Gina Kaminski Rescues the Giant by Craig Barr-Green
Gina Kaminski Rescues the Giant is the second book based around the character of Gina. Author, Craig Barr-Green shares some insights into how he wrote these books and it is a fascinating read.
Writers have different starting points.
If they are talented enough to be able to draw (I am not), then they might start with a simple sketch — a flash of inspiration. Some writers start with a tasty ‘what if?’. What if a frightened mouse invented stories of a monster to fool predators and navigate a dangerous forest? I start with character every time. Who is my character? What do they want and what do they need? What are the obstacles around them and what are the goals? When the character starts to talk freely on the page in exploratory drafts: I have a foundation.
Gina Kaminski’s journey was unusual because I started from a different place. I wanted to write a page-turning adventure story, and the hero would also be autistic. This had to be a picture book. It’s the youngest form for narrative literary representation: the earliest conversation starter. Heroes can be autistic. Autistic children are not defined by their diagnoses. I wanted this hero to be human, and not anthropomorphised. A real child. Real joys. Real obstacles. For some readers the hero would be a mirror, others, a window, but for everyone this would be a protagonist who hurdled obstacles, confronted peril and saved the day. Hooray! All I had to do was write it!
I started many times… but it wasn’t right. I was trying too hard to hit the outcomes. I had great feedback from wonderful book people (thank you Joe!) and then… POP… Gina appeared on the page. Just like that. She talked and talked and talked. I could put her in any situation and know how she would react. It was astonishing. Like witchcraft.
So all I needed was a plot to pull children from one end of a book to another.
Across two books, Gina Kaminski is a girl who is annoyed by the big mistakes in Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk respectively. She portals into the stories and fixes them, overcoming obstacles with fantastical ingenuity. She saves Wolf and rescues Giant. Bravo, Gina!
Only, those aren’t really the stories.
Across two books, Gina Kaminski is a girl who experiences complex difficulties in her everyday world — an over-sensory classroom and a frighteningly unknown art gallery on a school trip. Through resilience, and with the assistance of good teaching practice, she overcomes these obstacles and makes sense of the day. She endures and she enjoys the world on her own terms. Bravo, Gina!
That’s the real story.
To write a Gina book is to write two stories: the domestic and the fantastic; the exteriority and the interiority. The latter is a method of showing us that narratives can be challenged, and that endings can be changed. It’s essential that children acquire the skills and have the courage to investigate and evaluate a story, and challenge what they perceive as wrong, or unfair. Adults, and the stories they present, can be duplicitous and contrary. At their worst: monstrous. Gina is forming her own system of values and fairytales are safe place to experiment with these new thoughts and feeling.
I love writing in the first person present tense, which is unusual for picture books.
I write very long (ask my super patient editor, Perry) and then cut cut cut. For example, in early drafts, Gina and Wolf shared a long conversation about life. It made me laugh. Then, line by line, draft by draft, the scene was distilled to the purest essence. It’s a thrilling process, even if so much is discarded. The book must win.
The team behind the books is immense. A phrase popped up frequently: ‘Be More Gina’. I love this! Yes: things can go against us… but obstacles can be overcome. There will certainly be knowledge gained, lessons learned, and resilience strengthened. There may even be cake!
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Federation.
