Robert D Beaverson
Pat Zietlow Miller
Long before she sold her first picture book, Sophie’s Squash — a story about a child’s bond with her favorite fruit that went on to win seven awards — Pat Zietlow Miller was a mother of two who sat on her living room floor and studied every picture book she could find. She paid attention to plot structure, where pages turned and how problems were resolved at the end.
“I read everything Kevin Henkes ever wrote,” Miller, 47, says about the famed Madison children’s author. “Kevin is a top-shelf picture book writer. He’s in a different hemisphere than I am.”
Readers of Miller’s five picture books might disagree. In fact, with Henkes releasing a 20th-anniversary edition of Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, and former Isthmus editor Dean Robbins and Miller publishing critically acclaimed titles this year, Madison could be in its own children’s book hemisphere.
In 2016, the Fitchburg-based author published two books. The Quickest Kid in Clarksville is about two girls growing up in segregated Tennessee in 1960, shortly after African American sprinter Wilma Rudolph became the first woman from the United States to win three gold medals at the same Olympics. Sophie’s Squash Go to School is a sequel to Sophie’s Squash, in which Sophie takes her two zucchini squash, named Bonnie and Baxter, to school with her.
Miller’s story is not one of overnight success; in fact, she wrote her first picture book manuscript at age 19, received one rejection letter and gave up for 20 years.
But during what she calls an “early midlife crisis,” she started writing again and never stopped — after receiving a total of 126 rejections, Sophie’s Squash sold to a division of Penguin Random House and was published in 2013. Five more books are on the way, beginning in 2018.
As The Quickest Kid in Clarksville proves, Miller aims for diversity in her books. And Sophie’s new friend in Sophie’s Squash Go to School is an African American boy. “Children’s books are overwhelmingly white, and that’s not the face of our youth anymore,” says Miller, who is white. “I think any kid should be able to pick up a picture book and see themselves in it.”
In addition to striving to be inclusive, she also aims for subtlety in her writing.
“I read manuscripts that have a line in them like, ‘And that’s why you should always brush your teeth,’ and I don’t want that,” Miller says. “Picture books succeed when they have a universal truth or emotion in them, when anybody can pick them up and say, ‘Okay, maybe I’ve never fallen in love with a butternut squash, but I remember when I was a kid feeling that way about a blanket or a teddy bear. Nobody’s too old for a picture book.”
Pat Zietlow Miller reads from Sophie’s Squash Go to School and The Quickest Kid in Clarksville at Mystery to Me, 1863 Monroe St., on Saturday, Aug. 6, 1-3 p.m.
