From the January/February 2002 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

Boston Globe–Horn Book Award Acceptance

by Cynthia DeFelice

’d like to thank the Boston Globe, the Horn Book, and the award judges for this delightful and completely unexpected honor. I’d also like to thank all of you who made the effort to be here, to go about your business and continue with your work after the events of September 11. For all of us here share the same work: making sure children have words, stories, images, and information they can use to make sense of this beautiful, complex, and often difficult world of ours.

If you’ve read the author’s note in Cold Feet, you already know that this story has a long history as a folktale that was told throughout the British Isles. Rather than being the creator of this tale, I am actually the teller, one in a long line of many. The story’s essential structure has been honed through decades, probably centuries, of telling. As its transmitter, my responsibility — and my privilege — was to find fresh words with which to make the story come alive for today’s listeners.

I first heard the story told in Jonesborough, Tennessee, by the late Richard Walker. I loved every minute of his wonderful rendition, and it turned out to be one of those stories that stuck with me for years, rolling around in my head, still as vivid as it had been the evening I heard it. When it was clear that it wasn’t going away, I decided maybe I should try telling it myself. And I did, at various schools and gatherings, particularly in situations when a spooky story was called for. And, of course, it changed every time I told it.

I never thought of writing it down until I got a call from an editor with whom I’d recently struck up a kind of friendship. She wanted us to do a book together, and she also wanted to do a book with a certain illustrator she had “discovered.” This illustrator was quite well known in other venues but had never done any children’s books, and this editor was sure he’d be marvelous. She wanted to tempt him with just the right story — did I have any thoughts for a story that might match his style? She sent a file of his wonderful art.

I wanted to have a story for her, but I didn’t, not at that moment. Then I thought of that funny, twisted tale I had heard in Tennessee and had begun to tell. I decided to try putting it down on paper and see how it felt.
I asked myself, How can I take this ancient tale, this living entity that has floated freely through the air for who knows how many years, and put it down on paper, pinning it down into certain chosen words, locking it into one specific version that risks becoming the version? It seemed a daunting task. I didn’t want to take the life from it, chop off the feet, so to speak, that had allowed it to dance through the ages. But finally, after many drafts and revisions, I felt it was ready for a look-see, and sent it off to her.

The response was not what I’d hoped for. Not to put too fine a point on it, the editor didn’t like it at all, and the illustrator was horrified by it.

Now I felt stubborn. I loved the story more than ever. Who, I wondered, might appreciate this twisted, warped, hilarious story? Who, I asked myself, might be willing to take a chance on it? And the answer came: Dick Jackson! He loved it, and signed it up on the spot.

However, even the intrepid Richard Jackson was squeamish about one particular aspect of the tale. You see, in the story as I heard it, Willie McPhee, the finest bagpipe player in all of Scotland, is down on his luck. One evening as he travels the countryside looking for people who might have a wee bit of money to pay for music and merriment, he comes upon a poor, unfortunate dead man lying in the snow. Willie can’t help but notice the man’s lovely, sturdy black boots. He looks down at his own poor, frozen feet inside his own raggedy shoes, and makes a decision. He takes out his bagpiper’s tool kit, gets out his little saw, and saws the boots right off the man’s stiff frozen legs; he ties the laces together, hangs the boots around his neck, and goes on his way. Of course, there is the wee, small matter of the feet still being in the boots, but, well, he’ll worry about that later.

Now, one difference between oral and written literature is that when you tell a story and come to a part like that, you can let your audience know it’s all in good fun with a wink of the eye, a lift of the brow, or a little aside. But you can’t do that in a picture book. And when that same scene is written down in black and white, not to mention illustrated in living color — well, in color, anyway — it might come off quite differently.

Dick asked, “Cynthia, could you, do you suppose, think of another way for Willie to get those boots off?” Well, yes, I thought I probably could. The final version goes like this:

Willie looked down at his own poor frozen toes and he looked again at the boots and he looked again at his toes and he thought, Dead’s dead. But I’m alive. And I could use some boots.
    He held up his own foot beside the dead man’s foot. His ruined shoes and the sturdy, shiny boots appeared to be the exact same size. Well, that settled the matter, didn’t it?
    Willie bent down to pull off the first of those boots. Try as he might, he couldn’t get it off the man’s poor frozen foot. He tried the other, but it wouldn’t budge for anything in the world.
    Och, well, it appeared he wasn’t to have new boots after all. With a sigh, Willie let the foot fall to the ground. A sharp CRACK! echoed through the silent forest. Willie looked down . . . and looked again. To his surprise, that frozen leg had snapped in two — just like an icicle — right above the boot!
    Willie thought for a moment. Then, with a shrug, he lifted the other leg and let it fall. CRACK! Off snapped the other boot.
    Willie gazed about the dark, snowy woods. What sense was there, he asked himself, in leaving behind such splendid boots? A poor man must be practical, after all. So Willie picked up the boots, tied them together by the laces, and went on his way.

I was so happy with this solution! I loved the way it made Willie more hapless than calculating, and it eliminated all the other problems, as well.

Next came the matter of choosing the illustrator. I don’t remember who suggested Robert Parker, or whether Dick and I both thought it was inevitable right from the start. Bob had, after all, fabulously and famously (the New York Times named it one of the ten best-illustrated books of the year) done the paintings for The Dancing Skeleton, another book of mine that has a similar macabre humor and sensibility. I was thrilled when Bob called to say he loved the story and couldn’t wait to begin. When he called back to say he was thinking of putting Willie in a kilt, the better to show off his knobby, red, chapped knees, I knew we were in business!

At this point, the peripatetic Dick Jackson, whom I had followed from Orchard to DK Ink, moved on again, back to his beginnings. I despaired. My book was being abandoned, left a poor, pathetic orphan with no father to guide it through the editing, marketing, and publishing process. Without Dick to champion it, what chance did it have? Woe was me.

I fretted more. Had Dick gotten — cold feet? Was he bailing out of DK Ink as a way of disassociating himself from my book? Surely not. I told myself I was being ridiculous and paranoid, not to mention self-aggrandizing.

It was at that point that I got a reassuring phone call from Beth Sutinis at DK Ink, saying that she loved the book, too, and not to worry, she would be my editor from that point forward. And so she was, and a fine editor, too.

And so the book came out. And there were people who read it and said to me, “What was that about?” There were people who asked incredulously, “You say this is a book for children?” There were people who said, “We decided not to offer that book for sale during your visit to our school. You understand . . . ” And there were people like you, who got it. Thank you for getting it.