San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
A DYNAMIC DUO
Writer Minh Lê and illustrator Dan Santat tackle ‘The Blur’ of parenthood in new children’s book
Listening to Minh Lê and Dan Santat talk about each other, one would think they were lifelong friends. In fact, at the risk of sounding hyperbolic, the writer-illustrator team behind two bestselling children’s books often make it sound as if they’re artistic soul mates. “Working with Minh just helped me grow tremendously as a person,” Santat says. “He understands how to write for an illustrator by giving the illustrator the freedom to visualize how it should be done. I’ve been working with so many different authors, and he is, hands down, probably the easiest and best collaborator I’ve ever worked with.” “There’s a rhythm to it that works really well, and I think we both have similar sensibilities and know each other’s strengths,” Lê agrees. “He knows how to interpret the words that I give him and just really breathe life into it. It just works gorgeously, though, the way the partnership has evolved over time.” The partnership has paid dividends for both creators since their first collaboration in 2018 on the bestselling “Drawn Together,” a children’s book that went on to win multiple awards and make over a dozen year-end best-of lists. They followed this up with “Lift” in 2020 and now “The Blur,” which is being released this week. And while each of the books is a distinct story, they could be seen as a trilogy of sorts that explores the complexities, absurdities and delicacies of family. “It’s a very different kind of book than ‘Drawn Together,’ but a lot of the emotional underpinnings carry through, and I think of them almost like a loose trilogy,” Lê says from his home in La Mesa. “It is kind of this cohesive family story in my head, and even though it’s not like a straight trilogy, they fit together nicely.” Each of the three books explores a different dynamic within a family structure. “Drawn Together” was a tender tale of a grandfather and a grandson attempting to connect but who are separated by time and a language barrier. “Lift” follows a young girl dealing with issues of jealousy with the birth of a younger brother, which leads her to become more independent but still bonds her to her new sibling. And while each book deals in emotions and issues
that are universal, “The Blur’’ might be Lê and Santat’s most personal statement yet.
The story of a speedy young girl and the parents who can barely keep up with her, the titular “blur” can have multiple meanings and interpretations depending on who’s reading the story. It’s a brilliantly executed metaphor on the passage of time that parents will certainly relate to, while young children will certainly see a kindred spirit in the young girl with superhero speed. Santat, the father of two children of his own, says he immediately related to the story Lê proposed.
“I hear him talk about those experiences and I remember what it was like at that age,” says Santat, whose own sons are now teenagers. “Or I just think to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, that felt so long ago,’ but it really was only five years ago. As a parent, you can just really connect with the idea of how fast time goes.”
“For me, when I’m writing books for children, I’m always cognizant of the different ages of audiences who might be reading the book,” Lê adds. “I like to layer on different meanings, so I like to think of a picture book as being appropriate for any age. When people ask me what the age range is for a picture book, I always tell them, half-jokingly, that the age range is birth to death. Anyone can enjoy a great picture book.”
Both Santat and Lê have San Diego connections. The former grew up in New York but says it was his time attending the University of California San Diego, where he studied microbiology, where he first caught the illustrating bug.
“Prior to that point, I’d never taken art classes before in my life, because my parents just never let me take art classes,” Santat recalls. “So I was driving all over San Diego, going to figure drawing workshops all the way out in El Cajon. Like, I’d wake up super early in La Jolla and drive all the way to El Cajon to do figure workshops and just trying to put together a portfolio. I finally threw something together and got into the Artcenter College of Design in Pasadena. I called my parents, and I thought they were going to kill me.”
A first generation Vietnamese American, Lê also grew up on the East Coast, attending Dartmouth College and Harvard University before settling in Maryland and the Washington, D.C., area. He moved to La Mesa in 2019 with his wife and children.
“My wife’s family lives in Fletcher Hills, and every time we visited it, I’d be like, ‘Why don’t we live out here?’ ” Lê recalls.
Long before they were artistic collaborators, Lê and Santat were mutual fanboys of each other’s work. Sanat credits an article Lê wrote for The Huffington Post website as one of the reasons his book “The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend” won the Caldecott Award in 2015. Lê says the same book was instrumental in him finding his own voice when it came to children’ books. An agent eventually suggested they work together.
And while both have other projects they’re currently working on without the other (Santat recently released another children’s book, “Endlessly Ever After,” while Lê is putting the final touches on an authorized picture book biography of Nobel Peace Prize-nominated monk Thích Nhat Hanh), they both say that their creative friendship is far from over.
“Dan often says that I write like an illustrator, and that, to me, that’s a huge compliment,” says Lê. “He has such an amazing sense of energy and playfulness and dynamism, and one of the things that I love about his work the most is that there’s like this underlying heart to everything.”
“I’ve been illustrating other people’s manuscripts for years and I’ve been working with a lot of different people, but there’s this thing where sometimes you’ll read a manuscript and you can just immediately tell that it’s going to be something special,” adds Santat. “I would say there’s probably a handful, maybe four or five titles that I’ve worked on, where I thought that while they weren’t authored by me, I looked at it and I said, ‘This has the potential to be something very special.’ ”