While combing the shore after a storm for what his father called “faraway things,” Lucian finds a mysterious sword wrapped in seaweed. It’s not just any sword — it’s a cutlass that’s “silver and gold and copper and finely etched all around.” The cutlass soon takes a special place in his heart and goes everywhere with him, cutting driftwood and even slicing the sun in two like an orange. One afternoon, visitors arrive on a boat — a captain and his crew — claiming ownership of the cutlass. Lucian learns just how meaningful the cutlass is to the captain, but will he be able to part with his new prized possession?
Faraway Things was written by Dave Eggers, illustrated by Kelly Murphy and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
In Faraway Things, your new picture book illustrated by Kelly Murphy, the main character is a boy who finds things on a beach near his home. Do you ever find intriguing things on your outdoor ventures into the world?
I spent a lot of time beachcombing when I was a kid, and I do now, too. The beaches in the Bay Area all have different specialties. There’s a beach in Richardson Bay that for some reason has a ton of sea glass and boat parts. Rodeo Beach has jellyfish and bull whip kelp. And a few weeks ago, I visited a dead whale, at least 30 feet long, on Muir Beach. There’s always something new.
Lucian finds something very special and then is asked to give it away. He's reluctant, and I think that's a particular feeling that will resonate for a lot of kids. How have kids responded to this story?
What’s astounding to me is how quickly kids pick up on the subtleties. One of the first readers of the book was a 7-year-old named Isabella. Through the Young Editors Project, she wrote comments on the story, and she understood everything. Her handwriting was in the early stages of development, but her reading comprehension was off the charts. She understood all the book’s themes intuitively. I’ve always said that we just can’t underestimate how naturally gifted kids are at understanding stories. If we ask the right questions, we find that nearly always, they know stories intimately, understand them profoundly.
Several dozen young people are thanked in the book. They're part of the Young Editors Project. Can you say more about how you work with young readers and writers as you're developing picture books?
The Young Editors Project is a way to involve kids in the making of a book. The vast majority of school-aged kids don’t have a way into the publishing process, and I’d guess most have never met a living author. So through YEP we invite kids — usually through their teachers — to use the program to see the publishing process as a participatory thing. Authors send us their in-progress manuscripts, and we send these to teachers. The teachers show the manuscripts to their students, who then can comment on the stories-in-progress. We’ve worked with dozens of schools now, and the results are always adorable, and often very useful to the authors. And every student who reads a manuscript-in-progress is mentioned in the actual published book. This collapses the space between author and audience, and, I hope, makes books more accessible to all kids.
Faraway Things has a classic, timeless feeling, in part because of the seamless interplay between the images in the book and the text of the story. When you were writing this story, did you imagine illustrations like Kelly Murphy's? Or something else?
Kelly’s illustrations exceed anything I could have dreamt up. Her work really does have that classic, epic feel, and they enhance every page a thousand-fold. I have to admit that part of the reason I like writing picture books is just to see what a brilliant artist like Kelly will come up with. That day when she first sent sketches was like Christmas.
Many thanks to author Dave Eggers for sharing this Q&A and giving all of us a look at the story behind his latest picture book, Faraway Things. For more about the making of Faraway Things, watch this author/illustrator talk and this book chat with illustrator Kelly Murphy.