Always Look for Wonder: Loren Long on Creativity and ‘The Yellow Bus’

A podcast interview with Loren Long discussing The Yellow Bus on The Growing Readers Podcast, a production of The Children’s Book Review.

Embark on a journey of wonder and creativity with award-winning children’s author and illustrator Loren Long in this captivating episode of The Growing Readers Podcast.

The conversation delves into the heart of Loren’s latest masterpiece, The Yellow Bus, uncovering the extraordinary story behind this seemingly ordinary vehicle.

Prepare to be inspired as Loren Long reveals:

• His transition from editorial illustrator to beloved children’s book creator
• The spark of inspiration found in an abandoned bus and everyday marvels
• How he brings stories of change and resilience to life for young readers
• The magic of collaboration in picture book creation
• His unique artistic process, including an unexpected canine contribution!

Discover the artistry behind The Yellow Bus as Loren shares his innovative use of a 3D model, the power of a limited color palette, and his dedication to handcrafted illustrations using charcoal and acrylic paint.

Whether you’re a parent, educator, aspiring artist, or simply young at heart, this episode promises to reignite your sense of wonder and appreciation for the art of storytelling.

Tune in and let Loren Long’s passion for creativity inspire you to find joy in the most unexpected places!

Listen to the Episode

Read the Transcription

Bianca Schulze: Hi, Loren. Welcome to The Growing Readers Podcast.

Loren Long: Hello, Bianca. Thank you for having me.

Bianca Schulze: Oh, my gosh. It’s such a pleasure. I have been a longtime fan of yours. I have three children, and one of the books that was on repeat in the early 2000s was your illustrated version of The Little Engine That Could. That probably feels like forever ago now, but I loved the artwork. It was so rich and just incredible. And I loved being able to do all the voices of the different trains. Yeah. So thanks for being a part of my family’s life for a long time.

Loren Long: Thank you. That means so much to me. It really does, because my life’s work is making the art and telling stories. And it is a really gratifying, warm feeling inside to know that there are people that I don’t even know out there sharing some of my work with people they love. And that safe harbor, that is a picture book that you created with your children. It’s really cool to know that some of my work was in that space with you.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, absolutely. And we’re going to go really deep on your new book, The Yellow Bus. But just before we do that, I want to learn a little bit more about you, but I can’t do that without at least congratulating you on The Yellow Bus becoming an instant number one New York Times bestseller and an indie bestseller. I mean, just congratulations. That has to be just an incredible feeling.

Loren Long: It is. Thank you, Bianca. Thank you. It means so much. I’ve made quite a few books now over the years, and not every book can be a bestseller. It seems harder and harder these days to even get on the New York Times bestseller list. So to have something that I’ve created bump on there in such a big way is wonderful. And not only so much for me, but the people I made this book with at Macmillan and the Roaring Brook team, I’m so happy for them because of the enthusiasm and support they put behind The Yellow Bus. Thank you.

Bianca Schulze: Yes. Yay for the Macmillan team. They are amazing. All right, well, I want to ask you this question. What is one thing you do in your day-to-day practices that you feel would be either the most surprising or the most relatable to listeners? So it could be something that could inspire others, or it could be something that’s just so day-to-day that just demonstrates that we’re all in this together in this crazy life.

Loren Long: Okay. I have two things that come to mind that are very sort of normal, pedestrian. But I start every day. I’m very fortunate. I start every day with coffee. And I know that’s not very original, but I am blessed to start every day with coffee and with my wife, Tracy. And we have places, depending on the weather, where we have our coffee in the morning. And this is not some big, groundbreaking thought, but it really settles me to get to talk to her every morning about what I’m going to be working on that day and then hear what she’s doing throughout the day. And so that’s, like, a very wonderful thing for me in my life. That’s kind of centered me a little bit.

The other thing is, every afternoon, I run, take a run with my dog, and that has become a really important part of my daily life. And I’m not a big runner. In fact, most of the time, we just run a mile. I set it on my little watch, and I hit a mile, and then I walk back briskly with Charlie, my dog. And the thing that has happened, Bianca, with that is, at first I did it because I was trying to calm him down, and he was a rescue dog. But what I started realizing is it’s so good for me, not only physically, but mentally.

And I used to listen to podcasts. Now I don’t. I don’t even put music on. I think. And when you’re doing something like that, like some type of an activity, whether it’s walking or, I don’t know, it could be chopping wood, mowing the grass, whatever, and you’re not listening to somebody else talk, you’re listening to your own thoughts, and that’s where ideas come from. Some of my better ideas, and I could cite examples over the years, have come while I’m taking a shower. And I know that sounds odd, but it’s, you’re doing something that you put on cruise control, and then you think, and your mind just thinks. You don’t even know you’re thinking about it. But so, yeah, those are two things off the top of my head.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. I love it. Well, shout out to Tracy. And then I was, two things popped into my mind, and I was like, are you just basic drip coffee or an espresso coffee? A flavored coffee? Like, what kind of coffee gets you going in the morning?

Loren Long: It’s a basic drip coffee. We had a fun opportunity to go to Europe two summers ago, with my whole family, my grown boys, and Tracy. And so I got back, and I insisted that I needed an espresso machine. So Tracy got me this fancy espresso machine, and I do make it every once in a while. But I am finding it’s not part of my daily routine.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah.

Loren Long: It’s just basic coffee with a little shot of cream in it.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. The reason I asked is because I make myself a frou-frou lavender latte every day. I feel like it’s very specific, and I feel like if my coffee is missing that little shot of lavender in it now, it’s not the same, so I like it to be the same every day.

Loren Long: I’m gonna have to try that. I love that. And those routines, those sort of mundane routines, although that doesn’t sound very mundane. That sounds awesome and fancy. But those daily routines, I do believe they’re important for creative endeavors just to, again, ground you with a structure, because what we’re doing isn’t always structured. If you’re not careful, weeks can go by if you’re struggling with something. So a work ethic and a structure is important, I believe.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, absolutely. And if you think about just the creative realm, sometimes the creativity can just be so out there. And I think it needs an anchor. Right? No matter what, if you’re telling a story or there’s a piece of artwork, but there’s this anchor that grounds you. And so I feel like that’s the same with how we should move through the world.

Loren Long: I 100% agree. Yes.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Well, there’s a saying that you need to be a reader first before you become a writer. So I’m curious if there was a pivotal moment in your life in which you considered yourself a reader.

Loren Long: That’s a great question. And I may be different than a lot of my peers that are such amazing writers and were avid readers when they were little. I wasn’t. I think there was definitely an attention issue, you know, focus issue. Early on, I was not a great reader, and it made me not want to read. And so if you gave me a book that had a bunch of words, it was like work, you know, for me to read it and focus on it. And I was famous for, still am, for reading three pages and realizing I haven’t been paying attention to what I read. So it slowed me down in the beginning, but I was fortunate that I had a mother who read to me not only picture books, but Charlotte’s Web, you know, was big in our house. And then she read even at the time, like The Outsiders, and she dedicated…

I look back, and I realized she was dedicating some of her time to me, even when I was 13, 14. I could read. It wasn’t a learning problem, but it was just I was into… I’d rather go out and play sports. You know, typical things? My parents were not artists or teachers even. So Mom just did that because she enjoyed it and she liked the time with me. It’s one of the things I tell people these days. We all know the development a child gets having picture books read to them through age five when they go off to kindergarten. But that safe harbor that I mentioned is so also important, that bonding with your children. You’re tired at the end of a day and you read picture books with them. You’re falling asleep sometimes, but that bonds and creates that safe harbor that will stay, that feeling will stay with them forever. Even when they’re, in some cases, elderly, they can remember books that somebody that loved them read to them. And also, more importantly, the feeling.

So those experiences stay with you. And when you are going through the ups and downs of life, you have that to warm you.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, that’s beautiful.

Loren Long: I’m not sure I answered your question, you know.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, I think that was such a beautiful answer because, you know, it is a saying that to be a writer, you need to be a reader. But I love the answers that everybody gets, because while there are some common threads that weave through the answers, it’s always different for everybody. And I think that was beautiful. And I’m a mom who just, I love to read with my kids every single night. So your response was particularly meaningful to me.

Loren Long: Thank you, Bianca. And I will say I really didn’t… I shudder to say this for any of my peers that might be listening or colleagues or editors, but I really didn’t become a big reader until I was an adult. And frankly, in my twenties and married Tracy, she was an avid reader. She was one of those intense readers and still is. And, you know, we made a good match. But I, her vocabulary to this day is so deep compared to mine, and so she turned me into a reader now. And when I’m on the final stages of a book where the thinking is now on cruise control, I’ve already created a dummy or written a piece. If I’m illustrating somebody else’s, I’ve already gone through the conceptual, intellectual part of planning the book, and now I’m just painting it or drawing it or what have you. Then I really catch up with lost time because I love biography. So I will listen to 22 hours of a biography that would make it hard for me to find time to slog through and read. And so I love that part of my working life.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Well, now I’m surprised that I haven’t seen a ton of illustrated biographies written and illustrated by you, Loren. Maybe that’s, like, another chapter of your life.

Loren Long: Yeah, I am looking for ideas at the moment or working through ideas. So maybe I should add that.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. That’s so fun. All right, well, can we go back to the beginning of your career just for a brief moment? And what would you say it was that guided you toward creating books for children in the first place?

Loren Long: These kind of questions are so big. It’s like, where do I start? But I’ll just say this. I didn’t start my illustrat… By the time I realized I wanted to be an illustrator, like, you know, an actual illustrator as opposed to any other kind of artist, I had no idea, again, unlike many of my peers, that I wanted to end up illustrating children’s literature, which is my love. It’s my passion. So I just was trying to… Honestly, I was… That always felt like an underdog. It’s like, I just want to make art as an illustration.

And I remember being in school thinking, how cool would it be if just one person would pay me to do a picture? It could be a magazine, a newspaper, a brochure, a poster, just anything. That was the goal. So I started in broad-based illustration, meaning working for, did greeting cards, did anything. The phone called asking me to illustrate. But somewhere along the way, I really dove into my favorite periods of art history, and that is the American painters, the American scene painters, the regionalists, a lot of the, basically the art that was being done in America in the first half of the 20th century.

And so I loved the American regionalists, like Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, John Stuart Curry, but I also loved the Ashcan painters like John Sloan and George Bellows and famously, Edward Hopper. So I just dove in there, and it started showing up in my style and in the look of the way I drew figures. And I was fortunate, looking back on that, because it gave national publications like Time magazine and Sports Illustrated and Wall Street Journal and Forbes magazine a reason to call me living in the Midwest, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and that was very gratifying. It was a rat race, Bianca. It wasn’t my temperament or my personality. I remember Sports Illustrated calling on a Tuesday. And if this literally, the art director said, if the San Antonio Spurs win tonight, I need your sketches Thursday morning. If they lose, you have until Monday. And I remember thinking, I didn’t even know the Spurs were playing. I don’t even know the NBA that well.

But there are so many talented editorial illustrators. My dear friend and used to be my teacher, C.F. Payne, who’s also done children’s books, was a master at this and I wanted to be like him. But it didn’t take me long to realize that didn’t suit my life and my personality and I wasn’t good at that. And so I started doing YA book covers because editors in publishing were seeing my magazine work and I’d gotten in some juried exhibits by then, like Communication Arts magazine, Society of Illustrators, juried exhibits and publishing art directors saw that and editors. So start doing YA book covers. Did a book cover called Miles’ Song written by Alice McGill for Houghton Mifflin. And it was about a little boy escaping through the Underground Railroad. So an editor named Kevin Lewis at Simon and Schuster, I’m really going back through memory lane here. I love this, but it’s kind of a, it’s, it shows a snowballing effect and it also shows, hey, no matter what you’re doing, do your best at it. You never know who’s watching.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, absolutely.

Loren Long: So Kevin Lewis, who I didn’t know at the time, this is going back to 2000, 2001, 2002, he had a manuscript called I Dream of Trains. And he saw that book cover. He’s like, I don’t know who Loren Long is. He, frankly, he didn’t know if I was male or female. And where did this Loren person live? And he found me and took me on to illustrate I Dream of Trains, my very first picture book written by Angela Johnson. I’m so very proud of that book to this day. And that’s 20 years ago. So the rest is sort of history.

The Little Engine That Could came along not long after that with Penguin and their Philomel imprint, amazing editor named Patti Gauch. Patricia Gauch had me do a book for them and she had me do The Little Engine That Could. Still one of my favorite publishing experiences. The book meant a lot to me when I was little and just, it was my first, like real character development. I’d never painted cute little trains with eyeballs. Had the most fun. You know, my heroes, Thomas Hart Benton and Edward Hopper, they never painted trains with eyeballs and warm fuzzy. But I was like, wow, this is the most fun. And that definitely led a little bit to me writing and illustrating Otis the Tractor. Sorry, I’m rambling.

Bianca Schulze: You’re not. I mean, it’s fascinating. I feel like we could have just done a whole episode on your origins and spent so much time and digging into this. So anybody else that’s so fascinated in this, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that we didn’t just dedicate a whole episode to this. It’s great. And it’s so funny hearing you talk about creating just The Little Engine That Could, because I think that’s what I loved about the artwork. It was so rich and vibrant, and it was so realistic, and you just… how the way you manage to personify them, but they, but you feel that you’re looking at these real trains. Like, it just feels so natural that these trains would be personified. So I think you nailed it.

Loren Long: Thank you. That means a lot to me. And… Yeah, and it kind of opened up a whole world to me doing that part that I didn’t know I would like until that opportunity came along.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. So it’s like, I feel like the through line that I was hearing there is just the consistency of we have to show up and we have to let ourselves be seen and follow that path. But if you don’t show up and you don’t let yourself be seen, you’re holding yourself back.

Loren Long: You are. And it’s so easy to do that, Bianca. It is so… It is so easy to make up excuses, and at the end of the day, that’s all they are. So better to show up and work and not succeed or progress than to not show up. And it’s not just in any field or walk of life. You’re not wasting your time if you’re working. I mean, sure, there’s the adage, work hard, work smart. But by working, you start to realize what the smart part is. And again, very classic cliche, but you learn by doing. You learn by doing, you learn by failing.

What’s the famous book by Malcolm Gladwell? Outliers. And he talks about the Beatles and how many tens of thousands of hours they put into their work that nobody saw. So when they were ready, they were ready. I mean, I was working hard and trying to develop a style with a question mark above my head. And then The Little Engine That Could came along, and then Otis the Tractor came along and… And you’re just still working.

And one of the reasons I love this career in this field is even now, The Yellow Bus. I had so many doubts and so many questions trying something different and am I crazy? Am I wasting my time? And I had to go back and listen to my own advice to my two sons. And, and that is, no, I’m working. I’m trying. Maybe it’s not the most original thing. Maybe it’s not the new shiny toy. Maybe I’m not going to end up on lists and podcasts and all those things, but I’m working, and that’s the important thing.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’m glad that you did. And so I think we need to talk about The Yellow Bus now. So it explores themes of change, resilience, and finding joy in unexpected places. So let’s talk about the classic question here. What inspired you to tell this particularly beautiful story?

Loren Long: Thank you for asking. This one is so personal and so organic in my life that I do feel like it was a bit of a gift to me. I was running with my dog during pandemic. We had just adopted him. Charlie, crazy hound dog. He became my best buddy, my studio mate. I would run him every afternoon. Bianca. And near my house here in Cincinnati area, southwest Ohio, there’s a scenic trail, the Miami Valley Scenic Trail. It’s a bike trail, and it goes through woods. And I happened to notice through the trees, an old, rusted out yellow school bus sinking in the mud. And I thought the bus was at the… I’ve come to find out it’s a bus, that it’s around a 1960s to seventies era bus.

Anyway, it was curious to me, and I daily running, daily running through all seasons, because Charlie needs his run. Even in rain and snow, I go out. It’s my fun little challenge. And we would see it. Well, it was in a goat paddock, so it was surrounded by goats. And I noticed that they’d climb in and out, depending on the weather and different things like that.

And the curious thing for me was musing over this bus was this bus is created. And sure, in its heyday, it was bright and shiny, carrying this precious cargo, our children from one important place, their homes to another, their school and back. And that’s the heyday for this bus. Its purpose in life was doing that special, unique job. There it is all these years later, deserted, surrounded by livestock. Yet as I ran by daily, somehow it hit me one day, that bus seems happy. Here I am looking… Here I am, feeling sorry for that broken-down old school bus. But that broken down old school bus is looking back at me saying, I’m happy. That was so curious.

That’s when I thought, I may have a story here. Because now I’m asking myself, Loren, why do you think this bus is happy? And there was the story, and I came across, I just was like, okay, well, let’s just do a little contemplative little study as I put on my writer hat, I always feel much more comfortable as an illustrator than I do writing. I’m fortunate I can sometimes write my own stories and then illustrate other people’s stories. But this one, I just thought, okay, it’s the life of this bus. Where did it start? Okay, I know it started somewhere. Now I’ve got in my back pocket the goats. What happens in between? And then where can I take it?

So the bus starts out at the highest place possible, both literally and figuratively, and it ends up at the lowest place, literally and figuratively, that I could dream up in between my ears. Yet she’s filled with joy. So I loved that theme. And so that’s a long way of saying where the original idea… When I came back to my studio and started writing and just writing down in my notepads the basic structure of the story, and I kept coming back to that. They filled her with joy. I knew I had something that was not only just a cute story about a yellow school bus, but I had something about the passage of time and the deeper meaning of service and purpose in one’s life and where true happiness comes from.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we have to talk about your art process for this book. It’s really unique. It’s done completely by hand and not digitally. So could you tell us about the 3D model that you created and your process? And I’m really intrigued, because Morgan Rath from Macmillan said I should ask you about the secret dog hair.

Loren Long: Once again, great. Morgan Rath is, like, the best superstar in my book and in many other people’s books. Just such a unique perspective, this team that Macmillan… So shout out to Morgan. So, yeah, okay, so, all right, so I write this story, right? I’m Loren Long, the author, which blows me away because of that part about my childhood not being a great reader and necessarily a great student. So it’s so fun to have an idea that’s just between my ears and then to write it, and then it’s like, hey, I’ve written a story. It’s actually a product. Okay?

So we found Macmillan two years later after, like, in summer of ’22. So I’ve got a story. I’ve got a manuscript. By then, I had actually put it into a word file and emailed it to my agent, who found Macmillan. And all in its glory, Jen Besser, Kate Meltzer, two editors, and amazing art director Beth Clarke. That was the inner team that… The editorial team that made it. So we have a story now. It’s like, oh, no, I got to take this manuscript that just has words, and I have to make it into a book. It’s impossible. But the first thing I did was a sketch of the little setting. So the setting in The Yellow Bus, Bianca, is very important. It’s basically a gorge. It’s with a river that runs through it. It’s a gorge with a river surrounded by mountains. There’s a little town at the top, and it goes down to a farm below the little town, across a bridge along mountains to a lower farm in a valley, and the river runs through it. The school is in the top area. So I did a sketch, and I know this is, this is audio, but just to help Bianca see, I did this sketch.

Bianca Schulze: It’s beautiful.

Loren Long: Thank you very much. Anyway, so I’m faking those buildings, right? That little town, I’m just making it up out of my head. And I liked the drawing, but you can see in the drawing, it goes across a bridge. But I’m like, okay, well, what does that look like? And then I thought, I need for this setting to, I need my readers to see this entire setting in the very beginning when they open up the book, because then I want to show it throughout the middle and one other big scene at the end and then little bits and pieces along the way. So I want little eyes to be able to see where the story starts and the passage of time, because I figured the setting for the story takes around 50, as much as 60 years of the passage of time and the life of that bus.

So I wanted readers that are really paying attention, those little eyes, especially, to be able to see how it changes. And I can imagine at the end of the book, then they’d have fun going back to pay even closer attention to things from the beginning to the middle to the end.

So as an illustrator who’s basically trying to work fairly realistically, there’s two different ways you can approach art. You can draw completely out of your head. Some of the very best people, artists do only that, and many of them are in children’s publishing, and I love their work. I’m a little bit more of a realist. My, my radio station dial is on that thing, which is natural to me. So I wanted to see it. So I thought, okay, well, the only way I can see this and draw it consistently over time is to create a 3D model, a diorama. And I thought, I love working with my hands. I love doing this. So I thought, this is great. I’m going to make this model. It’ll hopefully… I can do it in about a week. I’m starting to get pressed on time here. I’ll just do… Just so I can see the topography of this thing, I can get above it, I can get below, I can get at eye level, I can shine a light on it.

Most importantly, to see how the shadows fall. That way I can draw shapes, not just details and buildings. Anyway, long story short, I made this thing out of cardboard, styrofoam packaging, envelopes, glue gun boxes, toothpaste boxes, anything that was laying around the house, model railroad paper houses, trees, Q-tips, toothpicks, anything I could get my hands on. Knowing nobody’s going to see this, nobody’s going to see it. It’s just a means to an end. It doesn’t have to be beautiful or immaculate. I just need to do it. Well, I got into it. I was having fun, Bianca. I had so much fun. And it ended up not taking a week or ten days. It took two months. It wasn’t just on a cardboard, it swallowed up my entire studio. It’s about 10 ft in length and it’s still sitting there, by the way, a few feet away.

Bianca Schulze: I can see the lamps, the lights that you use for the shading right there.

Loren Long: Yes, yes. So… But what that did was once I finally said, okay, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not the book. This is the process for the book. So once I finally said, okay, done, now use that. Don’t let that rule you. Loren, as the creator of this book, now use it. But now you have to sit at your desk and do the most important thing of a picture book. And that is the book dummy, which is the storyboard of a picture book. It’s the most important thing. That’s where you get page turns. That’s where we break out the type for the most effective usage. That’s where you have cinematography scenes, where you do go overhead and look for a mood, or you zoom in tight for another mood, just like a filmmaker. And that’s the part that I really nerd out about. And that’s also the scariest part, because you have this thing that looks kind of like this, a manuscript, and then you have words, and then those words go into your brain and you start thinking.

So as an illustrator who’s basically trying to work fairly realistically, there’s two different ways you can approach art. You can draw completely out of your head. Some of the very best people, artists do only that, and many of them are in children’s publishing, and I love their work. I’m a little bit more of a realist. My, my radio station dial is on that thing, which is natural to me. So I wanted to see it. So I thought, okay, well, the only way I can see this and draw it consistently over time is to create a 3D model, a diorama.

And I thought, I love working with my hands. I love doing this. So I thought, this is great. I’m going to make this model. It’ll hopefully… I can do it in about a week. I’m starting to get pressed on time here. I’ll just do… Just so I can see the topography of this thing, I can get above it, I can get below, I can get at eye level, I can shine a light on it. Most importantly, to see how the shadows fall. That way I can draw shapes, not just details and buildings. Anyway, long story short, I made this thing out of cardboard, styrofoam packaging, envelopes, glue gun boxes, toothpaste boxes, anything that was laying around the house, model railroad paper houses, trees, Q-tips, toothpicks, anything I could get my hands on. Knowing nobody’s going to see this, nobody’s going to see it. It’s just a means to an end. It doesn’t have to be beautiful or immaculate. I just need to do it.

Well, I got into it. I was having fun, Bianca. I had so much fun. And it ended up not taking a week or ten days. It took two months. It wasn’t just on cardboard; it swallowed up my entire studio. It’s about 10 feet in length, and it’s still sitting there, by the way, a few feet away.

But what that did was once I finally said, okay, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not the book. This is the process for the book. So once I finally said, okay, done, now use that. Don’t let that rule you. Loren, as the creator of this book, now use it. But now you have to sit at your desk and do the most important thing of a picture book. And that is the book dummy, which is the storyboard of a picture book. It’s the most important thing. That’s where you get page turns. That’s where we break out the type for the most effective usage. That’s where you have cinematography scenes, where you do go overhead and look for a mood, or you zoom in tight for another mood, just like a filmmaker. And that’s the part that I really nerd out about. And that’s also the scariest part, because you have this thing that looks kind of like this, a manuscript, and then you have words, and then those words go into your brain and you start thinking.

I don’t use the word intellectual in the same sentence, describing myself very often, but that is an intellectual process where you’re taking ideas and you’re then trying to create visual things based on this. That’s when this book dummy, that’s when the words are partners with the images. Sometimes you do an image, and you realize you don’t need certain words. You, there’s a certain rhythm. And I was very proud of The Yellow Bus from a manuscript standpoint, because I was able to be fairly minimal with my text, with my words. And when I first wrote it, I had some… I never used the word children or goats, you know, because it’s, I know I’m going to illustrate it. I’m going to put that in the imagery. I did have those sound words that certainly give clues, like pitter patter, pitter patter, giggle, giggle, patter. You know, that suggests a little bit, but that in conjunction with the art, the imagery is the sound and the music that your readers will do. And then you set that up with page turns. It’s like a film director switching to another scene for mood and effect. And so back to the dummy. So I lit the dummy.

Thank you for letting me relive this.

Okay, so then I have this monstrosity in my studio, and then it was very important to light it. So I had a photograph, like a special lighting to create mood. Again, with that light. If you put it down lower, it’s like a morning light. If you put it higher, it could be mid-day light. And that allowed me to really get in and get the nitty gritty somewhere along the way.

So somewhere along the way, Bianca, I realized, even though I’d painted this whole model in full color, I realized this somewhere in the book dummy, I thought, yellow bus. It’s the hero. In this story, the protagonist is quite possibly the most iconic symbol of childhood, if not our society in general and many societies around the world. And I thought, that yellow needs to pop. I want little eyes, whether the bus is big on the page or little tiny on the page, in every spread, to find the yellow. And so I thought, hmm, I should do this book in charcoal. I’ve never done that for a picture book.

But I love charcoal. Have since I was in 7th grade art class with Mister Pennington back in Lexington, Kentucky. Just love charcoal. There’s two things you get out of charcoal. You get scratchy lines, and also you get this beautiful velvety tone if you use charcoal dust and you wipe it around with Q-tips and paper towels. So I thought, I’ll pitch to my editorial team this idea. And they thought it was intriguing, but they wanted to see one picture. So I did the overpass scene so that the yellow bus was not huge on the page, but it was surrounded by all those great tones of charcoal.

I had a friend, Kate Albert, who’s local here, beautiful artist. She makes giclee prints. And I thought I… Okay, since I spent so much time on that model, I may need to save some time. So I thought, I’m going to work with charcoal and charcoal dust. I’ll have Kate, I’ll ask Kate if she could print out my sketches very faintly from my book dummy, from my PDF, and… And blow them up on, like, a print, and then I’ll draw. It was like a little time saver, so she blew my prints up. The thing is, the paper she used for the giclee print was a special kind of Epson paper that needed to hold inks, so it didn’t take my kneaded eraser, this thing, this is the eraser that I was going to erase my beautiful charcoal tones out of. So I’m thinking, oh, my gosh, I wasted all this time, but I took out an X-Acto blade, one of these things, and started scratching off where I needed the light. And then it became like a scratch board technique.

So, if you will allow me, one of the things I’ve done, and I want to be very specific, Bianca, because so many of my peers do amazing work in children’s picture books and all kinds of children’s books digitally, I have… They can do things that I cannot do. They can do things better and faster. I just haven’t jumped into that digital world yet. I am dabbling with Procreate on an iPad. At some point, I’m going to implement it, maybe into my process. It’s important for me at my advanced station in life to learn, so I am. It’s not that I don’t like digital work, but I love doing things by hand, even if it takes longer. I sometimes still cut out my manuscripts and put the… And tape the words next to my pencil drawings. Because it’s just a process. I don’t know if I can ever replace it. And so far, thankfully, no publisher has ever, you know, said no to my original art. I mean, we ship the stuff from Cincinnati to New York, and then they ship it often overseas for the printer. But let me just read. This is what I’ve sort of taken up on the copyright page, because I love doing this. Every book that I love, I look in the copyright page to see how the illustrator…

Bianca Schulze: Me, too. Me too.

Loren Long: Isn’t that so fun? Yeah, because I just want to know. I just… It’s like you’re looking at this… How did they do this, this amazing work? So I started doing this a couple of books ago. And so, in the title page and dedication page at the back of the book of The Yellow Bus, the art for this book was crafted with graphite pencil, charcoal pencil, and charcoal dust on Epson double weight matte paper. It was scratched out with X-Acto blades and smudged with Q-tips. The colors were created with acrylic paint, and all of it was mixed with water, with whatever dust and dog hair may have been floating around the artist’s studio.

So it occurred to me, I got this amazing experience going to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and there’s one whole little area where they show microscopic up close of his oil paintings and all the dust and grime and dirt that is in his paintings. And it does occur to me that when you’re doing physical art, it’s affected by your environment and the… And the dust that’s floating around. And my… I’ve already talked about, we’ve always had dogs, and now we have Charlie. During the process of the proofing, Beth Clark, the art director, who was going over this art, comparing the proofs with a fine-tooth comb. And I really relied on her. And it’s like, she’s my teammate, right? And so we found a dog hair on one of the spreads of The Yellow Bus. So everybody listening go, I won’t tell you where it is. I may do a post about this on my elaborate social media accounts. I say that laughingly, because they’re anything but elaborate. But, yeah, there’s a dog hair. And I said, what do you think? And Beth said, what do you think? And I said, are you thinking what I’m thinking? And she said, are you thinking what I’m thinking? Something like that. And we both said, let’s leave it in there.

Bianca Schulze: I love it. So it’s in there. It’s on one of the spreads. And I guess once you see it, you probably can’t unsee it, but to see it in the first place you’d have to be really looking.

Loren Long: I think so, yeah. I mean, I could tell them what spread, or I could hint.

Bianca Schulze: Or you could just give us a hint. Just give us a hint. Don’t tell us because that’ll be the fun in looking. That’s a good hint.

Loren Long: Okay, well, let’s see. A good hint is it’s toward… I’m looking at my book. I’m just going to say it’s toward the back of the book, and you have to look at it very closely. And I’ll give you another hint. It’s on a yellow something that’s painted yellow. It’s kind of hard to see, but once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Bianca Schulze: So, all right, towards the back of the book and look in a yellow area, and we might find the dog… We might find Charlie’s dog hair.

Loren Long: It’s a tiny little dog hair, but, yeah, it does indicate the really scratchiness. The fun thing about this technique, Bianca, was the… The grittiness and the combination of scratching out the grittiness, and you just see texture all over this art. And I do believe that there’s such a handmade quality, this book. And I told Beth, it’s like every square inch of this book, from the cover to the… The case cover, underneath the dust jacket. Beth designed these amazing endpapers that have a beautiful repeat pattern of a yellow bus. The title spread, it’s very manicured. It’s beautifully designed and developed, I believe. And that’s the part I’m proud of. My fingers are on every square inch of this book and spread.

Bianca Schulze: So, yeah, I think everything you just described, it’s like there’s so much love of what you do went into every moment that you spent on this book. And I think that’s what everybody is seeing. That is what everybody is feeling when they read this book. And that’s why it’s a number one New York Times bestselling book right off the bat. Because of that amount of love. Like, from every aspect. Like team, your team at Macmillan, I mean, they felt the love you putting into it, and it just carried through. And that’s what the readers feel on the other end. And they may not know that that’s why they’re feeling it, but that’s why they’re feeling it, because of the little bits of love and effort that went into every single speck and tiny atom of this book.

Loren Long: Thank you. Yeah, I love that. I love that. I feel that way, too. And like I said, it is gratifying, and I do want… I do think that there’s a certain, you know, I held back a little bit on the, on the words, and there’s, you know, there’s truth in this book that, you know, some people may have… I’ve had a couple people say it’s a sad book, and I personally feel like it’s a joyful book and it’s thought provoking. I hope, and I hope it’s surprising. When you just look at the title or look at the cover you might not imagine where the story goes. So I wanted to surprise myself as a writer and my character, the yellow bus, but also the reader. And I also wanted to, I made the assumption that those little eyes, I keep saying little eyes, but it’s just the children that are studying my art that they’ll see everything that I tried to put in there, and they’ll hopefully want to read it again and see more. You know, there’s a cameo of Charlie in the book staring back at you. You know, just all the little things that you ponder over. So thank you for saying those things.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Lauren, I just… Are you okay if we go a little overtime? Do you have something right after? You’re okay?

Loren Long: Yep, I am okay.

Bianca Schulze: Okay, good. Because I have more questions. But I felt like we could also end, but I don’t want to.

Loren Long: So, Bianca, I’ve been pronouncing your name, hopefully correctly.

Bianca Schulze: You know why I say Bianca? In the US, everybody says Bianca, and I honestly don’t even really notice because it’s like, I feel like most people say Bianca, but I say Bianca, and I’m not somebody who… I’m not worried at all how you say it. So don’t… Don’t even think twice. Just say it how it comes out.

Loren Long: Okay. Yeah, I noticed that. I noticed that. I heard that a little bit, and then I realized I’ve just been saying Bianca all this time, so…

Bianca Schulze: No, you’re good. Honestly, you’re totally fine.

Loren Long: Okay. Wonderful. Yeah, I’ve got more time, so…

Bianca Schulze: Okay, good. You touched on something that I’ve been really lucky and had a couple of conversations with the amazing Kate DiCamillo. And when you said you’ve had people say that this book is a sad book, and then you’ve had other people say that it’s a hopeful book. So this is something I’ve talked about with Kate a few times, and I almost feel like you can’t necessarily experience hope or even feel hope if you don’t understand a little bit of what sadness is or adversity is. So you know, is it a sad book? Is it a hopeful book? Well, to be either one of those, it would have to be both, I think.

Loren Long: Oh, that’s so great. Yeah. And I’ve heard and read enough of Kate DiCamillo that I get that. I loved her essay about Charlotte’s Web. Was it an essay or did I hear it in a podcast? Anyway, I love Kate. I don’t… I’m acting like we’re buddies, but I have met her once. I’m a big fan.

Bianca Schulze: I’ve only spoken to her four times, and I, you know, I… She’s my best friend now. Ha!

Loren Long: Oh, that’s so cool. Oh, absolutely. Of course, of course. Yeah. But so the truths that I sort of loved in the book are… And that’s… That’s… I love if people have conversations like, why do you think it’s… Why do you think she’s happy? Do you, little reader, think it’s sad? Or do you think it’s hopeful or happy? Or, you know, those are probably the best things you can ask for out of a book because it leaves so much room for each individual to interpret and bring their own experience in their own life and their own outlook of life. I somehow thought that that bus was happy. And I asked myself, why do you think that? And that’s inspired me to write this.

And the other thing about this particular character is she’s not in control at certain times of her life that goes through the high points and the low points. And that is such a truth in our life. In a person’s life, we can’t control often what happens to us, but like the yellow bus, we can control our outlook. And in my mind, it was simple. As long as she is doing some type of service for someone or something else, she’s filled with joy. And I thought, what a great… What a great thing to remember in my own life and to look around me and see that the people that have that spirit in them, and there are so many people in my own life and people around us. And so that felt very big and important to me as well.

Bianca Schulze: Do you mind if I just read a really small part from the book?

Loren Long: Oh, I love that. Yeah.

Bianca Schulze: Just like a lot of people, I have the most random item as a bookmark. Right now I’m using a business card here.

Loren Long: Love it.

Bianca Schulze: Okay. All right. So I was reading The Yellow Bus with my son, and I think what was so interesting for me is that we were just having this really lovely experience. And then we got to this point in the book, and I felt like he started holding his breath, and then he started to grab my hand to turn the pages faster. So it was like, it was the perfect, I guess, moment to show that your words and your art were having an effect. Like, he was so invested in the bus and needed to know that the bus was okay.

Loren Long: Yeah.

Bianca Schulze: Gradually, from around the bend, the river began to swell and rise and rise and rise and rise. The yellow bus was alone until…

And that’s where he starts flipping the page. And I’m not going to read on because everybody has to read the book. He just… The artwork is showing the bus, you know, going underwater. And I just think that the reading experience, for me to see a young reader, like, almost holding their breath and so invested in this yellow school bus, making sure that the yellow school bus, I mean, that’s evidence of a job really well done.

Loren Long: Thank you. And thank you to your son. That’s so sweet to hear.

Bianca Schulze: So I have to ask you, do you have a favorite moment in the book?

Loren Long: I think my favorite… And I… You’d think that over this time I would have a go-to answer for that, Bianca, but I don’t necessarily. I mean, I have one now at the top of my head, but there’s so many moments that are… My favorite…

I think a surprising moment is the goats. And I love the end here. Easy for me to say, I love the ending. But probably my favorite moment in the book is in the city under the overpass. It’s the first low point, the valley. It’s the first empty moment. And we have… We see the inside of the bus in full black and white, scratchy tone, monochromatic black, and then you see the sun setting. We kind of broke our rule there, where we set up this rule. When I decided to make it a black and white book and then paint the bus yellow, then anything that’s filling the bus inside with joy would also be in full color. And then I had the sketch where we saw the empty bus, because I wanted it to be empty, literally, you know, visually.

And that’s where I love the collaboration, because I’m pretty sure it was Beth Clark, the art director, that said, when we were discussing, I think she said, what if you painted the sky, beautiful sunsetting? And that’s where the… ‘Cause I was doing everything the other way. But I said this would just be very dark. It would be that yellow interior, very dark. And she said, what if it was the other way around? What if we broke our rule? And I just thought that was so brilliant.

And so that’s where I love collaboration, because other people have ideas that are, you know, that could contribute to my work. And so that’s my favorite moment. But then also, it sets up the first, I think, a little bit of a surprise, and that is who climbs in after that emptiness and fills her with joy. So I think that’s a long way of me describing maybe actually one of my favorite moments in the book.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, I think that’s a really special moment in the book. And you talked just a little bit ago about how, I mean, characters that show up and fill the bus with joy, they’re not actually named. So there’s children, there’s displaced people, there’s fish. So I love the onomatopoeia that you include that sets that up. Like you said, the giggle giggle, the shuffle, shuffle of the displaced people, the glub glubs of underwater animals. And I just think that’s such a beautiful way to approach some bigger topics. And anybody that’s an adult reading this with a kid has such an amazing opportunity to have discussion and just to talk about different things. And I’ve said on this podcast a lot, but I love a book that just opens, opens up moments of opportunity for meaningful discussion, and this book does it.

Loren Long: Thank you. Thank you, Bianca. Yeah. If you’re a listener, when I wrote the story, I didn’t have the pictures. I knew I was going to have them, but so I’m like, okay, well, what does this sound describe?

Rustle bump. Rustle bump. Bur bump. And they huddled together. The yellow bus didn’t carry them from one important place to another. Yet every night, with hushed noises and soft voices, they climbed in.

So for me, it was like, the first reader isn’t going to have my pictures, meaning, like an editor. So are they going to know? Because I didn’t put any art notes. Are they going to know? But those, it’s so those, yeah, they’re descriptive enough. You can describe things with… Just with words, and it gives you, you know, it indicates.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, you have been in the industry for some time now. I’m just curious. Is there a question you wish you’d been asked in an interview, but you’ve never been asked?

Loren Long: What is… Let’s see. Yeah. It has nothing to do with the industry, though. What’s my favorite sport?

Bianca Schulze: All right, well, what is it?

Loren Long: Soccer.

Bianca Schulze: Soccer. Or do you call it football? Soccer. Soccer. Awesome. What do you like about it?

Loren Long: I started playing it in high school because I was too small. It was before soccer was cool years and years ago in the eighties. And I just loved the, I was too small then to play high school basketball and football in my big high school. And I just love the game. It’s the beautiful game. It’s the strategy and the technique and the technical skills. I pretty much love everything about it. I love not only European soccer, but global soccer, but I also, I love the MLS. And I know a lot of American soccer fan, true football, American soccer fans don’t like it, but I’m like, it’s ours, it’s here, and it’s getting better and better. So I’m positive about it.

Bianca Schulze: Anyway, you know, just, you said that it’s got nothing to do with the industry. But then I heard you use the words, you know, it’s got strategy, it’s got technique. And everything you described about your process for creating this book, The Yellow Bus, was strategy. And then it took technique. So, I mean, there was overlap there for sure.

Loren Long: Awesome, right?

Bianca Schulze: Well, Loren, if there was just one important thing that listeners took away from our conversation today, what would you want that to be?

Loren Long: I think I would just end with a quote. And the quote is, “Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.” E.B. White, the author of Charlotte’s Web. So always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder. And I think that’s maybe what I was doing as I was running along and noticed that bus sitting over there. And the other thing I would just hope readers would ask is the same curiosity that I had. Why is she happy? Yeah.

Bianca Schulze: I love that. That is such a beautiful response. And I feel like I don’t want to add anything else onto the end because that’s just such an amazing way to leave everybody. But please, everybody know that The Yellow Bus is as stunning as you think it will be. It is so moving. And I hope that it sounds like almost everybody has a copy because it’s the New York Times best seller. So if you don’t have a copy. Go get a copy. And I’m going to put in the show notes the link to your amazing 3D model that you made. I know there’s a video of it out on YouTube, so I’m going to put that link in there so people can go and check it out, because it’s just, it’s phenomenal. So, Loren, this has been such a pleasure for me. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Loren Long: Yeah. Bianca, thank you so much. This is truly one of the best interview experiences I’ve had. And thank you for asking and just making me feel so comfortable. Thank you.

About the Book

Publisher’s Synopsis: Get ready for back-to-school season and hop on board The Yellow Bus, Loren Long’s #1 New York Times bestselling modern classic about a forgotten school bus that finds happiness and purpose in the most unexpected places—and the journey along the way.

There is a bright yellow bus who spends her days driving. She loves carrying children from one important place to another. Every morning they climb in… Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, giggle, giggle-patter. And they fill her with joy.

As time passes, things change. The Yellow Bus gets a new driver, a new route, and new passengers, young and old. Until one day the driving stops for good, and the Yellow Bus is left on her own. And yet, no matter where she is, the Yellow Bus still finds joy and discovery in the world around her.

A poignant reflection on the many new beginnings life has to offer, The Yellow Bus is the perfect present for the millions heading back to school, from first-time students and returning ones, to beloved teachers and the life-long learners in all of us.

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Show Notes

Loren Long is the author and illustrator of the New York Times bestselling Otis picture book series, now an animated television series on Apple+. He’s also the illustrator of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Of Thee I Sing by Barack Obama, Love by Matt de la Peña, and Change Sings by Presidential Inaugural Poet Amanda Gorman. He lives near Cincinnati, Ohio, with his wife and rescue dog, Charlie.

Resources:

Visit Loren Long online: ⁠https://lorenlong.com/⁠

Thank you for listening to the Growing Readers Podcast episode Always Look for Wonder: Loren Long on Creativity and ‘The Yellow Bus.‘ For the latest episodes from The Growing Readers Podcast, Subscribe or Follow Now.