After reading and reviewing Seven Little Duckling (Candlewick, January 2025), I had the privilege of interviewing author Annette LeBlanc Cate. We talked about how she became an author/illustrator, her process, and advice for young artists.

Find her online at https://www.facebook.com/AnnetteLeblancCate/ and at https://www.instagram.com/annet.lecate/ Her books are available at your local independent bookstore, and at Bookshop.org!

Where did you get the idea for Seven Little Ducklings?

Sometimes it’s hard to say where ideas come, exactly, but this one is easy! Seven Little Ducklings was sparked by looking at cute animal videos on Facebook (yes, yes, frittering my time away when I should be working, I am very good at this, possibly world-class champion level), specifically one photo that showed a mother merganser (a type of duck) followed by at least 50 little babies. Honestly hard to say if they were all baby mergansers. This prompted me say to myself, “Wow, look at that mother duck, just swimming along, all business as usual, proud as can be. Who knows how she got all those ducklings. Hey, wait a minute…!”

Seven Little Ducklings seems (to me, anyway), to have a very clear message. Did you write this book with a message in mind? Or did the message emerge out of the plot?

As a children’s author, I am very aware that a great idea is not enough on its own. It’s important, but it’s not everything. A great idea has to have enough momentum and rhythm to last 32 pages (or 40, the number I was happily granted for Seven Little Ducklings!), and – I deeply believe –  has to have a real reason to exist in the world. In other words, the message. I instantly loved the idea of a mother duck with all these babies. It was a cute idea of course, but what else could it be besides just cute? The original idea thankfully blossomed very quickly, almost on its own, and with no help from me. It went like this: “Yes, a mother duck… she has all these babies…but you know what would be EVEN MORE funny and adorable? Babies who are not even close to her own species (proven by the internet that it does happen, as I cite the example of the mother owl in a tree with a baby wood duck…), maybe not EVEN BIRDS…so this mom duck, she has all these babies not of her own, but she will take them in because SHE IS A MOM, and that’s what MOMS do.”

And well, there it was. The story came together very quickly. It didn’t feel labored to me in any way, which I think is very important. A picture book has to have a message, a reason for being,  but it also must feel very organic, like a built-in part of the story, as opposed to a story with a Message forced on top of it. The message that I hope shines through the silliness is that parents are there to always love, care for, and fiercely protect the children who need them, whether those children are personally hatched from them, or not! It felt very seamless, and to me that’s very beautiful!

My favorite part is when the mother duck says, “’Let’s get this straight / Five more children than eggs / They can’t all be mine...’ Then she counts all their faces / and knows that it’s fine.” Is this mother-to-all theme based on any mothers you’ve known in real life?

Oh I’m so glad that you like this part! I like that the mother is more than just heroic; she’s kind of goofy too. Because even though ducks are quite beautiful, they’re also pretty odd. I like stuff to be funny, but I also like things to be poignant, to me that’s the sweet spot I aim for. My own mother, who was always so welcoming to any friends we brought home, was definitely the “Food is love, and everybody gets fed” type. I strive to be that way, too! I remember the mother of my childhood best friend as well. She was so kind to me, always, and I will never forget that. Then there were lovely mothers of my college friends, and my own mother-in-law, who was also a very warm and giving person. Growing up in Waltham in the 1970’s, most families I knew were very large (and very Catholic). I didn’t know anyone without both a mother and a father. The Boston Globe had a column in the Sunday paper called “Wednesday’s Child” which was devoted to (mostly special-needs) kids in need of adoptive parents. As I knew of virtually no non-traditional families, I couldn’t even imagine such a thing. How did kids have no parents? How could a kid just be so adrift? This made me very sad at the time (and of course it still does), that there were children with no one to take care of them.

What were some of your own favorite books when you were little?

This is the best question of all time, and I don’t think I’ve ever been officially asked this!

When we were very young, my mother subscribed us to The Parents’ Magazine Press, and I remember these books the most. We went to the library a lot, but the books we owned are the ones most ingrained in my memory. My all-time favorite when I was little is Old Black Witch by Wende and Harry Devlin, I think because it was my mother’s favorite to read (with witch voice and everything!), so it was the one she read most often, and therefore it’s cemented into memory, specifically in the “happy memory” department. My mother read to us every night, and my older sisters read to us little ones, too. There were seven kids in the family, with 15 years between the oldest and youngest, and when I was older, I read to my little siblings.

Anyway, I was just teaching a little class at our town arts collaborative, and I brought my very, very old copy Old Black Witch to show them. It has no cover and it’s all mangled… but the art! I loved it then and I still love it. Probably my first real art inspiration, it’s got such beautiful pen-and-ink work. I learned to read, I swear, instantaneously. We had a bunch of old “Dick and Jane” style books lying around the house that I pored over endlessly. In first grade my teacher made it all make sense, and I said to myself, “Oh, THAT’S how it works,” and that was that, I could read! From then on, I read voraciously. I especially loved all the Black Stallion books (I adored the illustrations in these), and all the Marguerite Henry books. Because we had so many kids in the house, there were always books around, old books from my sisters, classics like Little Women, Trixie Belden mysteries. Once in school they showed us the movie for Charlotte’s Web. I knew I had to read the book. Then I had to read Stuart Little, and that brought me to truly feel the link between story and illustration. Garth Williams is probably my strongest art influence. Somewhere along the line I discovered the Winnie-the-Pooh books and the illustrations of E.H. Shepard, and to me, both are absolute perfection. My best friend growing up was four years older than me (and, interestingly, still is) and was always giving me books to read, and by 12 I was reading The Hobbit and Watership Down and The Once and Future King… all still my all-time favorites. I also loved Anne of Green Gables.

How did you learn to draw? What’s your favorite medium?

I feel like I didn’t really learn to draw. I just could! Always could. It was very natural to me. I think somewhere there is a picture of me on my fifth birthday, and I have the most amazing present: a sketchpad of very grown-up paper! This was AWESOME, fancy paper just for me! With six siblings, there weren’t many things “just for you.” I’m not meaning this in a sad way, it’s just how it was. Even though I drew well, I wasn’t the only one who drew, all of us kids did. We went through so many of those cheap manila doodle pads that my mother cut  up brown paper bags for us to draw on, and I think my father absconded with a huge chalkboard from his office for us, and that was absolutely the BEST. We drew constantly, all of us, making up stories as we went along. If we got a new box of crayons, I would sneak off with the black one. That one was MINE, the best for drawing. When I used up the black crayon I would move on to the brown, because that was second best. Then bittersweet, which was an okay red-brown, then blue-green. For some reason I did not care to draw with purple, even though it was dark. Do you get the feeling I was rather a strange child? We had coloring books, and I liked those. Coloring was acceptable to me as a past-time, but clearly NOT as important as drawing. 

When I was a kid, there was a store within walking distance of our house. It was called “Moe Blacks,” and it was a sort of a precursor to the big odd-lot stores you see nowadays. You could get all sorts of interesting things there. They had a stationery section, and you could buy a little set with a bottle of black India ink with a dip-pen, which fascinated me. I HAD to learn! Then I found that the paint-and-art-supply store downtown sold all the little separate pen nibs from tiny drawers in little cases (My favorite way to buy anything! My childhood art store is still open, and they still have the pen nibs. These are getting harder and harder to find. I had to make an emergency stop there for them when I was working on my dragon book), and that was it. Virtually every dollar I earned from babysitting went to the art supply store. All these years later, simple crow-quill dip pens and black ink is still my favorite way to work! I’m most happy and comfortable in the black-and-white world. Dark smeary mysterious pencil and charcoal too, but black ink will always be my favorite!

Do you consider yourself more a writer or an artist?

Definitely an artist! I went to art school to learn to be an illustrator, but have never taken a writing class of any kind. Whenever I write anything, it feels very much like I am hanging onto a cliff by my fingernails, even right now as I am writing this. Sometimes it feels like I’m completely over my head, and the agonizing hard work of writing makes me feel very sorry for myself, causing me to wail in self-pity about how I, a complete fraud, have no business doing this, and how I am absolutely over-stepping my boundaries. Whose idea was this anyway, actually writing books, not just sensibly drawing the pictures?

But honestly, I have always written. I was a good-enough writer all through school, also a prolific letter-writer and endless notebook-scrawler. I knew if I wanted to bring all the stories in my head to life, there was going to have to be some hard work. Drawing is easy, writing… not so much!

Something that struck me when I read the book is how perfect it is for reading aloud. Did you read it aloud to anyone while you were writing it? Also, what role does reading aloud play in your creative (writing) process?  

Oh, I am SO happy you noticed this! I love that sometimes people mention that my books are fun and easy to read out loud! This is very important to me.

Yes, I do read aloud as I write, and I am actually reading this out loud right now! There are a few reasons why. The first is that yes, I am sensitive to the fact that deep down I don’t think I’m a very good writer; I make a lot of grammar mistakes and such, and I feel I will notice the mistakes more if I hear them. I like my sentences to feel put together right, to have a good cadence and rhythm, to have interesting words in the right places, and not having them stick out awkwardly. Above all I need to sound like myself – really myself, not someone kind of like me, someone putting on airs. It has to be authentically me.

Reading out loud really helped me with my second book, Look Up! It’s a non-fiction book about bird-watching, and there was a LOT of information to fit into a very small number of pages. I had to be clear, and reading endlessly out loud helped me to understand where things were confusing (If I was confused, that was bad enough. Imagine the poor reader!), and this also helped me maintain my own personal voice, even as I felt so out-of-my-depth. It made me feel grounded. Even if I was writing something hard, it was still me in there! I know I have my weaknesses: descriptive language and just getting characters to move through a story. It wasn’t apparent just how hard this sort of thing was until I lived through my third book, A Dragon used to Live Here, an early grade chapter book of nearly 300 pages… whew!

I also am a huge believer in the power of reading aloud to children, and want to make the experience as easy and fun as possible. As a mother of two, I understand that when a book is not so fun to read out loud, it is not likely to stay in the rotation. I read to my sons a LOT, and there were some books I had to hide because they just felt like too much of a chore. I read to them even through their teens, and even now that they’re pretty much grown up, we still sometimes read out loud on vacation, usually local ghost stories, that sort of thing. Dave Barry travelogues are also very popular. Books that are well-written are a delight to share! I would like people to feel that about my books.

What advice do you have for students whose families (or friends) might discourage them from pursuing a career in the arts?

I so badly want to be able to say, “Don’t listen to them! Follow your heart and go for it!” but I know that is very vague, so vague that it isn’t exactly helpful. I wish it was that easy, but it isn’t! Life can be hard, there’s no sugar-coating that – and the people who tell you being an artist is no way to make a living are most likely are telling you that because they care about you, and don’t want to see you struggle. A career in the arts is never a sure thing, but if you know, deep in your heart, that being an artist is what you need to be, if you feel that compulsion, I think you owe it to yourself to try. And this is where I can give the only advice I have, and that is to keep an open mind, and know that there are so, so many ways to be an artist, so many ways to get there, so many paths. Those paths aren’t always terribly clear-cut. It may take longer to get there than you think, and when you get there, it might not be what you thought it would be, but that might be okay, too. Here’s my most practical wisdom: Keep learning! Try to take art classes, meet artists and learn from them! Work on your own. Draw on your own! Fill a sketchbook with drawings of your room, your sneakers, your cat, your own beautiful face in the mirror. Write. Keep a journal, write about the things that make you happy, make lists of all the things you find annoying (and illustrate them, of course) play music, and try to make friends with people who like to do this stuff, too! When you can, go to museums and galleries, go to art fairs, figure out what’s the kind of art that makes your heart soar. Look at art books, read about famous artists, try to look at the world through their eyes, but understand that seeing the world through YOUR eyes is what being an artist is all about. Know your voice is valid and think about where your own voice, your own way of seeing, might take you. Keep your eyes, and your heart, open!