think much about the lack of characters like her until she came across Tracy Wu, a character in Judy Blume’s book Blubber. Says Shang: “I still remember turning the page, and she’s like this normal kid,” a surprising find at a time when most Asian characters were modeled after negative stereotypes. “It was this moment of, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s me.’”

She started writing stories with Asian characters because that’s what she knows, she says. And she hopes her readers take away the knowledge that people can have lives that are both distinctly different and quite similar to their own. “This is my wildest dream, to write books and connect with readers,” she says. “I feel super lucky.”

Kirsten W. Larson (Col class of ’96)

From its first pages, The Fire of Stars: The Life and Brilliance of the Woman Who Discovered What Stars Are Made Of by Kirsten W. Larson tells two stories: how a star is made, and the backstory of the astronomer and astrophysicist who figured out that recipe, Cecilia Payne.

What intrigued Larson the most about Payne, she says, was how in love she was with her work and the idea of being the first person to figure something out.

As a writer, Larson says, she feels a lot of affinity with Payne. “You have this idea, and you really want it to all come together,” she says. “And then it’s just a matter of perseverance and waiting for that ‘aha!’ moment where it brings everything together.”

Larson’s other books, like The Fire of Stars, also feature overlooked women. Wood, Wire, and Wings: Emma Lilian Todd Invents an Airplane tells the story of the self-taught engineer and first woman to design airplanes. A True Wonder: The Comic Book Hero Who Changed Everything tells the story of Wonder Woman, including the women who helped shape her adventures. And she has more books coming in 2025, including a graphic novel titled Light of Resistance, about a Parisian art curator who doubled as a World War II spy.

For somebody who was interested in so many things that she had trouble landing on a major at UVA, Larson says the title of children’s book author is a perfect fit for her. “It was a combination of something I thought I could do,” she says, “but also an opportunity with every book to learn about a whole new subject and be forced to master it and understand it in order to write a book.”