Janell Cannon: Mysteries of the Misunderstood

This children's book, author and illustrator has carved out a career of making the unloved - lovable

Janell Cannon was the type of kid who was always coming home with a new pet. Although, we're not talking about your standard kitten in a shoebox or errant neighborhood mutt. Janell has always had a soft spot in her heart for animals most people might find, well, kind of gross. In fact, her childhood backyard in Minnesota sounds like it was literally teeming with all sorts of creepy-crawlies for Janell and her siblings to bring inside to their mother. "Crayfish, frogs, turtles, snakes, salamanders - we always found them to be so beautiful and people kept telling us they were awful," Janell remembered during a visit to Teaching K-8's editorial office this past October. Now, as a hugely successful author and illustrator, Janell Cannon just can't seem to keep herself from bringing unloved and sometimes misunderstood animal friends to our doorsteps. With her latest offering for children, Pinduli (Harcourt, 2004), Janell has shed new light on yet another oft-maligned creature - the hyena.

A shift in attitude. You'd think with her multilayered tales (all from Harcourt) about fruit bats (Stellaluna, 1993), pythons (Verdi, 1997), cockroaches (Crickwing, 2000) and the curious fuzzheads (Trupp, 1995; Little You, 2002), Janell Cannon has racked up frequent flyer miles to the underbelly of the animal kingdom. But in actuality, all she has to do for inspiration for her next story for children is take a trip to the zoo. Always a careful observer, Janell sits back and simply watches how people react to certain animals. "The animals that get the meanest, worst comments automatically become candidates for a story," she told us.

In fact, a visit to the San Diego Zoo was what planted the seed for Pinduli. She encountered the resident striped hyena, an endangered animal, and was immediately struck by her remarkable beauty. One of Janell's friends at the zoo told her how he had watched people drawn to this stunning animal who instantly turned away when they saw the hyena label on her enclosure. "It was all just a word that shifted their attitude," Janell said. That shift in attitude was all she needed to get the story of Pinduli (a Swahili word for "catalyst") in motion. Once she had an idea of where the story would take her readers, she began the research for her illustrations by videotaping and sketching the hyenas at the zoo. "I have to know an animal well enough to turn it around in my head," Janell commented. She quickly learned that these often-reviled animals have some rather wonderful character traits. "When they're not at ease, hyenas have a mane that just flies up like a mohawk or a fin. I was able to actually film the hyena showing different emotions," she remarked. And when she's looking to recapture the stark beauty of Africa, all Janell has to do is take a day trip to the desert near her town of Carlsbad, CA and use her imagination. "When I see how beautiful it is there, the depth of the light, I just feel like I'm in Africa," she said.

Up in space. Once Janell gets started on a story idea and the drawings start to come to her, she works on the book day in and day out. "Sometimes I can go a couple of weeks if I can see the story clearly. I want to take advantage of the muse when its there." Janell admitted that she's easily distracted and designed her studio so she has to literally climb up into a loft to get to her drawing table. "It's like climbing into a spaceship and closing the hatch," she laughed. But once she gets started, there's no stopping her. "There's a period of time where 1 just look and look and take in as much as 1 can. Then I synthesize it I never work directly from a photo - I just mix it all up and put it back down."

Janell, who worked for a number of years for the Carlsbad Public Library as a graphic artist, reached almost instant recognition with the publication of her first book for children, Stellaluna. Since a lot of the time her animal subjects have to do things slightly out of character, she has to go beyond her research and really stretch her imagination and visualize. "When Stellaluna ate the grasshopper, 1 thought about the celery casserole my mom used to make me eat and we'd be at a stalemate at the kitchen table. So a lot of emotion goes into the drawings!" she laughed.

Start at the top. It was while Janell still was working at the library that she began to think perhaps she was headed in the wrong direction. "I knew I had reached a burnout staee when I just went up the driveway and couldn't get out of the car," she said. Knowing she had to do something drastic soon, she began to draw different characters and their stories, and eventually realized that the body of work she was creating could one day be a book. She looked up how to write a query letter and quickly fired off some of her drawings to wellknown literary agent Sandra Dykstra. "I thought that I'd start at the top and work my way down," Janell laughed. She drew some of her characters across her cover letter - "I didn't want her to think I was a one-trick pony" - and sent off her manuscript. Luckily, Janell had timed it just right. Ms. Dykstra responded right away and the rest is history. Stellaluna achieved bestseller status within its very first year of publication and paved the way for Janell's other award-winning books.

Even though the outlook was good, Janell was still nervous about whether or not she had made the right choice in deciding to take the plunge into children's books. The very first review she got for Stellaluna was from her threeyear-old niece and quickly made up her mind for her. "1 brought the mock-up back to Minnesota and gave it to my brother to read to my niece. He read it to her and she said, 'Read it again!' That was the best!" she recounted.

We believe that after hearing the latest Janell Cannon book, children will be yelling, "Read it again!" for a long, long time to come.

BY KATHERINE PIERPONT, SENIOR EDITOR

Copyright Early Years, Inc. Apr 2005
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