Interview with Susan L. Roth
on Listen to the Wind

   Where does an idea for a book come from? In this case, it all began with apricots. Twenty-four varieties in all sizes and shapes, to be exact. Being the artist she is, Susan L. Roth saw that gorgeous color in her head and knew she had to put it into a book. Her fascination with the story of the children and their school in Korphe began twelve years ago while she was visiting an old high school friend in California. A simple question: “What have you been doing recently?” opened a whole new world to Susan. Her friend, Julia Bergman, had just returned from a trip to Pakistan. She had helicoptered into a remote area high in the mountains, and made her way to a small village she had never heard of. In that village was a sign stating that the school had been built with funds from Jean Hoerni. What a surprise this was, for Julia‘s cousin was married to Jean Hoerni. Julia took a photograph and brought it back to Jean. Eventually, she met Greg Mortenson who had set all this in motion when he promised a school to the villagers. She told him she was a librarian and he responded that they needed one for their schools in Pakistan. Julia joined the Central Asia Institute and returned to bring books to the schools, carrying them on her back to get them there. Susan was mesmerized as Julia told her about the warm and welcoming people, the amazing and stark landscape, and the apricots.

   If you have read Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, you will be familiar with this story. Interestingly, Susan began looking for a publisher for her children‘s book long before Three Cups of Tea was published. There were many rejections along the way but Dial finally accepted Listen to the Wind. With input from Julia and careful vetting by Greg Mortenson and others, the story was written.

   In Listen to the Wind the story is not only accessible to children because it is written from the perspective of the children of Korphe, but also because of the style of the story. It reads like a wonderful folktale: a tall stranger appears in a faraway village, receives kindness from the people, and later returns with a treasure for them. Upon this frame is a true story rich in detail of how all the villagers, including the children, worked together to make the school a reality. “I was conscious of the way the children helped to build the school. They put little slivers of rock into the walls to make them stronger. Only small hands could do such work. This was not busy work. They were genuinely helping,” states Susan.

   The details and rich textures of the collage illustrations transport the readers to this remote part of the world. First we see those fabulous apricot trees with the mountains rising up behind them. The scene has been set. Turn the page and meet the children of Korphe. They stand there, with The Balti Workbook in hand, inviting us, the readers, to hear their story. By the way, the actual workbook used by the students was developed by Julia Bergman with pattern designs by Susan. The apricot trees and the mountains appear throughout Listen to the Wind, reminding us always of the geographical setting of this story.

   Susan created the collages in the exact size you see in the book. The materials used in the art came, literally, from around the world, and around the corner. Some of the fabric used in the headscarves came from India, some of the paper from the Netherlands. The pink paper used to make the people‘s cheeks came from the dry cleaner. The richness of the textures gives the artwork a three-dimensional appearance. Readers will want to reach out and touch them. In the “Artist‘s Note” in the back of the book Susan says, “Julia was right: nothing goes to waste in Baltistan. It was moving to witness the deliberate, aesthetic use of things we would normally discard, and to realize the women of Korphe share the collage medium with me.” Susan also studied traditional Buddhist carvings with various geometric designs. These inspired her geometric borders. Bird sculptures suggested the bird motifs. Other influences were Pakistani and Indian fabrics, that fabulous apricot color, and the famous computer chip that was found attached to the typical Balti woman‘s hat. Susan even used her own bookcase. If you look closely you can see some of her book titles. The other bookcase is based on the actual one in the Korphe school classroom.

   Susan needed to do a lot of research prior to creating Listen to the Wind. Although she was unable to travel to Pakistan as she would have preferred, she made trips to museums, consulted books and photographs, and had many conversations with Julia and Greg, university professors and other knowledgeable people. It was important to her that the text and the illustrations accurately portrayed the culture of the people of Korphe. Several advisors read over the text and perused the collages. It was important to get details right, such as the placement of Sher Takhi‘s hands as he is blessing the school.

   How does she begin her artwork? Susan first makes a “loose” dummy in which she scribbles how the pages will be laid out. She then creates multiple layers for each collage. She does “a lot of fixing and a lot of changing at the same time.” Does she ever toss an illustration? “Oh, yes. Usually the first one or two I make for every book are discarded,” she says. She is quite proud of the maps she made, which can be seen on the wall in the classroom and among the photographs in “A Korphe Scrapbook” in the back of the book. The world map displays a dot where Baltistan is located. The other map shows the location in Pakistan and the surrounding countries. Readers can quickly see the region of the world where this event took place.

   What would Susan like to say to adults and children? “Working on this book was as fascinating as it was challenging. Cultural differences are interesting and beautiful. We must learn to respect these differences. Nobody would be fighting if only there were ways for us to learn to appreciate, to share and to delight in each other‘s differences. I hope this book will help people learn a bit about those people on the other side of the world. I believe that it is through appreciation of our differences that we can begin to appreciate our universalities.” She continues, “For our American children it is incredible to think that there are places in this world where people do not have enough to eat; where pencils are a rare commodity; where children write on the ground with sticks. It is natural that after hearing about these circumstances, many want to know how they can help. That is why we have included the information about Pennies for Peace.”

   “I am very pleased that this book will be printed in Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, and distributed to all the CAI (Central Asia Institute) schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” says Susan.

   My conversation with Susan ended all too soon, but I continue to go back to read and look at Listen to the Wind. Each time I do so, I discover a new approach to sharing this with children. It seems to fit into every subject area: math, science, language arts, art, geography, social studies, character-building, and more. Each time I look at the apricot-colored endpapers, I imagine myself sitting among twenty-four varieties of apricots and inhaling their fragrance.

For more information of this author, have a look at her page on the Children's Book Guild web-site.

To view this author's feature from a previous year, click here

Review

Listen to the Wind: A Village in Pakistan Builds a School
Greg Mortenson and Susan L. Roth
Collages by Susan L. Roth
   Written from the perspective of the children of Korphe, the story of Greg Mortenson‘s experience in a Pakistani village unfolds. He was lost in the mountains and by chance encountered the village of Korphe. The people helped Greg get well. As he recuperated, he assisted them with his nursing skills and helped the children with their lessons. Once Greg regained his health and was ready to go home, he wanted to do something special for the people of Korphe. The response that he received from Haji Ali was to “listen to the wind”; from those words, Greg knew that he was going to return to help the village build a school: there was no school building and lessons were held outdoors. The story continues with the construction of the school building, which was not a simple task because the supplies had to reach from one mountain to the next mountain where Korphe was located. Yet determination and many helping hands completed the school building. The collages are exquisite and capture the heart of the story. The artist shares her story about the research in creating the magnificent scenes in the book. In addition, there are captioned photographs of the construction and the people of Korphe. Although there are versions of this story for older readers and adults, this book with its richly textured collages is inspirational for readers of all ages. Listen to the wind to hear what message awaits you. 2009, Dial Books for Young Readers/Penguin Putnam, $16.99. Ages 5 to 8. Reviewer: Carrie Hane Hung (Children's Literature).
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3058-8
ISBN: 0-8037-3058-6

Additional Reviews

Babies Can‘t Eat Kimchee!
Susan L. Roth and Nancy Patz
   Our narrator, now an older sibling, is grappling with her emotions about the new baby in the family. “Babies can‘t eat kimchee!” she grumpily notes, and they cannot do many other good things. She continues to recall the many other activities babies cannot do but she can, as well as all the things babies do not know that she does. And they do make “a big fuss.” Then she looks ahead to all the things she can teach the baby; all the fun they may have together. But all these cheerful thoughts for the future will have to wait for “someday”; right now, baby‘s response is a loud “WAAH! WAAH!” across the pages. The collaboration of the authors has created a visual narrative that is loaded with emotions shown in mixed media, including ink drawings, oil pastels, and aggressive use of collage. Big sister and baby act out future behaviors in boldly brushed black outlines, intense scumbled colors, and impressionistic backgrounds. Kimchee is explained in a note and a Korean costume for a first birthday is depicted, but otherwise this is a family anyone can identify with. 2007, Bloomsbury Children‘s Books, $16.95. Ages 3 to 7. Reviewers: Ken and Sylvia Marantz (Children‘s Literature).
ISBN: 978-1-5999-0017-9
ISBN: 1-5999-0017-3

Cinnamon‘s Day Out: a Gerbil Adventure
Susan L. Roth
   Cinnamon is a gerbil with a personality. He tells his friend Snowball about his big adventure outside their cage. He climbed a mountain (a stack of books), spied a wolf (a dog), found a pond (cat's water dish), and escaped from a tiger (housecat). The adventure is related visually from Cinnamon's perspective and Roth's cut paper collages and mixed media scenes are wonderful. The center spread with the big cat created out of corrugated paper is just wonderful. Little Cinnamon looks so real, you want to stroke his furry body. Young children will share in this daring outing by the brave little gerbil and will want it read to them more than once. 1998, Dial, $15.99. Ages 3 to 7. Reviewer: Marilyn Courtot (Children's Literature).
ISBN: 978-0-8037-2322-1
ISBN: 978-0-8037-2323-8

Great Big Guinea Pigs
Susan L. Roth
   Did you know that there were prehistoric guinea pigs? This book tells the story of how guinea pigs evolved from a giant size to the small pets they are today. Based on scientific research, this fictionalized account begins with a guinea pig telling her child a bedtime story of how the guinea pigs lived in prehistoric times. She tells him that they were as big as buffalo and weighed a ton. They lived in Venezuela in the swamp and ate grass. They loved to swim, but had to watch out for the hungry alligators. The theory is that when their food began to disappear, they became smaller and quicker. Some stayed wild, but some became “cuter and friendlier.” The last page includes a bibliography and facts list about guinea pigs. The large collage illustrations are made from textured cut papers such as canvas, cellophane, and contact paper. The splashy results are interesting and create visual fun. Children will be fascinated by the story and the artwork. 2006, Bloomsbury, $17.95. Ages 2 to 6. Reviewer: Vicki Foote (Children‘s Literature).
ISBN: 1-5823-4724-7
ISBN: 978-1-5823-4724-0

Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah
Susan L. Roth
   Susan L. Roth takes the holiday song "Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah" and turns it into a picture book using mice to depict the gathering of family and friends. Roth's mice light the menorah, dance the hora, eat latkes, play with dreidels, and gather around the piano to revel in holiday cheer. While Roth's choice of cut cloth and paper collage certainly creates a colorful and textured appearance, it also makes the work appear fragmented. Furthermore, the emotionless mice fail to convey any sense of merriment typically associated with the holiday season. While the illustrations could have more closely matched the tone of the holidays, children of all religions will be able to identify with the mice as they dance and play throughout the book. Jewish families will certainly appreciate the addition to the comparatively small collection of holiday children's books, while non-Jewish children will be able to learn about the Hanukkah season. 2004, Dial Books for young Readers/Penguin, $10.99. Ages 1 to 5. Reviewer: Henry Tindal (Children‘s Literature).
ISBN: 0-8037-2843-3
ISBN: 978-0-8037-2843-1

Hard Hat Area
Susan Roth
   Kristen is a young woman in a job area usually full of men. She is an apprentice ironworker. Her story is her work. She takes orders from the other workers for both food and materials, climbing around the construction area and contacting the different workers. On each page under the text there are explanations of the job each worker does and of the tools and materials used, with numbered references on the illustration. When Kristen has collected the orders from connectors, hooker-on and tag-line men, signal man etc., she takes the man hoist down to the ground, leaves their orders at the deli while she collects what's needed from the gang box, and delivers to the hungry workers. On the final pages Roth shows them all at work and challenges us to name them. There is a wealth of information on the many folks who do construction and the tools they use in the text and even more in the end-note. Washed-out photomontages of the city taken from on high form backgrounds for the double-page scenes depicting the process of making the iron skeleton of a sky-scraper. Roth uses collage, fabrics and papers of all sorts, to provide the textured visuals that depict the various specialized tasks of the workers. She also provokes smiles from the end-papers with their graffiti on fences and posted signs. There's a light-hearted atmosphere created which tends to belie the fundamental danger of the work. 2004, Bloomsbury Children's Books, $17.95. Ages 5 to 8. Reviewer: Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz (Children's Literature).

Best Books:

• Best Children's Books of the Year, 2004; Bank Street College of Education; United States
• Children's Catalog, Nineteenth Edition, 2006; H.W. Wilson; United States
• Children's Literature Choice List, 2005; Children's Literature; United States
• Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, 2005; National Council for the Social Studies; United States
• Publishers Weekly Book Review Stars, November 1, 2004; Cahners; United States

BIBLIO: 1-5823-4946-0
ISBN: 978-1-5823-4946-6

Leon's story
Leon Tillage
With pictures by Susan L. Roth
   Leon's Story is the autobiography of a man born in Fuquay, North Carolina in 1936. This short novella is the result of stories captured on tape by Susan Roth, and whose collages decorate its pages. The vignettes from Leon's life span many years of change and are told with simplicity, honesty, and no anger. Leon's father was an uneducated but honest and hard-working sharecropper. On his fifteenth birthday, Leon watched while a car of white boys intentionally killed him. He tells the story of a white man teaching his son to hate, and he tells of the horrors he faced marching Raleigh's streets in non-violent protests during the sixties. Leon speaks without judgment, but readers will most certainly grieve and be enraged and troubled by his descriptions. 1997, Farrar, $14.00. Ages 8 to 12. Reviewer: Susie Wilde (Children's Literature).

   Leon Tillage grew up in rural North Carolina. His father was an uneducated sharecropper who could never seem to get out of debt. Leon reminisces about a time when entertainment consisted of listening to family stories, about how poor his family was and how wonderful Christmas was because they would get a small toy and some fruit in their Christmas shoeboxes. He and his brother James did go to school where they learned to read and write. They even taught their mother to read. He talks about discrimination and the real fear that the Klansmen engendered. As he grew older, he became active in the early Civil Rights movement. Then he ended up in Baltimore where he worked for thirty years as the custodian at the Park School. His story, which he tells at an annual assembly, is a tribute to perseverance and to someone who would not just sit by, but became involved in helping himself by acquiring an education. 1997, Farrar Straus Giroux, $14.00. Ages 8 up. Reviewer: Marilyn Courtot (Children's Literature).

Best Books:

• Adventuring with Books: A Booklist for Pre-K--Grade 6, 12th Edition, 1999; National Council of Teachers of English; United States
• Best Books for Young Adults, 1998; American Library Association-YALSA; United States
• Best Children's Books of the Year, 1997; Bank Street College of Education; United States
• Best Children's Books of the Year, 1998; Bank Street College of Education; United States
• Booklist Book Review Stars, October 1, 1997; United States
• Capitol Choices, 1997; The Capitol Choices Committee; United States
• Children's Books of Distinction, 1998; Riverbank Review; United States
• Children's Catalog, Eighteenth Edition, 2001; H.W. Wilson; United States
• Children's Catalog, Nineteenth Edition, 2006; H.W. Wilson; United States
• Editors' Choice: Books for Youth, 1997; American Library Association-Booklist; United States
• Fanfare Honor List, 1997; Horn Book; United States
• Kaleidoscope, A Multicultural Booklist for Grades K-8, Third Edition, 2001; National Council of Teachers of English; United States
• Lasting Connections, 1997; American Library Association; United States
• Middle And Junior High School Library Catalog, Eighth Edition, 2000; H.W. Wilson; United States
• Middle and Junior High School Library Catalog, Ninth Edition, 2005; H.W. Wilson; United States
• Notable Children's Books, 1998; American Library Association-ALSC; United States
• Notable Children's Trade Books in the Field of the Social Studies, 1997; National Council for the Social Studies NCSS; United States
• Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, 1998; National Council for the Social Studies NCSS; United States
• Publishers Weekly Book Review Stars, September 1997; Cahners; United States
• Recommended Literature: Kindergarten through Grade Twelve, 2002; California Department of Education; California
• Senior High Core Collection, Seventeenth Edition, 2007; The H. W. Wilson Co.; United States
• Senior High School Library Catalog, Sixteenth Edition, 2002; H.W. Wilson; United States
• Smithsonian Magazine's Notable Books for Children, 1997; Smithsonian; United States
• Teachers' Choices, 1998; International Reading Association; United States

Awards, Honors, Prizes:

• Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Excellence in Children's Literature, 1998 Winner Nonfiction United States
• Carter G. Woodson Book Awards, 1998 Winner Elementary United States
• Jefferson Cup Award, 1998 Winner Virginia
• Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children, 1998 Recommended Title United States
• State and Provincial Reading Lists:
• Georgia Children's Literature Awards, 2000; Nominee; Grades 4-8; Georgia
• Lone Star Reading List, 1999-2000; Texas
• Maine Student Book Award, 1998-1999; Nominee; Maine
• Pennsylvania Young Readers' Choice Award, 1999-2000; Nominee; Pennsylvania
• Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award, 2000; Nominee; Illinois
• William Allen White Children's Book Award, 1999-2000; Nominee; Kansas

BIBLIO: 0-374-34379-9
ISBN: 978-0-374-34379-8

Made in Mexico
Peter Laufer
Illustrated by Susan L. Roth
   In Paracho, Mexico, there are guitars everywhere. The city has become renown for its high quality guitar making and, as the text states, there is much more than mariachi music from these guitars. Jazz and classical musicians use these guitars and Paracho is beginning to take on Spain as a source of concert guitars. Readers learn about the guitar-making process and that it takes one month to make a fine guitar. Those who are more in tune with contemporary stars may be surprised to learn that Linda Ronstadt learned to play on a guitar from Paracho. Susan Roth has created a series of bright mixed-media collaged illustrations to tell the story. One of her creations even uses wood shavings from master craftsmen and papers from Mexico and the U.S. The text mixes Spanish and English words and there are translations on the endpapers. Simultaneously issued in Spanish. 2000, National Geographic, $16.95. Ages 5 up. Reviewer: Marilyn Courtot (Children's Literature).

Best Books:

• Adventuring with Books: A Booklist for Pre-K-Grade 6 13th Edition, 2002; National Council of Teachers of English; United States
• Council of Teachers of English; United States
• Lasting Connections, 2000; American Library Association; United States
• Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, 2001; National Council for the Social Studies NCSS; United States

ISBN: 0-7922-7118-1
ISBN: 978-0-7922-7118-5

My Love for You All Year Round
Susan L. Roth
   A big mouse and a small mouse share their love for each other throughout the year--warmer than a snowsuit in January, gentler than a newborn lamb in March, fuller than families in November. Each page is bursting with the colors and textures of Susan Roth's trademark cut paper illustrations. On the title page, she tells us that she makes her collages with "big and small scissors, curved and straight tweezers, Japanese rice-based paste, and papers from everywhere." If you look carefully among the green papers of March, you'll even spot a single real clover. Notice the minute details of the fireworks and the soft sand of the August afternoon. My Love for You All Year Round is perfect for bedtime reading and family cuddling, but it can also inspire creativity in the classroom: how many ways can children cut paper to look like trees or flowers? How does art look different when you use paper that feels different? And what a marvelous way to learn about the importance of adjectives, which have all been gathered on a single page at the end of the book--softer, louder, quieter, plumper, fuller, warmer, funnier, sweeter, gentler, brighter, rosier, cozier. 2003, Dial, $14.99. Ages 2 to 6. Reviewer: Karen Leggett (Children‘s Literature).
ISBN: 0-8037-2796-8
ISBN: 978-0-8037-2796-0

Added 05/28/09

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