Julie Fogliano, Molly Idle, and Juana Martinez-Neal Discuss ‘I Don’t Care’

A podcast interview with Julie Fogliano, Molly Idle, and Juana Martinez-Neal
The Children’s Book Review

In this episode, it’s a trifecta of children’s book creator guests!

Two are Caldecott Honor Book winners Molly Idle and Juana Martinez-Neal, and the third is New York Times bestselling author Julie Fogliano. They’re here to talk about their picture book collaboration I Don’t Care, a beautiful, lyrical story of friendship that has received multiple-starred reviews.

Listen to the Interview

Julie Fogliano is the New York Times bestselling author of, among other titles, And Then It’s Spring, and If You Want to See a Whale, and Just in Case You Want to Fly,  illustrated by Christian Robinson. Recipient of the 2013 Ezra Jack  Keats award and two Boston Globe-Horn Book Honors, her books have been translated into more than ten languages. Julie lives in the Hudson  Valley with her husband and three children. Visit Jule Fogliano at juliefogliano.com.

Molly Idle‘s work as an author-illustrator includes the Caldecott Honor Book Flora and the Flamingo, Flora and the Penguin, Flora and the Peacocks, Flora and the Chicks, Flora and the Ostrich, and Tea Rex, Camp Rex, Sea Rex, and Santa Rex, among other books, including Pearl,  an original fable about a mermaid who learns the power of one small act. She lives with her family in Arizona. Visit Molly Idle at idleillustration.com.

Juana Martinez-Neal is the author and illustrator of the Caldecott Honor-winning book Alma and How She Got Her Name. She also illustrated La Princesa and the Pea by Susan Middleton Elya, for which she won a Pura Belpré Illustrator Award, Babymoon by Hayley Barrett, Swashby and the Sea by Beth Ferry, and Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard, which won a Robert F. Sibert Medal. Juana  Martinez-Neal lives in Connecticut with her family. Visit Juana Martinez-Neal  at juanamartinezneal.com.

Read the Interview

Bianca Schulze: This is so, so exciting because, for the first time, we have not one, not two, but three guests on the podcast. So, I have had Juana on before and Molly on before, but this is the first time we have Julie on the podcast. So, Julie, I want to start by saying a big welcome to you. First of all, welcome to The Growing Readers Podcast.

Julie Fogliano: Thank you. I’m thrilled to be here.

Julie Fogliano: Well, let’s see. I mean, there’s the most obvious, which is just that I love writing in general, that it’s just like the place where I feel most myself, most at home, most comfortable, and most free, if that’s grammatically correct. The freest, I don’t know. You know what I mean. I feel free to use words in a different way than when I’m actually speaking them. As you can see, I’m not the most articulate speaker.

But then, as far as specifically kid writing, I’ve always worked with kids, been around kids, got three kids. So, kids have always just been a very big part of my life. And I guess it’s just like how authentic kids are. There’s no nonsense. They don’t pretend for anyone, which is something that I always kind of strive for, just in my life in general but also in my writing, and they tend to be little inspectors of the world. It’s like they see everything almost under a microscope in a way that we don’t. And so, I feel like that’s one little bit of myself that I try to hold on to is just being able to notice the little details, the things that often seem insignificant or mundane. Those are the things that really interest me.

And I think that’s why I like to write for kids because they find those things interesting too. It’s the little details and the little bits of life that matter most to me. So, I like to take those things and kind of elevate them. Yeah. So, I guess that’s what drives me to write for kids.

Bianca Schulze: All right, well, here’s a question. It’s a personal question, so I hope you’re all comfortable answering it. I know that all of us here today we’re mothers. And I would love to know about the intersectionality of motherhood and work. And what does that look like for each of you? And Juana, I would love to start with you on this question. How do you find that balance? And what does it mean to be a mother and a mother working and making it all work together?

Juana Martinez-Neal: I think, first of all, thank you for asking that because even though it’s such a big part of what women creators deal with every day, we don’t talk about it. And that’s a terrible thing. I think we’re a part of our work. I cannot separate my work from my life. And for that, there’s a big overlap. Whatever is happening in my life is represented in my work somehow. And then we also have parents, right? Elderly parents that we need to take care of. So, there’s all these layers and different aspects of our lives. We are not just the person right there just talking about books. We are so much more than that, right? We are multilayered.

How do we manage? I honestly don’t know. I am still figuring out that I failed miserably. Sometimes I read beautifully, others, and in the middle of doing it, I think we find our way, and we each will find our own way. I would highly encourage those who are new moms or just starting to figure out how to balance those two different aspects of their lives not to get disparaged. You will find your way. You will find your way of managing and balancing everything. And you know what? The thing is, if something drops in the way, we’ll figure it out.

Bianca Schulze: Molly, how about you?

Molly Idle: Yeah. When Juana said, ” I fail spectacularly some days and miraculously pull things off others, ” that felt so true. And most days are like, maybe I pulled off some things and dropped others. And I remember thinking and asking similar questions. When Juana and I first met, we had very young children. My youngest was two months, and Juana’s youngest was one. And I remember asking her, like, how do you manage? And the idea that there’s one right way to combine your parenthood and your career. Now I just see that as folly, right? Because it’s this constant rebalancing.

As you were asking the question, I was thinking; I wish I could say every day was like a Mary Lou Retton gymnastics routine, right? Then you end up you stick the landing arms in the air like, that’s not it. Most days, I’m on the balance beam, just trying to stay on. And it is this constant evolution. Some days work demands more. On other days, your family life demands more. But I find that they both feed the other. I know that I changed on a molecular level when I became a mom. And the way that I connected with my work was so much deeper than before I had kids. So, I always try and remember that on days when I’m like, ugh!

Bianca Schulze: Julie, do you have something you want to add to that?

Julie Fogliano: Yeah, absolutely. That is certainly a topic that is very close to my heart today. For example, I have three kids home from school on a snow day, and it’s like, oh, great, and I have to do a podcast. I’m hiding in my bedroom, where it’s the quietest spot I could find. So, there’s that just the simple fact of other humans always being around.

I don’t have a studio or an office, so I guess it’s a very complicated issue. I feel like, in some ways, it’s really great because it forces me not to be too precious about my writing time because I have to be able to just kind of fit it into the nooks and crannies of everything else. And I do have the luxury, unlike Illustrators, like, I have the luxury of, like, not having to be in a studio. And with all these things that I need to use, all I need is me and my computer. And also, I’m generally not on a deadline or working on a very long-term project like Juana and Molly do because they start a book, and they’re in it for months and months.

For me, it’s—generally, if I write a picture book; it’s very quick. I mean, I write every day, but the actual act of writing a picture book, you know what I’m saying. That can often happen quickly. It’s not like a drawn-out process. So, in that sense, it’s allowed me to be a lot more flexible about where I write and stuff like that. I used to think I needed an office, a desk, and to be in the same chair every day. And now I realize, no, I will take what I can get. I will write on the kitchen counter next to a plate of cold scrambled eggs. I will write in my car. I will write on my bed. I will write wherever. I’ve literally hidden in the bathroom before, so it’s helped me just be flexible with it.

And this is the most complicated part for me is it makes me know my writing time is like my time, and it feels very luxurious when I’m writing. It feels like I’m doing something selfish because it’s really very joyful for me. So, it feels like, yes, I am working, but I really want to be doing this, and I hope no one bugs me. And so, then I feel it is attached to, like, almost guilt, because I’m like, well, I like this too much. This must not be right. You know what I mean? And so, then I feel bad about constantly looking for writing times. I’m sure that a therapist would happily go into that with me. But for now, that’s been the rough spot, is saying, no, this is my job. And although obviously, I’m a mom first, this is my job, and it’s okay for me to take that time. So that’s been the challenge for me to work through that.

Bianca Schulze: I’m nodding along. Everything you all said is like we can all connect and identify with everybody’s scenario.

So, Julie, let’s stay with you. You said that you’re writing every day, and sometimes the manuscript can come together quickly. But sometimes, as a writer, I’m sure there’s days that just the words aren’t flowing. And so, I’m really curious about I Don’t Care because it is ultimately one long sentence with zero punctuation until you get to the final page, and there is one period. So, what did your writing process look like for this? Did it come together really quickly and easily? Was it one of those lucky manuscripts that just worked, or did it take some hashing out and lots of editing?

Julie Fogliano: Well, this is a really good manuscript for that particular question because some of my other ones did pop out very easily, almost completely in one sitting. This one was the opposite. The first little chunk, the first few lines of it, came out of a free write that I had done. Generally, if I’m not working on a specific thing, I’m free writing because I don’t usually sit down with an idea in mind. I usually am just, like, sitting down to write, and I feel like just having that openness and the lack of expectation for anything is usually when I’m most comfortable and generally most successful with it when I’m not trying to write a particular thing. So, I usually am free writing.

And so, in this case, those first few lines popped out. I didn’t really think much of it, went back, reread it, as I always do with free writes, and I look for the little nuggets of goodness in there, like, is there anything that’s speaking to me? Is there anything I want to develop more? And then those few lines were definitely like, oh, okay. And so, I took those lines out and put them in another document, which is how I always do it. And then I just kind of went from there. And pretty much that whole first section of the I Don’t Care parts, that all kind of came out very easily. It was all very clear. Like, I knew exactly what I needed to say there.

But at the time, I didn’t know where this book was going. I didn’t know what it was. And I sent it off to Steve, my agent, who then sent it to Neil. And Neil loved it, and he wanted it, and he was like, okay, great. And he immediately was, like, thought of Molly as an illustrator, and we were like, okay, let’s do this. But I still had half of a manuscript, and it was literally years before I realized how I wanted to end the book because I knew that I couldn’t just write a book of only what the kid didn’t care about. I needed to also know—I needed to write about what they did care about. And when you’re thinking about what a kid cares about in a friend, it’s, like, not as cut and dry. It seemed very complicated, and I didn’t want it to be overly sweet and cutie pie and too saccharine.

So, I really had to dig in and think about what things really meant something to me as a kid. So that took a long time. So that was, like, a couple of years. I can’t remember Juana or Molly. Do you remember what Neil said? How long was it—like, how many years? When he finally got the other part.

Molly Idle: He’s such a good email saver. I think he knew down to the month, like, 17 months later or something.

Julie Fogliano: And they both got the manuscript when it was not even finished, right? You got it when it was just the I don’t care part. So, you must have thought I was a very sourpuss of a person that I don’t care what you think. So, yeah. So, this was the opposite. It took a while. It took a long time.

Bianca Schulze: And now you’ve taken this long time. You’ve got this story. It’s wonderful. It’s beautiful. And somehow, you have so much luck because you have not one but two children’s book illustrator mega-stars. I mean, you have Molly and Juana, and I feel like it’s a great story. And then, when you add the artwork from Molly and Juana, the elevation just brings it to life with perfection. And there’s kind of like a special story about how it came about to have two incredible illustrators. I don’t know if you want to sort of segue into that, Julie, or if we want to pass it over to Juana and Molly. I want everybody to hear the special story of how it came about.

Julie Fogliano: Well, I guess it would be best to pass it on to them. Once I knew that Neil wanted the book, he mentioned Molly, and I was like, Great. Of course, I didn’t think that there was a potential for not only a second illustrator but for the other illustrator to be Juana. That was not something that was possible. So, when that all came about, that was already out of my hands, and that was Molly’s doing. So, I’ll pass it on to them, but all I can say about it is, like, that was the icing on the cake for me. I mean, I couldn’t be happier with having both of these amazing illustrators.

Molly Idle: Like Julie was saying when I first saw the manuscript, it was the first half of the things about which we don’t care about and what I didn’t realize was that Julie had written it sort of intending it as a monologue like one character talking. But when I read the first line that says, I really don’t care what you think of my hair; I thought, Well, I and you. So, somebody is talking to somebody else, like one person talking to another. And as I read on, I realized, okay, these are people who are seemingly very different but anticipating that there will be things that they care about that they have in common that are much deeper than these surface things about which they don’t care. I thought, oh, so it’s two people who seem very different but are really very much the same.

And that made me think, oh, that reminds me of Juana and our friendship. My gut reaction was I could illustrate this as if it were Juana and I. As kids, we often say that we wish that we had met when we were younger, and this would enable that to happen. And then I realized, hang on, who am I to represent Juana’s perspective about our friendship? Like, oh, surely you feel this way about me, right? So, I thought Juana needed to illustrate Juana in this book.

And so, I simultaneously sent an email and a text. I sent an email to Steve, who is Julie’s agent, and mine too, and said, what do you think? Do you think that Neil and Julie would be open to having a co-illustrator on this book? I think Juana would be perfect for this. And then I sent Juana a text saying, like, hey, do you want to illustrate this book together? I hope you think it’s a good idea because I’ve already told some people I think so too. And then I thought, well, that is off my plate because publishing can move kind of slowly. So, I thought, well, I’ll have a few weeks before everybody figures out what they want to do, and they’ll give Juana and I a chance to talk it over. But about 15 minutes later, I had an email response from Steve saying, Neil and Julie think this is great. And I still hadn’t heard back from Juana. So, this is where I pass off the story to Juana.

Juana Martinez-Neal: Well, there’s not much to add. Not really, there isn’t. But I think it’s worth mentioning that Molly and I have been critique partners for about 15 years. And when one of us receives a manuscript saying, would you like to illustrate this book? Of course, we go by our gut reaction, our personal reaction to the manuscript, but then we tend to sometimes send it to the other one and say, how do you feel about this? And then there are manuscripts that go, oh, I only see you doing this. This is absolutely perfect. That’s a way to have a reassurance that, yeah, this is the right thing to do. This is the right manuscript. So, when Molly gets this manuscript. I read it, and I loved it. And the thing is, I loved Julie’s writing for a very long time, so it was just another wonderful manuscript, right?

And then Neil was also the editor, so I think it was an easy, very easy choice to make. I was very nervous, though, about working with Molly because even though we have been friends and we love each other, the thing is, we have never worked together this way, and this will mean every single step of the way, we will be working together. And that made me really nervous. But I am a very anxious person, so it just comes with the territory of just something new. But I am definitely glad that Molly had the idea and that this manuscript just existed and Julie wrote it. It was just perfect. It was such a delight to work on this book, and it was wonderful. But that’s the story.

Bianca Schulze: Well, I want to stay on the illustrations a little bit longer. Juana, you said you were nervous. How did it go? Was it fun?

Juana Martinez-Neal: Of course. Yeah. I think it’s one of the most it is the most fun I have ever had working on a manuscript. And the thing is when you’re an illustrator, you work on your own. Of course, there’s the editor, and then you bounce ideas with the editor, and you bounce ideas sometimes with the authors and then with the director. That back and forth. But when you’re actually working on the book, working on sketches or the actual artwork, you’re on your own, and it’s very solitary.

I don’t know. It’s like, you and the work. That’s it. And then this one was not like that. At every single step, we had to figure out how are we going to do this. It wasn’t a chance to talk about money. I think it was a chance to figure things out in our mind, in our brain first, and then share it with the other one, and then find a way to make it work that was probably completely different than what each one of us thought would be on our own. Molly.

Molly Idle: Yeah, I totally agree. It was so much fun. Not that I don’t enjoy working on my own, but I have so much there’s always this little bit of self-doubt. You make a decision, and you hope that’s the right decision. Even though we are critique partners, and we do, we talk about a lot of stuff. It’s not like we’re showing each other every little thing. So, there’s always when we work alone, so there’s always this feeling of, like, gosh, not until you turn it in. And even after you turn something in, you think, I wonder if I made the right decisions.

And it was so much fun to have a person who was a constant partner in this process. And every time we would wonder, one of us would wonder, is that working? There was another person that had an equal stake in making sure that it did work, and we could ask. And if it was like no, then, oh, great, then let’s figure this out together. And if it was yes, then it’s two people feeling like it’s working out. So, I felt even more assured that we were making the right decisions. Also, we were making all of this art during COVID, so it was, like, such a wonderful way for us to be connected when we couldn’t actually be together. The fact that we were talking almost every day and sharing progress and working through things just helped us feel like we weren’t so alone in a time when so many people were feeling so alone.

Juana Martinez-Neal: But I think there’s one more thing. When we agreed to work on the book—to illustrate the book, we both lived in Phoenix. We were, like, 25 minutes away. So, the plan was to get together physically in Molly’s studio or my studio and either sketch or paint right. Together. That was the whole idea. And that’s what kind of, like, I think in some way reassured Neil, right? That, okay, well, they’ll figure it out. They’ll be together. But then the pandemic happened. And when that pandemic happened, my family moved to Connecticut, so now we are on the other side of the country. So that was something that happened right in the middle of making the book before we even started doing sketches. It was a change that happened. Right. And I think that really helped just make the book even better and make us think more thoroughly before making any decisions. Right, Molly?

Molly Idle: Oh, totally. Because now there were logistics involved in making the art that hadn’t existed prior to the move. But it was so much fun. It did make us think. We had to think of mediums that we could use, that we could keep consistent despite the art not being all in one place at one time, and how we could most efficiently give each other work to do while still allowing ourselves to work. Like figuring out how we could both work at the same time and what technique we would use and what was so wonderful.

I think one of the things I enjoyed most was sort of echoing one of Julie’s beautiful lines from the book. I really do care that you always play fair. We decided at the outset not to use any mediums that we were best known for or most comfortable with. Juana is an amazing painter. So acrylic paint was out, and I love my colored pencils. So colored pencils were a no-go, and we decided we had to be on equal artistic footing. And so, graphite, we chose graphite, and that’s also something that travels well. So, it was like things just came together. In some projects you work on, there are always challenges, but in this instance, it was one of those magical projects where every challenge that you meet every hurdle, you just easily, like, jump over. And it was so much fun.

Bianca Schulze: The color palette is really simple. It’s yellow teal and then the gray from the graphite pencil. And I believe that the teal and the yellow come from being each of your favorite colors. So, does somebody want to speak about the color palette? And also, in that response, my question is not going to be particularly articulate here, but I believe that Juana tends to use a little more texture. So how did you sort of decide on the colors? Combine it together, keep it so subtle and simple, and elegant and figure out how to blend your styles.

Juana Martinez-Neal: Yeah, elegant sounds wonderful. It’s a gorgeous thing to hear about your book, but I don’t think it was at all.

Molly Idle: I’m shaking my head now, back here.

Juana Martinez-Neal: But I love hearing that. Once again, I think it was a matter of thinking. There was so much thinking, probably overthinking, but that’s something Molly and I are very good at. So, we were doing that, but we were trying to figure out the book if we were going to only use graphite. So, neither one of us will feel like we don’t know what to do with this media. We both were very good at we love sketching, and we’re good at that, so it’s a strong point for both of us. So that was the way to even the playing field. But if we’re using graphite, then the color of the paper is very important. It was a very important decision. We needed a color that was not white, that was some sort of warm color, and that’s exactly what we chose. But on top of that, that will be as important as the teal and the yellow that we had because the paper was this warm, cream color.

Then we added yellow for my favorite color and then teal for Molly’s favorite color. Then the overlapping of those two colors when we are doing printmaking will give us a green, which was his third color. That’s kind of how it went for, like, paper and print.

Molly Idle: Making printmaking was a way of adding color to the work and also a way that we could both consistently use color because I hadn’t really thought of it until we started working together. But when you see one of Juana’s drawings, it’s apparent right away, oh, that’s Juana’s. And if you see one of mine, it looks like something I’ve done. And the ways in which we use color are different, and we needed a way to create a look that was as close to seamless as we could. For us, the book be made by two people because that was part of what made the story so special; they are these two different people who are really so very much alike. It was important for us to be able to combine our two very different styles into one that looked very much alike.

And so, we needed to find a medium that would allow us to add some color but add it in a consistent way. And it was one a genius idea to involve lino-cuts because we just decided we would use ink, like straight from the tubes. I find a couple of really beautiful colors and let the process blend them. And it was so much fun for me. I don’t know if it was fun for you on it, but it was fun for me. I hadn’t done any printmaking since college, so it was so much fun. And it’s such an immediately gratifying technique to work in because you roll it, and then there’s this huge color field that you have, and it also let us work back and forth in a way that we could anticipate the results before the other person had added their work to the drawing. So, if I did half and then passed it off to Juana, we could imagine what that overlay was going to look like because we had sampled it and we knew what the colors would do.

Juana Martinez-Neal: I have to say, Molly had a lot of thinking and planning in how we did all of these swapping and who, that’s what. And there were only four swaps, and that’s pretty impressive.

Molly Idle: We really bring out each other’s strengths. Juana has such wonderful instincts when it comes to a direction that we should head. If I had a strength, it would be like the planning of the implementation of that. But what’s wonderful is one of them will say, like, she can get so caught up that in the emotion of it, that, like, how it’s going to get done can become problematic. And for me, I can get so caught up on how we do something that doing it becomes problematic for me. And so, it was so wonderful. We each were able to bring out the best in each other and help each other not only follow that gut instinct but then be able to carry it through in a way that made the work easier for both of us.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Julie, you might be able to provide some better words here, but I feel like the story and the essence it does start off feeling like the ‘I’ that you mentioned. It’s I, but then it becomes the character you, and so it is ultimately about being an individual but also coming together and seeing the goodness in each other while respecting each other as individuals. And so, ultimately, that sounds like what the odd process became for both of you and why the idea was genius, Molly, to include Juana. But Julie, do you feel like I’ve articulated that fine? It’s your story.

Julie Fogliano: Totally. You actually articulated better than I could have because I’ve tried to think of how to say that, and you said it’s much better. Yeah, it was almost like it was a real-life example of what the book was trying to say; it was a perfect extra layer there. That’s why I think of it as being like the cherry on top. Because it took what I was saying and just made it deeper and way more real, yeah, I couldn’t; now it’s like I can’t even imagine it being one illustrator. I can’t imagine it being one person. When I wrote it, I didn’t have any idea who was talking. Neil always will ask me who’s talking or who they’re talking to. I’m like; I don’t know. It’s like I just like I hear the words, I write the words, but I never have a plan for the words, or I rarely have a plan.

And in this case, I really didn’t I didn’t know anything. And I was so glad that they knew that it was them because it just really was just the most perfect turn of events, the way it all went down. One of those funny little things that you could never predict. I would never think to hope for such a thing, honestly. I mean, who could dream of that?

Bianca Schulze: If you were Julie to pick a favorite moment or a highlight from the picture book, is there a specific moment or illustration that feels like a favorite or a highlight to you?

Julie Fogliano: I just love that spread with the flower crown. It’s really just like one of my favorites. It’s just like the emotion on their faces, and just I don’t know, just the whole thing. I just have loved that since I first saw it. That has just been my favorite spread. I love the details of it. I just love it.

Bianca Schulze: Molly, what about you? A highlight of the book either in the creation or a specific moment in the story?

Molly Idle: Oh, my gosh, the whole thing has been such a joy. It feels really hard to pick. I would say I couldn’t pick, but that it really is the whole thing. From the moment that the manuscript first landed on my desk to be lucky enough to have Juana say that she would work on it with me, to the way that it deepened our friendship and our professional respect and appreciation for one another. And then to get to meet Julie and then when we met her, realizing, oh my gosh, we’re all three so much alike and having so much fun. Not just making the book but then being able to do things like this and get together and talk about the joy of collaboration and making things together. Truly, the whole thing has been a joy.

Bianca Schulze: Juan, I imagine you feel similar to Molly that just the collaboration process has been a huge highlight for you. Is that fair to say?

Juana Martinez-Neal: Yeah, it is. Brainstorming is just amazing. Even after when we were promoting, the book was a big puzzle to solve. And that’s fun. That really is fun. I loved it. His book is really special to me. Very special.

Bianca Schulze: So, what impact do you all hope that this story will have on readers? Molly, I’m going to start with you.

Molly Idle: First of all, I just hope they enjoy it. That’s, like, the best part of any book, right, is that I would hope they enjoy it. But I think more than that when I read it and want to read it, and especially when we got the full manuscript that Julie had sent, we were both just crying, and we texted each other like, It’s us. Oh, my gosh. But of course, Julie didn’t write it specifically for us. That wasn’t the case. But I suppose if I hope for anything, it’s that because we saw each other in it, Julie has written something so beautiful and universal that other people will see themselves and their best friends in it, too.

Bianca Schulze: Juana, what about you? What impact do you hope for?

Juana Martinez-Neal: I think for the readers to value the importance of their own self-identity, how it’s so important that they accept who they are, and they will be loved as they are. And then the fact that how huge relationships, like interpersonal relationships, are for everyone, really. Not only absolutely everyone, and how they make us so much stronger and so much better.

Bianca Schulze: All right, Julie, you wrote the book. You wrote the words. So, what impact do you hope it has on readers?

Julie Fogliano: I mean, I never go into anything with an intention. Like, I never want to be so on the nose with meaning because then I feel like it’s not as much about enjoying the book as it is about getting the moral of the story. I try to just go into any manuscript as just, like, just having fun with it, enjoying writing it, and just putting these feelings, because that’s usually where it comes from. It generally comes from feelings. It doesn’t usually come from, like, I want to express this particular I don’t have an agenda. Generally.

When I wrote it, I didn’t sit down to think, like, I hope that people come away with the understanding that you should just be yourself and people will like you even if they’re not like you, and just be your true self regardless. That wasn’t my intention. My intention was if the kids read the book and enjoy the illustrations, and I hope that as a result of that, they also, somewhere in the back of their minds, do absorb the idea that there are things that just don’t matter. They just don’t matter. As far as personal relationships, it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t make you a good person or a bad person or an interesting person, or a boring person because of what you like and don’t like. A lot of things just don’t matter. And I feel like so many little kids get that better than we do. But then, somewhere in childhood, all of a sudden, that shifts. And if kids or could hold on to that and bring that understanding of, like, this just doesn’t matter, like, whether or not this person like me or has a lunch that I find appealing, that doesn’t matter. If they could just hold on to that and just walk through the world with that knowledge, that it’s okay if not everyone likes everything about you and vice versa, I guess that’s what I hope they take away from it.

Bianca Schulze: It is true sometimes you’re writing from a personal place, right, and it doesn’t have to have a specific impact or meaning, but once that story lands into somebody else’s hands, it usually does have a meaning, and it can be completely different to what you were feeling and processing as you wrote the book. And I just think that’s what’s so special about story, and particularly about this story because I feel like Molly said it as well so beautifully, that no matter what your background is, you could sit down and read this and see yourself with your BFF in it. And I think that’s going to be so lovely and special for so many young readers.

So, I actually also believe that you have another book coming out, Julie. Kind of perfect for Valentine’s in the sense that there is a love theme, but it isn’t a Valentine’s story.

Julie Fogliano: Yeah, it’s funny, I never thought of Valentine’s Day and this book together, but recently I was like, oh, wait, yeah, it has the word hearts in the title. That’s kind of a no-brainer, but it didn’t occur to me at the time because it’s not about romantic love in that sense.

And I just had this moment of, like, wow. And especially in this time when we all were so vulnerable, I just felt this awareness, and if we could all be so aware of each other’s heartbeat, then we would be so much better to each other. So, yeah, it kind of came from a very feeling, z kind of place. We were all emotional, especially during that time. And that’s coming out at the end of January. And, yeah, I’m excited. It’s a very different kind of book than I Don’t Care, which I Don’t Care felt so grounded in. It was like a very tangible thing. I feel like, at least for me, it seemed a lot more tangible, whereas the other book feels very kind of like, just, I don’t know, just like a big how do I even explain it? I don’t know. It just seems much more emotional, I guess.

Bianca Schulze: Juana, and Molly, do either of you have something coming up soon?

Juana Martinez-Neal: I have two Alma board books coming out in September of this year, so that’s coming.

Bianca Schulze: That’s fun. We all love Alma

Molly Idle: And I have a new Flora board book coming out this fall too, so we’re board book buddies too. Yay.

Bianca Schulze: There can never be enough Flora and Alma; that’s wonderful.

I hope you don’t mind, but I want to gather together everything we’ve talked about today and use some words that you all shared with me individually ahead of our chat today. Julie, you’ve said that it’s important that being your true self is one of the most important things in both friendship and writing. Is there anything that you wanted to add to that?

Julie Fogliano: Yes, I think obviously in friendship; I mean, no good friendship would be built on anyone trying to be anything other than their true selves.

And, yeah, it’s definitely the same with writing because when you’re a writer, and you’re trying to be a writer, or you don’t feel like a writer yet, finding your voice is the challenge. I mean, that’s what it is. It’s all about figuring out what you really want to say and how you want to say it. And there were so many years of me not writing as my true self. I was writing as anyone that happened to be reading at the time, or what I thought I should be, or what I thought a good children’s book would be or trying to write characters that I thought would be something that would sell a book, but that had nothing to do with my heart. It was just more like, oh, this is a spunky character idea. That’s not it wasn’t working for me. And it wasn’t until I was like, you know what? I’m not even going to try to write anything for anyone. I’m just going to write whatever I’ve got. And that’s when it started coming. That’s when I was like, oh, this is easy, and this is fun, and it feels good, and I sort of like it. And it was like, building that confidence in that.

And aside from reading extensively, I feel like those two components are the two most important things. If you are going to be a writer, reading as much as you can, whatever you can, and just figuring out what it is you really are trying to say as the big picture, not even on a book-by-book basis, but what you want to put into the world as a career. And how you’re going to say that? I never thought I would be writing things that were considered poetic. That was never in the realm of possibility for me. I didn’t think like, poetry, but apparently, that’s how I write. So that was a shocker.

Bianca Schulze: Juana, you articulated that humans and our relationships matter so much and affect every aspect of our lives. Is there anything you want to add to that?

Juana Martinez-Neal: I think who we are with, who we share our time with, gift our time to matters, and who we allow in our space because I am a very private person and I have a really hard time just talking to anyone. I really do. So, at the same time, I’m very precious about my time because I have very little. And if we allow someone in, I think we’re gifting them. They are gifting us too. It’s a back-and-forth. Who we allow in our lives changes who we are. I think that’s where I’m going to leave it. Yeah.

Bianca Schulze: Molly, you emphasized how much can be accomplished and how much fun can be had when you work together as friends.

Molly Idle: I grew up; my dad was always saying you can get so much accomplished if you don’t care who gets the credit. Of course, I’m giving him credit for that quote, but he wouldn’t care. But I think that’s true. We can say, oh, it was my idea to have Juana, but without Juana there, it doesn’t matter whose idea it was. What matters is all the work that we all put in and the result. And that can be true of a picture book. It can be true of building a classroom or a community, or a kind of world. Like, we all just need to pitch in. And if you are doing that with a friend, it lightens the load for you both.

And as this book so clearly points out, your friends don’t have to be exactly like you. In fact, some of the people who may seem the most different can be the people that you’ll connect with the most. And just think, if we all connected with more and more people, that’s like the Sesame Street song, right? If just one person believes in you hard enough and long enough, why not two? And then more and more, and it can make the world a better place.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. So, all three of you together, I hear, bring more of yourself. When you show up to the world, bring yourself. You don’t need to bring anybody else other than yourself. When you bring yourself, make sure that you’re bringing yourself with people that are seeing you and honoring you for who you are. And then when you find that, do more together. And when you do more together, life becomes even more cherishable and beautiful. And I feel like, collectively, that’s what I took away from all three of you.

On that note, I just want to say that we need to disregard the title of the book. I Don’t Care in the sense that I do care. I do care that readers go out and grab this book and read it because it’s gentle and energetic, it’s caring, it’s loving, and it’s fun. And I’m just really grateful that all three of you got to work on it together and that we all get to read it. So, thanks for being here on the show, and I hope that someday we all get to do it again.

Molly Idle: Thanks so much for having us.

Juana Martinez-Neal: Thank you.

Julie Fogliano: Thank you.

About the Book

Publisher’s Book Summary: Two Caldecott honorees—and real-life best friends— team up to illustrate a story of friendship from bestselling author Julie Fogliano.

Like the two stars of this story, illustrators Molly Idle and Juana Martinez-Neal know that differences only make a good friendship stronger. In this bouncy, rhyming story, two best friends think about all the little things that don’t matter– and the big things that really, really do.

Mostly I care that you’re you and I’m me,
and I care that we’re us,
and I care that we’re we.

With each artist designing and drawing one character and collaborating on the scenery and details, Molly Idle and Juana Martinez-Neal transformed this sweet story into a celebration of friendship– including their own– and a unique artistic vision.

Working remotely, they swapped drawings across the country, using a limited palette of teal and yellow over graphite. As artwork passed back and forth between their mailboxes, childhood versions of each artist came to life and came together on the page into one unified creation.

Award-winning author Julie Fogliano’s rhythmic rhymes bring it all together, expressing the unconditional love any best friend can relate to.

Buy the Book

Show Notes

Discussion Topics:

• Things that motivate Julie Fogliano to write for children
• The intersectionality of working and motherhood
• Inspirations and the writing and editing process for I Don’t Care
• When two illustrators collaborate on one picture book
• The illustration process behind I Don’t Care
• Author and Illustrator highlights from I Don’t Care
• Thoughts on friendship, individuality, and togetherness

Thank you for listening to the Growing Readers Podcast episode: Julie Fogliano, Molly Idle, and Juana Martinez-Neal Discuss ‘I Don’t Care’. For the latest episodes from The Growing Readers Podcast, Follow Now on Spotify. For similar books and articles, you can check out all of our content tagged with Friendship, Juana Martinez-Neal, Julie Fogliano, Molly Idle, Picture Book, and Unconditional Love.