Interview with Ian Wallace, author of author of The Sleeping Porch:

Groundwood Books: The Sleeping Porch is the perfect anecdote to a hot summer's night. Where did you get the idea for this story of a young boy flying through the starry sky with his feline companion?

Ian Wallace: In March 2006, I joined my wife, Deb, in Boston to look for a new place to live. The previous fall she had accepted a position at Baker Library at the Harvard Business School, which precipitated a move from Toronto to Boston and away from Canada to the United States. At the time, I rationalized that I could write and draw anywhere. Just give me my computer, a box of paints and paper, and a drafting table, and I would be fine. But in my gut and heart I was very concerned about where the inspiration would come from, being a creator of Canadian stories and images. I needn't have worried. Inspiration, like love, comes sometimes when the creator least expects it, and from the most unlikely places.

One night, Deb and I were invited to dinner at the home of one of her colleagues—an Arts and Crafts home where every room had been meticulously restored. Stepping off the second-floor landing and into The Sleeping Porch, our host began to tell me the history of the space. As he talked, my imagination took flight. Having been born and raised in Canada, I was familiar with verandas and screened porches, and I had enjoyed sleeping on many. But I had never encountered a porch that was designed specifically for steamy nights when bedrooms became too unbearable for sleeping and families retreated to cots in order to catch a breath of air.

I came away inspired and certain that there was a story in that magical space. Over the following months, as I returned to Boston several times in search of a place to live, the story began to take shape in my head. I moved the setting of the house from where it stands on a tree-lined residential street, positioning it in back of a graveyard. I enjoy exploring graveyards. They are rich in social history, family stories, and, often, great tragedy. In New England, the tragedies almost exclusively centre on the sea or war. The graveyard in The Sleeping Porch was drawn from the oldest graveyard in the town of Brookline, an old Boston suburb, where we came to live.

The salty Maine coon cat sprang into my imagination one afternoon after a guided tour of Forest Hills Cemetery, in another Boston suburb, Jamaica Plain, where I saw a gravestone of a dog asleep at the foot of a family grave.

GW: Does Brando, the young boy's name, have any personal significance?

IW: The name of the boy in the story was inspired (obviously) by one of America's most acclaimed actors, Marlon Brando, who is also one of my personal favourites in movie history. Mostly, though, I liked the strength of the name when I said it aloud and when I read it. From the outset the boy in the story just felt like a "Brando" to me, from head to toe.

GW: Your illustrations are full of hidden images and structures. A building can also look like an ice cream sundae. It's like a visual treasure hunt. What went into this decision?

IW: As an illustrator I have always believed that I am only as good as the text that has been laid down by the writer and that beautiful images can't save a story that doesn't work. Every writer sets out guideposts that give the illustrator the opportunity to embellish and expand upon carefully written sentences, while at the same time allowing him or her to walk about the spaces between the words. From the text I had written, I understood that the city was "melting in the heat:" So I asked myself two fundamental questions about the image that I wanted to create. In a dream, what does a city look like when it is melting in the heat? And how can I capture a steamy summer night where the buildings are giving way? Two common expressions that we use to describe how hot it is outside leapt into my mind: A cat on a hot tin roof and It's hot enough to fry an egg in the street. In addition, I thought that at least one of the buildings had to be physically melting and created an ice cream stand. In the moments when dreams can be somewhat logical, if logical at all, it made sense to me that an ice cream stand would melt not an apartment block. To add to the strange timber of Brando's dream fantasy, on a billboard in the upper left hand corner, I have painted a human eye watching over the flight of Brando and the Graveyard Cat, the landscape, and the steamy night. The eye was inspired by, and pays homage to, the French painter, René Magritte, and his painting, The False Mirror (1928).

GW: You thank k.d. lang in your acknowledgements. Do you often listen to music while writing and illustrating?

IW: I do listen to music most days when I am drawing and painting, but never when I write. For some reason the sounds that I find distracting when I write don't disturb me when I draw. To be able to write, I need the sound of silence.

During the creation of The Sleeping Porch, I played k.d. lang's Songs from the 49th Parallel so often that I just about wore out the tracks. The songs, written by Canadians, speak eloquently about the Canadian landscape and people, while her voice is as remarkable and as evocative as always. The music helped me assuage my homesickness for Canada.

GW: You appeared recently at Book Expo Canada. How important is it to you to meet readers, face-to-face, who are so familiar with your works?

IW: Over the thirty-four years that I have been writing and illustrating books for young people, I have frequently remarked that the best part of the job isn't always the writing and illustrating, but the opportunities that enable me to meet and work with young people, teachers and librarians, booksellers and parents. The readings and presentations give me the chance to stretch my artistic spirit in different ways, bringing out both the actor and the ham in me. It also gives me the chance to talk with people, one-to-one, making each school and library visit more personal. Out of several thousand appearances, I've enjoyed almost every reading and nearly every meeting: a remarkable statistic. I am a very privileged person. More than three decades ago I found the work that I was born to do. I am passionate about the picture book genre and that passion hasn't diminished as the decades passed.

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