Auntie Narwhal’s Kitchen
The weather in my neck of the woods has been California-gorgeous, almost all week— in the seventies, low humidity; perfect for my painting project. We did have one super hot, rainy, muggy day, during which I enjoyed sitting inside and working on Jonah and the Whale (mostly the whale, TBH), but there isn’t quiiite enough progress on that one to blog about again yet. If you’re interested in my less business-y and more home-based creative projects, you can check out my other blog, A Wandering Hearth. For now, on this blog, I’m writing about an old project.
I posted pictures from the graphic-novel-in-progress last week, but I didn’t talk about them. A graphic novel is kind of like a comic book, except that sometimes we refer to comic books only to mean stories about superheroes. Graphic novels are usually read left to right (like regular writing, in English at least) and top to bottom (like English and lots of other languages).
I worked in a middle school library for a couple of years, and the two ways to get a library display cleaned out for sure were to fill it with graphic novels— no surprise— and to fill it with recipe books, which was a surprise to me. I didn’t even know that libraries had cookbooks until I was an adult, and I’m pretty sure that even when I was a kid they would not have been that popular. The conclusion I’ve eventually come to is that all the cooking shows on TV have made a difference in this younger generation being interested in being good cooks.
All that is to say that when I quit my middle school job to work on my writing, I jokingly said that I would write a graphic novel cookbook. I WAS joking, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea.
This page is where I feel like the graphic novel actually starts: Zach comes in and feels confident enough in Auntie Narwhal’s indulgence that he asks for cookies. We had a next-door neighbor when I was very small who fed me and my older sister Danish butter cookies (the kind you get from a tin) and caramel candies when we would go to visit. I still love those flavors to this day, though the way my body works now, they would both make me very sick if I actually ate them. “Aunt Carrie,” as we called her, never babysat us— she was much too old— but certain aspects of Auntie Narwhal are definitely based on her. Now that I think about it, even the fact that the neighbors are sharks might be influenced by Aunt Carrie— many years before my sister and I were her neighbors, my dad’s family moved in next door. With eight boys, they caused her and her husband some alarm, but, according to Dad, they were so respectful (didn’t ride their bikes through her flower beds, didn’t throw baseballs through her windows) that they made friends. My sister and I reaped the benefits of this friendship when my dad, all grown up and married, moved into the house his parents owned.
“Auntie Narwhal’s Kitchen” started out as just a recipe (3-ingredient peanut butter cookies) but then my sister was confused by my recipe-explainer person (a narwhal, of course), so then I had to add a frame story. And then I wanted to put in my special method for cracking eggs, so I did put it in— but I needed to motivate it. This is how Auntie Narwhal ended up with a tremor.
Here we find out that Auntie Narwhal’s first name is Nora. I’m still not sure what Mama Shark’s name is. Maybe we’ll never know. I’m glad it’s not a decision I have to make for this story (I’m leaving her anonymous for now).
I haven’t worked on this project since October of last year, actually, because I was working on the paper Nativity and then the paper Easter Set. I’ve learned a ton about my graphics program (Clip Studio Paint) in the mean time! Also I’ve finished a couple of things, which has increased my faith that I’ll be able to finish this, too, some day.