Outside In World talks to Ellen Heck
about her debut picture book
A is for Bee: An Alphabet Book in Translation

Hello Ellen, it’s great to have you on Outside in World. Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Thank you for having me! I am the author and illustrator of A Is for Bee. It’s my first published book, but I have been making books for fun since I was about 6. I am an artist, and I enjoy using a variety of materials and looking at things from different angles.

‘A is for Bee’ is a unique alphabet book. How did you come up with the idea for it?

My husband’s side of our family is Lithuanian. When our son was little, I was reading him a Lithuanian alphabet board book. There was no text, just letters and images of things that start with those letters. Next to the letter B was the photo of a monkey, but I couldn’t remember the Lithuanian word for monkey. We were just staring at the B and the monkey until finally, I read “B is for Monkey!” and continued from there. It was silly and a lot of fun—both true and not true at the same time. It got me thinking about alphabet books and then more broadly about translation and the relationship between meaning and form. I wanted to share that experience with others.

Do you speak other languages?

English is the only language I’m truly comfortable speaking, but I’ve enjoyed studying French, Lithuanian, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. I also love listening to people speak in languages I don’t understand; whatever is being said, it sounds like a beautiful truth. (Often, it turns out to be the everyday statements of daily life, but even this discovery isn’t a letdown because it reminds me that the statements of daily life are beautiful.)

What do you hope children get from reading ‘A is for Bee’?

This book is about delighting in the fact that something silly from one angle can be true from another. I hope that seeing several different ways of naming the same thing will make anything feel possible. If readers already know or are learning new languages, I hope they find some connections.

Your work is primarily as an artist but do you plan on doing more books?

I hope so! I love the book format: that it is bigger on the inside than the outside, that it is easily accessible, and carried, and shared. Readers choose the speed and environment in which they read. They touch, move, and turn the pages. Books can be explored silently or aloud, alone or together. Of all the art formats, the book is most eager to collaborate with its audience on its audience’s terms.

November 2022