Moanalua teacher's keiki book a family affair

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Book Editor

Katherine Nakamura, right, wrote "Song of Night' about things we do to get ready for bed. Her mother, Linnea Riley, drew the illustrations. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

In a natural progression, given that her mother is a respected artist, designer and children's book illustrator, Nakamura soon began turning phrases over in her mind, envisioning a children's bedtime book.

Two years later, "Song of Night," Nakamura's read-aloud book for the very young, is in stores.

Nakamura and her husband, Bruce, a Honolulu lawyer, now have someone to read the book to: their first child, 4-month-old Rachel. Nakamura is on leave from teaching fourth grade at Moanalua Elementary School in order to spend time with the baby.

Nakamura jokes that she "milked" her connections to get the book published: Her mother, Linnea Riley, wrote a book for publisher Scholastic Inc., "Mouse Mess," which was a considerable success. It made the New York Public Library list of the top 100 books of 1998 and was selected as a Best Book of the Year by the School Library Journal. But Riley, who is visiting Hawai'i from Seattle with her husband, Michael, says she just passed a good idea on to her editor at Scholastic.

Nakamura's twin sister, Johanna, is an artist who works with her parents in their company, Linnea Design, known for its poster-art calendars and fine greeting cards. But Nakamura, who says she's the one in the family who missed the art gene, had never had a chance to work with her mother before. She said it was most comforting for a first-time writer to have her work critiqued by someone she trusted, and who understands the vagaries of the publishing business.

As is typical of children's books, which often go through many phases, "Song of Night" isn't quite the book Nakamura first envisioned. Her editor at Blue Sky Press, an imprint of Scholastic, suggested that a book about all the things people could be up and doing at night might not be the best thing for young ones, who already tend to resist bed-time. So they refocused the book on the things we do to get ready for bed: singing a good-night song, having a bath, brushing our teeth, listening to a story.

Nakamura also had pictured the book with people as the characters, but her mother thought animals would be more appealing.

Animals characters jump right across barriers of ethnicity or background. Besides, kids like them, as Riley knew from her first book, a beguiling story about a mouse who goes on a midnight rampage through cupboards and counters and refrigerator, then wonders why his hosts don't keep a cleaner kitchen.

"Mouse Mess" makes a cameo appearance in Nakamura's book, an idea the editor contributed (you see a family of cats all snuggled up reading the book about mice).

"Mom wasn't going to do that because it seemed like tooting her own horn, but the editor thought that would be a book cats would like to read," Nakamura said. During her first public reading from the book the week before last, children in the audience got the insider joke — pointing excitedly at the "Mouse Mess" in the illustration.

This is one of a number of amusing tidbits layered into Riley's beautifully executed drawings — look for a mouse carrying Rodental Floss and a character spraying perfume around as skunks get ready for bed.

Although the book is composed of exactly 154 words, finding the exact right ones was a challenge, said Nakamura, who meets weekly with a small writers' group but isn't yet fully comfortable calling herself a writer.

First she came up with a list of activities — one for each two-page spread, such as watching the stars, putting on pajamas, rubbing baby's back, singing a lullaby. Then she devised a rhyme for each, which in turn would pass through her mother's hands, and the editor's. Every time one word changed, the entire line would have to be rewritten.

Meanwhile, Riley went to work with colored pencil and watercolors to find the right faces for her characters; she goes through multiples of drawings to get each character set, and then scribbles notes on what color combinations she used to be sure she can re-create that particular bunny or bear.

This may seem like an awful lot of trouble for one little book that's meant for people too young to read it themselves, but Riley and Nakamura take producing books for children very seriously. Riley read to her children from her mother's own cherished books, passed down. Nakamura keeps a shelf of her own childhood books.

"They form our earliest perceptions," said Riley. Forever after, your image of what a castle is by that first drawing of a turreted building.

More importantly, Nakamura said, books influence children's understanding about what's important, what's delicious, what's funny and fun, about art and poetry and ideas.

Nakamura said even her fourth-graders aren't too cynical to enjoy being read to, and she's noticed that their parents often get into the books she sends home for the children to read — so much so that they ask the children to bring the books home, even when there is no homework.