AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Writer and illustrator Jon Klassen is known for weaving complicated emotions into his children's books, like envy, wonder, guilt and anger. His new trilogy is aimed at even younger readers. They're a series of board books titled "Your Things," and they're all about what it feels like to truly own something. He spoke with NPR's Andrew Limbong about the first book in the series, called "Your Truck."
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: The one thing Jon Klassen knew when he started working on a book about a truck is that he did not want the truck to move.
JON KLASSEN: Well, my drawings are always pretty stiff. I don't bend or flex the drawing very much. I like my guys to look kind of awkwardly still, like they don't really know what they're doing in the book.
LIMBONG: But also, part of the beauty of owning something - it's not about what it can or can't do. It's the possibility of what you can do with it.
KLASSEN: It just fit to think, let's do a book about something that's going to do something or that could do something. Let's describe what it could do if it were moving, and let's - and I think that young kids feel that way all day. They have this - they're being told about what you will do someday or things that they'd like to do, even physically, but can't yet. They can't walk or they can't grab that, or don't get up there. And so it's all this potential.
LIMBONG: Here's Klassen reading.
KLASSEN: (Reading) This is your truck. It is yours to have. It is a red truck. There could be other colors too, though. It could be a blue truck or a green truck or a yellow truck. But let's choose red for now.
LIMBONG: Again, the truck doesn't go anywhere or do anything. It's got eyes instead of headlights, and sometimes they move a bit. But a dog hops into the cab and looks forward, and the book goes on.
KLASSEN: (Reading) Your truck can go fast. I know it's not going fast right now. It is waiting for you. But when you say to go fast, it will go fast. When you are ready to go, your truck will go and go and go. It will take you as far away from here as you want. But not right now. Not yet.
LIMBONG: Klassen knows exactly what he's doing with this line - the excitement for the kid hearing the story and the emotional gut punch for the person reading it.
KLASSEN: I started thinking about trucks, and I was like, my kid does like trucks. My youngest especially likes trucks. Why does he like trucks? Is he - like, trucks take you away. Don't go away. Like, you just sort of, like, spin out as a parent to be like, well, don't go anywhere.
LIMBONG: When you're writing these books, do you have the metaphor in mind already?
KLASSEN: No. No, if anything, you try and avoid metaphorical thinking, or at least I do, because it happens anyway, right? Like...
LIMBONG: So you didn't write a book about your truck, thinking, all right, this is going to be a Springsteen song, this is going to be about go, this is about movement?
KLASSEN: No. No, I tried to do the opposite where I was like, think about a truck, because kids aren't thinking that way. Do you know what I mean? Like, it'll be built in it, but you really want to do it for them. You want to just sit there with it. Don't complicate this. That's harder to do for me because the temptation is to think of yourself as some fancy poet and go off into meaning. But I admire the books more that don't do that and still manage to pull it off. That's the best, is when you kind of step back after you did the thing that you thought was just about a truck, and yet you've got this lump in your throat on Page 7. That's the goal, I think.
LIMBONG: The next two books in this series are going to be called "Your House" and "Your Rock" - two objects famously free of any symbolism or deeper meaning and couldn't possibly be a stand-in for your hopes and dreams for a child's life. They are, after all, just things. Andrew Limbong, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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