PaperTigers: Your life has been a tapestry of living in many cultures—in France, Spain, England, the United States, Nigeria, India. How has this helped you as a writer?

Katia: This is an interesting question. How does life in general help and/or affect us as writers? I would say every experience shapes us, and what we are shows up inevitably in what we write. I could not have written Amadi’s story if I had not lived in Nigeria. On the other hand, it must be said that a life spent traveling or living in vastly different countries (even if I also find similarities from one to another) has made me slightly jaded. I’m so used to witnessing diverse ways of living, eating, dressing, even driving a car on the road (!) that it takes more and more to surprise me. I notice that particularly when we have guests. Some of the things that amaze them, I have come to view as part of my daily routine or panorama.

PaperTigers: It’s been said that writing a picture book is as demanding as writing a poem. Each word must be precise, the use of language must be economical, and the images evocative. Longer forms of fiction can be more forgiving. Why did you choose this difficult form for Amadi’s story? And would you choose it again?

Katia:I love the picture book format. I love the conversation between the art and the words on the page, how they are meant to complement each other. I think that writers who are also artists are very lucky to be able to experience this medium in its full beauty, and difficulty. Amadi came to me that way : it was a turning point in the life of a young boy, related to a particular instance, and something that needed to be resolved quickly. And yes, I have three other picture book manuscripts that I hope will find a home. Children love pictures. They love being able to suspend the flow of a story to examine an image, notice details, talk about the expression on the face of a character, the background, etc.

PaperTigers:As a mother of two girls, why did you decide to write about a boy? Is there a “real-life” Amadi? How did you manage to enter the heart and mind of a small “Igbo man of Nigeria” and give him such complete life on the page?

Katia:There is no “real-life” Amadi, but there are lots of boys just like him. The problem of these boys dropping out of school to earn quick money in the street is very real. As for entering the heart and mind of Amadi, I think it’s the reverse. Amadi entered my own mind and started telling me his story. I just had to write it down. (more…)

Today PaperTigers is thrilled to be part of Katia Novet Saint-Lot’s virtual book tour for her wonderful book, Amadi’s Snowman (Tilbury House). From her home in Hyderabad, India, Katia is spending this month visiting blogs around the world in interviews and photos, discussing her life as a writer and global nomad, and providing photos and drawings from children who have fallen in love with her irrepressible and insatiably curious creation, Amadi.

The drawings that preface our interview with Katia come from students in two fourth grade classes at the Vidyaranya School in Hyderabad, with whom Katia recently spent time reading and discussing her book.

These are children fluent in English, with Hindi and Telugu taught as second languages, who were quite interested when Katia told them that Amadi and his classmates are English speakers as well.

And as their delightful drawings plainly reveal, they became immersed in the Nigerian world of the small Igbo businessman and devoted reader in the making, Amadi!

The perfect picture book is one in which pictures and text blend together into a seamless unified whole world held in two hands. When this magic happens, then that book appeals to all age categories. This is what Katia Novet Saint-Lot and Dimitrea Tokunbo have accomplished in their new book, Amadi’s Snowman (Tilbury House, 2008).

From the first sentence of this book, when Amadi is introduced while “crouched in the shrubs, stalking a red-headed lizard,” until the last words “And he ran down the dirt path, his heart filled with joy,” he leaps out as a completely delightful small boy, who considers himself “an Igbo man of Nigeria.” Although his mother urges him to let a neighbor teach him to read, Amadi sees no room for that nonsense in his future. He plans to be a businessman and knows exactly how to begin this enterprise–reading is unnecessary.

Wandering through the market while mulling over his business plan, Amadi finds an older boy immersed in a book. Caught by a picture of a world covered in white and a boy standing beside a large white figure with a carrot for a nose, Amadi discovers that his own world is far smaller than he ever imagined. With awakened curiosity, he begins to hunger for facts that can only be provided by breaking the secret code of print on a page.

And yet this book is so much more than this simple plot summary. With precise and evocative descriptions of Amadi’s world, Katia Novet Saint-Lot plunges readers into the color and beauty of Nigerian village life, while making Amadi such a vivid character that as he runs down the dirt path and away from his readers on the final page, he leaves us hoping for a sequel. Dimitrea Tokunbo’s glowing paintings bring motion and light and detail to the words, truly illuminating the text by showing readers exactly what Amadi sees every day.

This is a celebration of literacy that takes us back to the yearning and hunger that made us readers, while giving us a new world that we will yearn and hunger to learn more about, no matter how young–or old–we may be.