>> Michael Cavna: Okay, alright! Are you guys ready to do this? [Cheering] Oh, come on! You can make more
noise than that. And I know you can make more
noise slapping those bean bags because they make
noise, I've heard it. I have kids, I've
heard how loud. If you're a fan of Ann
Martin, Gale Galligan, Baby-Sitters Club, please
slap those bean bags! [ Applause ] That's the way to do it! Now do we have anyone here
with ties to New York? New York state? Anyone? [Light cheering]
Welcome, welcome to our fair land. At times it may seem
a little different. There are political
buildings everywhere. You'll adjust. My name is Michael Cavna,
Washington Post, cartoonist, cover comics, cover
graphic novels. I love to champion
graphic novels. Graphic novels are books! They are literature, you
guys should know that. Tell your teachers,
tell your librarians. So with, up here, all the
way from New York state, we have two rock stars. Moderating them will
be my colleague from the Washington Post
and, and food writer and video specialist, extraordinary, Mary
Beth Albright. [Applause] Next to
her, you know her as a bestselling author of what? I don't know? Hundreds of millions of books? Baby-Sitters Club, The Main
Street Series, A Dog's Life. [ Cheering and Applause ] Belle Teal, Here Today,
and the Newberry winner, A Corner of the Universe. You know, we're lucky enough
just this month to find out The Baby-Sitters Club is
getting a reboot on Netflix. [Applause and cheering] We're
also getting the audiobook with Elle Fanning. It's just, you know,
it's all update. There's going to be Baby-Sitters
Club for the Instagram era. And next to her is her partner
in Baby-Sitters Club now, illustrating it, Gale Galligan. [Cheering] Alright! Baby-Sitters Club #5, Dawn
and the Impossible Three. Baby-Sitters Club
#6, Kristy's Big Day. Coming up: Baby-Sitters
Club #7, Boy-Crazy Stacey. This fall! Both of them, I think they
both knit, and they both make, I think one of them
makes children's clothes. One knits, and they have lots
of animals, but most important, they are here to be,
to entertain you, and tell you what's coming up, and there'll be questions
at the end. Please welcome these
rock stars, Gale and Ann! [ Applause ] >> Mary Beth Albright: This is
like the Super Bowl for books! This is why I'm so excited! Like, Michael just
did a great job of getting everybody excited, but you guys being here
is thrilling, so thank you so much for being here! >> Ann M. Martin: Thank you. >> Mary Beth Albright: And I
will say it's 180 million books. That's, I mean, give
or take, you know, a million or five million. But as Michael was saying,
it's a lot of books and a lot of great fans out here. So everybody's thrilled
that you're here. >> Ann M. Martin: Thank you. >> Mary Beth Albright:
What do you think it is about these books and about
these girls that after decades, the themes are still
resonating, right? Like things are so different for
everybody out here than it was when I was a kid, but everybody
still loves these books. They still are wonderful. So what do you think it is? >> Ann M. Martin: Well, I
think that the main themes of the books are
pretty timeless. It's friendship, school,
families, and I don't think, while those things themselves
may have changed over the years, the kids' concerns
with them haven't. I mean, they, they really
resonate from generation to generation, and I do
think that the new formats that the books are coming
out in, audio versions, Netflix coming, and especially
the graphic novels help to pull a new generation
of readers in, and then maybe they'll discover
the, the original books later. >> Mary Beth Albright:
Oh, Absolutely. And speaking of Netflix, we
do have a surprise sneak peek. A little bit. Yes, we're going to have
a fun thing coming up. Try to hold it. >> Ann M. Martin:
It's not a clip. >> Mary Beth Albright: It's
not a clip, it's a photo, but it's still exciting. Nobody's seen anything
about the Baby-Sitters Club for Netflix yet, and it's
filming in Vancouver now. You just got back from the set. Is it exciting? >> Ann M. Martin: I did. It was very exciting! It was wonderful to see
the actors who are playing, especially the core
group of kids, the members of the
Baby-Sitters Club. They, none of them knew
each other ahead of time, and they've already become very
close friends, which is sort of like the Baby-Sitters Club,
and they work well together. They have wonderful
chemistry, so I think-- oh. And we got to see the sets
which have been decorated right down to every detail from
the characters' bedrooms, and that sort of thing. And it's just, it was really
fun and very exciting. >> Mary Beth Albright:
Does it look like what you thought it would
look like or like what it looks like in your imagination
when you sit down and write? >> Ann M. Martin:
It actually does. We spent most of the time
in Mary Ann's bedroom, and we saw Claudia's
bedroom too. And there are just these
incredible details. They've paid so much
attention to fashion, to what they might
have on their walls or in their closets
or in their drawers. I mean, it was just wonderful. >> Mary Beth Albright:
So these girls, we've known them
for a long time. And the great things about
them are they're entrepreneurs, they're ambitious, they try
to make, they try to do things in their ambition that make
life better for other people, which I think is
great things about it. Do you, I mean, there might
be some people out here who are thinking about getting
Baby-Sitters Clubs started, or there might be some people
who are interested in writing. And your dad was a cartoonist,
and that takes a lot of ambition and a lot of persistence. So do you have any thoughts
for anybody out here who might be interested in that? >> Ann M. Martin: Well, I
mean, it may sound trite, but first of all if you,
if you are interested in starting your own
business or anything that you're interested in, make sure it's something you're
actually passionate about it, because it you're not
passionate about it, it's not going to work. You have to love
what you're doing, and then it becomes more fun. But I, this was something that
I learned when I was working on the series, but also
something that I had seen in my childhood from my dad. You have to be, you
have to have a lot of dedication, a
lot of discipline. My dad, yes, he was a
cartoonist for The New Yorker and other magazines, and
so he was self-employed, and he could have worked however
he wanted to, but every morning when I was growing up, he
got up, or he left the house at about 8:00, went to
his studio downtown, and didn't come home until six. And he was working
all that time, and he worked six days a week. And then just as an extra
illustration of his dedication, I was ten when he sold his
first cartoon to The New Yorker, and he had been contributing, I believe it was 20 cartoons
a week to The New Yorker for either five years or ten
years before they bought one. And then his career finally
took off, and if he hadn't had that dedication and
that discipline, I don't think he would
have been as successful. >> Mary Beth Albright:
And belief in a dream! >> Ann M. Martin: And belief
in a dream, absolutely. >> Mary Beth Albright: Like
you believe in yourself, you believe in your dream. >> Ann M. Martin: And he
was doing something he absolutely loved. He'd been drawing since he
was a very young boy, so. >> Mary Beth Albright: I
heard you're a Mary Ann. >> Ann M. Martin: I definitely
am Mary Ann, yes, I am. >> Mary Beth Albright: Do we have any Mary
Ann's in the audience? Anybody feel like
they're a Mary Ann? Yes, totally, same. So and now we have Gale
Galligan here who is helping to adapt these books for,
for maybe the same audience, maybe a different audience. You have a little presentation about your creative process
going from text to pictures. >> Gale Galligan: I do! Yeah, and I would love
to share it with you. Alright, do I hit a button? [Laughter] >> Mary Beth Albright:
Let me find out. >> Gale Galligan: Oh, gosh. Hey, it worked! Alright, so I've adapted three
Baby-Sitters Club books now, Dawn and the Impossible
Three, Kristy's Big Day, and Boy-Crazy Stacey,
coming out September 3. And I'm working on
my fourth right now, so I thought it would be really
fun to take a little break and talk to you about how
I adapt Ann's amazing books into a visual format. So you'll be surprised to know that the first thing I
do is I read the book. Once for pleasure as a
reader, as a longtime fan, and then again thinking
about the story. What I want it to be about,
what I think it really is about at its very core. How I would describe
that book to a friend. And during the second pass,
I'm underlining stuff, I'm circling it, I'm
making little notes to myself asking questions
and thinking about things that I'm really looking forward
to drawing, like the moment where Stacey sees the cute
lifeguard for the first time. So I read the book a few times. I get a really good idea of
what I think the story's about, and then I make an outline. And an outline is like a short
essay saying what I want the graphic novel to be about:
beginning, middle, and end. So that I can get an idea of it
before I do all the hard work of drawing it, and this is
the first thing that I send to Ann and the editors. They read it through, and then
they come back to me with notes. These are questions. These are ideas. What if we swap these two events
for more conflict or interest? What if we cut this
out and put it here? Really great ideas like
that, and that's something that you can do in
your own life. Whether you're making a song
or writing a prose story or drawing a comic book, you
can show it to your friends and family, who you trust
and like and have good ideas, and the questions and
ideas they come back with will often help you
figure out more stuff about your own story and
make it even stronger. And that's what I love
about this process is that it's collaborative, and it's always going
to be so much better. So I get that outline back. I revise it, and then
I write a script. Oh, laser pointer on. I'm great! But a lot of people, some cartoonists jump
right into drawing. I personally find it easier
to put down words first. So for example, here's
a tiny part of the outline, in
Kristy's room. Everybody enjoys
snacks, goofs off, and talks about their
upcoming summer plans. It's a cute little
paragraph, right? In the script, that's going
to be two, full comic pages. So that's a big part of adapting
a graphic novel is figuring out how much real estate you
want to devote to each of them. How much time you
have for something. What you want to say, and what's
the most important to show. So I write that whole script,
and then I make a visual version of that script called
thumbnails. Because here's the
thing, you guys, comics, they take a long time to draw. So in a thumbnail script,
instead of taking all the time to draw big, fancy, face,
add all the details, and then realize it doesn't
work with the story and have to crumple it up
and throw it away? I'm going to draw little
stick figures, plug in words, and just get an idea
that everything reads in the right order, and
that the characters are where I want them to be. And this is the next thing that
I send to Ann and the editors. And sometimes they're coming
back like, "Hey, Gale, who is this stick figure? What does it mean?" I have to say, "That blob
is Kristy, I'm sorry." [Laughter] But this is a
really fun part of my process where I'm figuring out
how to visualize words. So for example, I'd like to pull
the original dialogue when I can to keep the flavor
of the characters. Like in the very bottom
where Kristy's saying, "I won't see you guys
for over two weeks!" But then there are moments when a character's
thinking something, and how do you show that? So Stacey maybe is thinking
about how different she is from Mary Ann, so what I
did here was pull together like a cute scrapbook-y
side-by-side of the two of them, and it's really fun to find
visual solutions to show things that people are saying. And once I get notes back on
those thumbnails, and again, make them even better,
I get to go to the fun part of
drawing the comic. So I start off by
roughing it out. I take those stick-figure
characters and flesh them out a bit. I'm thinking about how they
act, where I want them to be, making sure I'm not accidentally
slopping them back and forth. Just laying all of my stuff
out so I can tighten it up. These are tight roughs. I make the characters look more
like who they're supposed to be. I add Mary Ann's classic bangs,
for example, and look at all of my references to make sure
that I'm not redrawing anything that already exists because
I'm not the first person who worked on these comics. Raina already designed a lot
of characters and places, and that means I
get to look at those and not do all the work myself. But here's the thing: I'm
not doing it all from memory. And I love working from
home because I take a lot of silly reference pictures. And again, this is
something that you can do in your own comics because
you might have a great visual library and have an idea of how somebody might
look doing something. But if you ask them how to,
say, throw a basketball, you might notice that their hand
moves in a certain way that adds to the acting of the character, so these are all
things I'm thinking about when I'm roughing
and tight roughing. And then tidying up for pencils. Up until this point, I've been
doing everything digitally on the computer, but this
is the part where I print out the pencils onto
big paper to ink, my absolute favorite part. You'll see here some of my
tools: a lightbox, a dippy pen, like old-y timey with the
feather on top, a brush and White-Out, because
nobody's perfect. And then I ink the pages. And you might notice
something a little bit weird about these pages. There are no words. That's because when I
finish inking the drawings, I scan them back
into the computer, and add my letters digitally
on top so that if we end up deciding to change a
word or move a balloon, or even maybe translate them
into a different language, I don't have to redraw anything. We can just change those on top. And this is the part,
actually, where I'm done because the Baby-Sitter's Club
has an amazing colorist whose job it is to think about how
you can show the time of day with color or a certain
mood, or really spice up the feeling of the comics. So I send those inks
off, he sends them back, and I get to say, "Oh! Those look so much
more beautiful now! Thank you, thank
you, thank you!" And you do that again, about
160 times over and over and over again, and you have
an entire graphic novel. [ Applause ] >> Mary Beth Albright:
That is amazing! And one of the great
things, I got to have lunch with Ann Martin-- I know, right? I heard the, "Oh my gosh!" I know it. She's creeped out
by me, completely. But, but she told me that
sometimes she'll look at one of your drawings, Gale, and
it's like ten pages of the book in one drawing of the
way people's faces look, and that to me is shy graphic
novels, as Michael said, are really, they're books! They're literature. You're processing so
much through them, and I just think that's great. Thank you so much for
sharing that with us. >> Gale Galligan: Thank you! >> Mary Beth Albright: Now, Ann
Martin is going to read to us for a few minutes from the
original Baby-Sitters Club. [Cheering] I know. So the room is pretty
noisy, so if you want to-- . >> Ann M. Martin: Okay, alright. This scene takes place a little
ways into Kristy's Great Idea when the girls are about to have
their very first actual meeting of the Baby-Sitters Club. Two days later, the members of the Baby-Sitters
Club gathered eagerly in Claudia's bedroom. Even though the flyers said for
clients to call us between 5:30 and 6:00, we all
managed to show up early. I was the first person there. I knocked on Claudia's
bedroom door, which now had an
official-looking sign on it, reading, "The Baby-Sitters Club. Hours: Monday, Wednesday,
Friday 5:30 to 6:00." "Come in," called Claudia. It was only 4:30 when
I entered her room, but I found her sitting
cross-legged on the bed with the phone in her lap, one
hand clutching the receiver. "The phone's not going to run
away, you know," I greeted her. Claudia grinned, "I know. I'm just so excited!" Actually, I was too. "So am I," I squealed suddenly. I dashed across the room
and jumped on her bed. "I've been waiting all
week for today to come. What do you think will happen?" "Oh, this has just got to work! I know we'll have
some customers. We'll have customers, won't we?" I grabbed the phone from
Claudia, and held it in my lap. A knock came at the door. It couldn't be a
customer, could it? Claudia and I glanced
at each other. "It's probably Mary
Ann," I said. "Oh, right," Claudia answered. "Come in." "Hello, everybody,"
called Stacey. Mary Ann arrived a few minutes
later, luckily without running into Janine, Claudia's sister. It was 5:05. The four of us sat
on Claudia's bed. Nobody said a word. At 5:10, Claudia got up, took
a shoebox labeled "sneakers," out of her closet, opened it, and handed around
some jaw breakers. At 5:25, I began
staring at my watch, following the minute
hand around and around. Five twenty-seven, five
twenty-eight, five twenty-nine. At exactly 5:30, the phone rang. I screamed. "Oh no! I don't believe it!" cried Mary Ann. Claudia spit out
her jaw breaker. "I'll answer it! I'll answer it," she shrieked. She jerked up the
receiver and said politely, "Good afternoon,
Baby-Sitters Club." Then she made a face
and handed me a phone. "Kristy, it's your mother." I spit out my jaw breaker too. "Mom!" I exclaimed as soon
as I got on the phone. These are our business hours. You're not supposed to-- . What? You do? Oh." I calmed down. "Please hold for a moment." I put my hand over the receiver. "Mom needs a sitter
for my little brother!" I cried. Everyone
suppressed shrieks. "I've got our appointment book
right here," said Claudia. "Now, let's see. Mary Ann, you have to
go to the dentist today, that day, and I have art class. That leaves you," Claudia
pointed to me and Stacey. "What should we do?" "Just another sec, Mom," I said. I hadn't really thought
about what to do if several of us were available
for the same job. "Well," I began. "He's your brother," Stacey
said, "you should get the job." "But if you took it, you'd get to know some other people
in the neighborhood." Stacey's eyes lit up. "But what are you going
to do while I babysit? Hang around and watch?" "Well, I hope I'll have
another job," I said huffily. "You take the job, Stacey. I don't want my first
Baby-Sitters Club client to be my own mother." "Okay, if you're sure," Stacey said slowly,
and then she grinned. "Thanks!" "No problem," I said. I took my hand off the receiver. "Mom, Stacey will babysit for
David Michael on Wednesday." "Okay." "Hey, where are
you calling from anyway? Oh, the office." Claudia elbowed me. "Quit tying up the line. Someone else might be
trying to get through." I nodded, "Mom, I
have to get off. I'll see you in a little while. Bye." I hung up. And that was how the members of the Baby-Sitters Club
got their first job. >> Mary Beth Albright: Oh! [Applause] You know, what I love about that passage
you just read is that it really encapsulates
the, the when you're, when you're that age, and you're
ready for more responsibility, but people won't give it to,
and they won't trust you. And it's like, "I'm ready! I've got this covered,"
you know? And the excitement of that. It's just, oh, I love it! So now what we have is a
photo of Ann Martin on the set in Vancouver of the Baby-Sitters
Club series for Netflix, which is coming out
in the spring. Do we have a photo of that? There she is, on the set! And there's the actual script. Don't try to read
it by enlarging it, I already tried,
it doesn't work. [Laughter] It is so exciting that this is going
to be happening. And it's bringing it, as I said,
to an entirely new audience. Yeah, which is really exciting. So, okay! So we have time
for questions and answers. Well, definitely
time for questions. I'll see if Ann has
time for answers. Yes, right here in
the black shirt. Oh, thank you, orange
shirt, for helping! >> Ann M. Martin: That
was awesome, thank you. >> Child: So when is the Netflix
series supposed to come out? >> Ann M. Martin:
There's no set date yet, but it'll be sometimes
probably next summer. It will definitely be 2020. >> Child: Great! That sounds good. >> Mary Beth Albright: Yes? Then you. >> Child: So first, I want
to say I'm a really big fan. I think you guys
are really awesome. >> Thank you. >> Child: And second,
how did you and Ann meet? >> Gale Galligan:
Oh, the two of us? [Laughter] Well, I
got the job working on The Baby-Sitters Club, and
Scholastic sent me to Book Expo. They said, "Hey, Gale,
do you want to meet one of your favorite
authors of all time?" I said, "Oh, no! I'm very sweaty all
of a sudden!" [Laughter] And honestly, it's
been such a treat getting to know Ann ever since then. >> Mary Beth Albright: Yes? >> Child: So-- . >> Mary Beth Albright:
Oh, I'm sorry. You have one question,
and then you. Yes. I'm so sorry. What is your question? [ Inaudible ] What made you think of
writing the Baby-Sitters Club? >> Ann M. Martin: Actually, the title just "The
Baby-Sitters Club" was suggested to me by my editors. It was really her idea. She wanted a story about,
about, well a baby-sitters club, but she didn't know
exactly what that might be, so it was up to me to figure out what a baby-sitting
club would be. And then I, I came up with
the four original characters: Kristy, Claudia,
Stacey, and Mary Ann. And in the beginning,
there were only going to be four books in the series. One book featuring each girl, but it grew a little
bit from there. [Laughter] >> Mary Beth Albright: I'm so
sorry that I interrupted you. Please go ahead. Thank you for waiting
so patiently. >> Child: It wasn't anything. But where is the Netflix
series going to be filmed? >> Ann M. Martin: It's
being filmed in Vancouver. >> Child: Where is Vancouver? >> Mary Beth Albright:
Great question! [Laughter] Thank you! >> Ann M. Martin: It's in
British Columbia, in Canada. >> Child: That makes no
sense, but thank you. [ Laughter ] >> Mary Beth Albright: Vancouver's a beautiful
city, I'm just saying. [Laughter] It's lovely. >> Child: How did you
come up with the idea to turn the Baby-Sitters Club
into a graphic novel series? >> Ann M. Martin: Actually,
that was Raina's idea. >> Gale Galligan: That was
Raina's idea, wasn't it? >> Ann M. Martin: Raina, who
did the first four books, right? I think she had met with one of
the art directors at Scholastic, and somehow the idea
came up between them. I think this is right, and my
editor and I hadn't thought about transforming
The Baby-Sitter's Club into graphic novels, but we thought it was a
fabulous idea, and it was. Raina and Gale both have done
an incredible job with it. >> Gale Galligan: Thank you. >> Ann M. Martin:
You're welcome. >> Mary Beth Albright: And we're
going to take two questions from over here, because I've
been neglecting this side. I'm so sorry. >> Child: What made you
want to become a writer? >> Ann M. Martin: Oh, what made
me want to become a writer? I've always liked writing, and
I've always enjoyed reading. I grew up in a house that
was just full of books. My parents read aloud to my
sister and me, and we got books out of the public library and
the school library every week. And it just sort of
seemed natural that, that I would become a writer. But I didn't consider
it seriously until I was in college. >> Mary Beth Albright: I
guess, I think we have time for two more questions. >> Child: How long
have you been working on the Baby-Sitters Club? >> Ann M. Martin: Oh, the first
Baby-Sitters Club book came out in 1986, and I had
started working on it about a year before, so
basically since 1985. >> Child: Thank you! >> Ann M. Martin:
You're welcome. >> Mary Beth Albright: Go ahead. >> Child: Did you guys, like, work in the old Baby-Sitter
Club movie? >> Ann M. Martin: Oh, the old, yeah the Baby-Sitters Club
movie came out in 1995, I think. And I had a little
bit to do with it. I got to read the script
and go out to see a few days of filming, which was
a lot of fun So yeah, I had a little bit
to do with it. It was great. >> Gale Galligan: I watched
it when I was a little kid and liked it very much. [Laughter] >> Mary Beth Albright:
Yes, over here? >> Child: When is the, when is
Boy-Crazy Stacey coming out? >> Gale Galligan: September 3! That's very soon! >> Mary Beth Albright:
That's Tuesday! >> Gale Galligan: Wow, right? Time flies! [Laughter] >> Mary Beth Albright: Okay, we
have time for one more question. I get, I got a sign,
this is wrap it up. That's why I've got to
do one more question. >> Child: Have you started
working on book eight yet? >> Gale Galligan: Yes! It's Logan Likes Mary Ann, and I'm having a great
time working on it. >> Mary Beth Albright: Well,
for everybody who's in line, and many people are in line who didn't get their
questions answered. Good news! There's a book signing. Yeah, so-- oh, I'm so sorry. I, I know. It's like crazy that they're
here and so wonderful. So 4:30 is the book signing,
which is the areas right over here, and you can
get your book signed, and I'm sure answer,
ask them questions. These are two wonderful, nice ladies which is what I
think the mass exodus is right now, getting in line
for the book signing. So thank you so much!
