Embarrassing a Ferret

Look, we've all been there

Does anyone remember the Looney Tunes short Duck Amuck, where Daffy Duck is gleefully tormented by an offscreen animator (until the end) who keeps erasing his bill, rearranging his scenery, generally screwing with his whole existence?

Truly peak body horror

That’s often how I feel, drawing and redrawing characters having super bad days, just pushing and pushing them up to their limit and then gently toeing them over it. As I told some kids at a library last month, my job is drawing pictures, telling stories, and giving animals a really hard time. How do I do the arms and the eyebrows on this bird to really show they’re 10 seconds past losing it? What does a frog look like when it’s teetering on the edge?

Literally

Look, there’s part of me that feels bad about it. A very, very small part. But that’s also the part that follows these poor creatures off the cliff too, because I am also all these frogs and that poor bird and this ferret going Through It on the page*.

We’ve all been there.

Which brings me to my new book!

Embarrassed Ferret, the new picture book by Lisa Frenkel Riddiough and me, is now out and about in bookstores and libraries!

Ferret’s having some kind of a day.

*And because I will always Kool-Aid man into a conversation with this Ronald Searle quote about humor: he said there’s what a person wants to do and wants to look like, THEN there’s the reality of what they actually do and actually look like, and the difference between those points = humor. [My read: = humanity].

Lisa made an incredibly sweet school full of characters and then went 100mph in giving them a really difficult day in the funniest, most relatable way possible.

Laugh-out-loud moments (especially Ms. Rabbit’s hilarious reaction to her own embarrassment) will help this story address not only the common feeling of anxiety, but also engender a conversation amongst classmates and friends about the odd consequences of being alive.”—School Library Journal

If you squint at my earliest pacing breakdown for the jokes, you can see me earnestly trying on different framing and pov for the Fart shot, trying to get that peak-Dolly-Zoom-Vertigo moment:

Show her face? Don’t show her face? Show the crowd’s reaction or save it for after the page turn? Are we not all Like This when our bodies naturally assert themselves in the middle of a crowd?

“readers will come away knowing just how to survive life’s minor mortifications.”
—Publishers Weekly

There’s nothing more existentially piercing than having a lofty and exciting view of yourself absolutely shot down in flames by reality, and god forbid, doing that in front of other people - it still feels awful at 40 as it did at 4. And each time - what a gift it is to have folks around you who can be chill about it.
Shout out to Lauren H, who I accidentally mooned in 7th grade, and even though it was middle school gold, kept it to herself. What a legend.

We’re all just out here doing our best and worst, right?

*design by Phil Buchanan, editor: Sylvie Frank