New children’s book examines the meaning and purpose of a school bus

S1: Welcome to San Diego. Today Jade Hindman is here and we’re talking about a children’s book about a yellow school bus that takes us on a journey. We’re talking with author and illustrator Lauren Long. This is the KPBS Midday Edition. We connect our communities through conversation. The yellow school bus is an iconic symbol of American culture. I mean, we all know the lyrics to Wheels on the Bus, but what happens when a school bus loses its purpose? Well, a new children’s book called The Yellow Bus explores just that. In it, we follow the journey of a yellow bus as the city around it changes and it slowly fades into oblivion. The book was written and illustrated by bestselling author Lorin Long. He’s also holding a story time this Saturday, June 29th at the San Diego Central Library and Lauren is with me now. Lauren, welcome to the Midday Edition.

S2: Well, thank you so much for having me, Jade. I’m excited to talk about my brand new picture book.

S1: Oh yes.

S2: Um, and it started about four years ago, as you may recall. And in the rest of the world. Four years ago, there was something going on. It was in the spring of 2020 and the pandemic hit, and my wife and I, like everybody else, made a few changes. And one of them was we decided to adopt a crazy hunting dog. And it was kind of one of those pandemic adoptions. And, um, every moment that I’m in my studio, Charlie the dog is in my studio. He’s a little bit nervous, which led to another change in my life, which is I started running. And I was never much of a runner. But to get Charlie in shape and to refresh his energy, um, I would go running with him every day and we would run along a bike path. I live here in southwest Ohio, in the Cincinnati area, and there’s a wooded bike path nearby. And every day we would notice a rusted school bus in the trees. The rusted school bus was sitting in a goat paddock, and there were goats all around it. It looked pretty sad. It was sinking in the mud. Um, the floorboards were rotting. Um, but somehow, Jade, over time, after I’d been driving it for a good year, I thought, you know, that’s odd. Why is the bus there? I realized that the bus seemed happy with the goats climbing in to get out of the rain and playing on the roof of the bus in the spring. And the bus was, you know, in some ways the worst place a bus could be. I thought, surely it was bright and shiny at first, doing the most important job of transporting this precious cargo from one important place to another. And there it was, at the lowest point I could imagine. And yet it seemed happy. And that made me think that maybe this is a storybook.

S1: Yes, well, you know, the bus used to transport children, but now it takes care of other kinds of children. That’s right. Right.

S2: Right. Very good, very good, I like that.

S1: You know, everything in the book is black and white, except for the yellow bus. That’s what really gives this world color. Was that your intention from the beginning? No.

S2: Jade, that was another surprise. So, as a children’s book author and illustrator, I always think of the visual aspects first. I wrote this piece, though, without really thinking about what the book was going to look like now. I was armed with the knowledge that I was going to illustrate it, so I had that going for me, but I essentially wrote the piece and tried to use as little text as possible, knowing that I could show what little eyes would read, um, so that the words would fit the images very well. But then I was about halfway through the outline, which is basically the plan, like the storyboard of a picture book. Um, and I always think of it as making a little movie, like, I’m a film director and a cameraman, and I’ve got my main character, and I’m the casting director, and I’m the person who dresses all the characters, and I’m making a little movie. And I kind of noticed, you started with that. The school bus, the yellow bus is an iconic symbol in our society, in many societies around the world, and I wanted that yellow to jump off the page. So if you’re a 15-month-old on someone’s lap, this book could be an exercise in making the yellow pop on that charcoal gray background. But if you really get into the book, what really got me going as a writer is that I kind of stumbled upon that refrain by accident. They filled them with joy. Then it started to take on a little deeper meaning than just a nice story about a school bus.

S3: Um, and.

S1:

S2: It just represents that simple feeling that the yellow bus has when it does something for others. It’s a very simple, basic, human-feeling thing, but that in some ways touches on what I hope, which is that readers and families and teachers and children of all ages can take something away from it. And that’s just the curiosity that I had walking past that abandoned, broken bus. And I hope readers will wonder why that yellow bus is happy. And there are a lot of twists and surprises in the bus’s life that are out of its control, out of her control. What she can control, however, is her attitude. So that’s what I’m doing now, a little bit deeper or more philosophical about a children’s picture book. But I think sometimes readers can take different things away from it. And I think that’s what a lot of us who write for children and make art for children have kind of tried to do. Yeah.

S1: Yes. This is the KPBS Midday Edition. We’re back after the break. Welcome back to the KPBS Midday Edition. I’m Jade Hindman, speaking with author and illustrator Loren Long about his new book, “The Yellow School Bus.”

S2: I was, uh, I was a normal Midwestern boy who liked a lot of different things, sports and so on. Uh, my mom and dad weren’t artists. We didn’t go to museums. I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, but in seventh grade I started. I mean, I’ve always loved to draw, but in seventh grade I had an art teacher who encouraged me. And, uh, I’ll never forget him. Mr. Pennington, the cool thing about Mr. Pennington is that he was not only the art teacher, he was the football coach. The coolest guy in the building. Right. And, uh, and he, uh, saw my name and held up my drawing in front of a class of my classmates, and that stirred something in me. And it planted the seed. I wonder if I could be some kind of artist. And, uh, then I went to college and art school and finally decided that I was going to be an illustrator. Um, I had the conversation with my dad, who worked in sales, and my mom was kind of a secretary, so they didn’t know, but they always supported me. And, and, um, I was very lucky that they supported me even though they didn’t know this world that I wanted to work in.

S1: Family support is so important. Well, you’re going to be holding this event at the San Diego Central Library. Tell us about it.

S2: I’m really looking forward to it. I’ll be at the American Library Association this coming weekend, which is in San Diego. And I was so excited when Macmillan, um, my publisher, also organized this event for the San Diego Public Library, and I’ll be presenting the yellow bus for the second time to families and the public. So I’ll do a nice, short presentation, but still quite elaborate. I’ll be sharing from the idea to the process, different decisions that I made on this yellow bus. So I would encourage families with young children to come. I would encourage anyone who is a teacher, librarian, or bookseller to come. And not just the very young ones, but let’s say you’re a middle school student who likes to draw, or let’s say you’re an art student or a college student. And, uh, for me, it’s always been enlightening and inspiring to study and listen to other artists. Mhm.

S3: Mhm.

S1: All right. Sounds good. And it’s something that’s going to bring a lot of people here. I spoke with Lauren Long, the author and illustrator of The Yellow Bus. He’s going to be doing a story time at the San Diego Central Library this Saturday, June 29th. Lauren, thank you so much for being with us today.

S2: Thank you so much for having me, Jade. And I hope as many people as possible come along on Saturday. I’d love to meet you.