BookWorthy Chats Again with Maria Antonia

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Valerie - Welcome to Bookworthy. Today we're talking again with author Maria Antonia. You might remember her from a Christmas episode featuring her book, The Christmas Elephant, a Nativity Story. But today we are not talking about elephants, but sheep. And not just any

sheep, but Barnaby the sheep. It's a story that reminds us that the Good Shepherd is always with us and he speaks to our hearts. Welcome back to Bookworthy Maria.

Maria - Hi, thank you for having me back, Valerie.

Valerie - It is a pleasure to have you. To get us going, I thought we'd, since this is airing in summertime, I thought we'd talk about what is your favorite thing about summer.

Maria - So when I was a kid and in school, summertime meant book reading time. I loved it because I could just relax and read as much as I wanted to. So, it's not quite the same for me now. I still have to work during part of the summer at least. So, summertime now for me means. Visiting usually with my sister my brother's family visiting with family during you know when they have vacation and when I have vacation aren't vacations coincide yeah, then We visit we don't do a lot of reading during those visits but You know, I'll fit off. I always fit in reading

Valerie - Found to find a book somewhere. Very fun. Now you're up in Canada, correct? Now the Great White North isn't quite Great White during the summer. What is it like up there?

Maria - So in the summer, I mean, it's very green. have, I live near Niagara Falls, so we have a lot of fruit trees and we're sort of in the fruit belt and we got peaches and pears and like we personally have a plum tree and cherry trees and a pear tree. And our neighbor ha she used to have apricots, which are amazing. yeah, that's summertime means, I know we have raspberries too, so, and blackberries. So summertime means a lot of burying and fruit eating. It is great. Yep.

Valerie -A lot of fruit. I grew up with a pear tree and a peach tree and an apple tree in my backyard. And it was always just fun to climb that tree and pick the pears. Wasn't so much fun picking up the pears that were on the ground, but there's some good memories with pear trees.

Maria - Yeah, and then when I was really little, like we lived next door to a farm and we had this apple tree that just like these little apples that were very sour. And I just remember, like to this day, I remember eating those sour apples, which I like sour apples, so it's not a big deal. But yes, that was good memories.

Valerie - I'm not big on sour apples, but my son is. And so like I have to have almost, almost 24 green apples in my house on a weekly basis, just so that he can eat them all. Cause he likes those, that sour taste. So, well, Maria, tell us a little bit about Barnaby, the Runaway Sheep.

Maria -So Barnaby, the runaway sheep, initially started when I was just scrolling on social media, and I came across a post about a sheep that lived in New Zealand, and he ran away. And his shepherds found him six years after he had run away. He had gone to live in a cave, and he was very hot, he had a lot of wool, and he wasn't doing good at the end of that. And the social media post, think it had something to do with pointing us to the story in the Bible where Jesus talks about the lost sheep and how the shepherd comes and finds the lost sheep this story of Shrek, the sheep in New Zealand, his shepherds found him, brought him home, sheared him. Normally, good someone who can do, I had to do research on this. I've never lived next door to sheep. I've

seen them in pastures, but I've never had to raise them. But anyhow, when, you shear a sheep, which you have to do, I think, at least once, if not sometimes twice a year, the way sheep, they need that wool taken off. it's a process that normally takes a few minutes, maybe five minutes. Shrek needed 20 minutes to shear him because his wool was so thick. Now I have a picture in the back of the book for those who are able to see this, like that is Shrek in all his glory. I he couldn't, I don't even think he could get up. He was basically stuck. yes, and it was just by coincidence that his shepherds found him in his special cave. So, this story, like, It just captured my imagination. And I thought, well, like that is the most awesome thing ever. I thought, you know, this has to be a devotional, it has to be something. And I started off with like a poem or like a really short, story. I don’t really, like poetry, to me in my brain, my brain says poetry needs to rhyme. And I know it doesn't. And I don't do rhyme well, or at least I don't want to put in the effort to learn how to rhyme well. So what absolutely, and I am, I am amazed at the people who are able to rhyme well. And when I read a picture book that is in rhyme, it's, and it's well done. Well, like it's beautiful. I don't do that, but I did write this like short 50 word thing and I found it just a little while ago. I was, I was researching, how, how Barnaby came to be. And yeah, 50 words, this little poem called The Lost Sheep, and it talks about Shrek. And that was my first draft. And I was busy with something at the time, it was actually around the time when I got my agent. So I was busy, we were going to put out another other books. And so I just let it sit. And I like to let things sit. Like as a writer, I like to let my story sit anyhow, just kind of percolating in the back of my brain. And when I came back, I thought, well, maybe it could be a devotional, maybe it could be a non, maybe I write it about Shrek. So I started to write about Shrek, I thought, I don't really want to be sued for the name. I mean, not that, and it is, they do say online that when you talk about Shrek the sheep, you're supposed to say Shrek the sheep, because it's different than Shrek the ogre from the movie.

Valerie - Similarities, similarities.

Maria - Yeah, well, I mean, that's the reason why they named him Shrek, right? Because he

kind of looked a bit like an ogre, the ogre of the sheepish ogre. So anyhow, so I decided, you know what, why don't I try just fictionalizing it? Then I can change, you know, because I wasn't there. I don't know the exact details. I've never been to New Zealand. I've seen pictures of it. It's very beautiful. But let me make a fictional place, a fictional farm. And I did. like I said earlier, I did work, or I did not work. I lived next to a farm when I was a kid. we would do like we would play in the in the barn, like jump in the hay mown. That was very fun. They didn't have sheep, but they had horses initially and cows when I was little. And then when I got to be a little older, I became goats. So I actually have a slight fear of goats from this time period in my life. I wrote a story as I was working on Trek. I was also working on a similar story about goats called Speedy the goat and or Speedy the kid and how I put my ex to myself in the I created to characters. One was scared and one was the one who owned the goats. anyhow, that became a magazine story. And it was the first time I'd taken an animal and written from the animal's point of view. So I wrote from Speedy's point of view. And that was interesting. And interesting because the real Speedy and his name really was Speedy. The real Speedy was like brought fear to my little six year old heart.

And all the little girls would all, like so would my sister and then the two girls that lived at the farm. If we would see Speedy, we would just, we would run out of it because Speedy would headbutt us. So anyhow, so was really interesting writing in the point of view of Speedy. And I thought, well, I could do this for my little sheep. And I initially called him Brutus, probably because of Shrek. And one of my critique partners said, you know, he does his, so he's, so Barnaby is, does these little wiggle dances. He's kind of silly and just cute like that. And one of my critique partners says, Maria Brutus just doesn't seem quite the right name for a little sheep that does wiggle dancing. And so I thought, you're right, you're right. So, I went back to the drawing board and I came up with the name Barnaby. I thought Barnaby was kind of a name that was a little bit silly. It just had the word barn in it. I thought that was cool. Like it works with the farm. So, so he became Barnaby the runaway sheep. And I kept the same idea of Shrek, of Shrek's real story, Shrek the sheep's real story where he runs away. And I, although I gave, I gave Barnaby a reason. He didn't want a haircut. Like he didn't want to be scared. And you know, I remember as a kid, my mom would cut my hair. She wouldn't, I wanted long hair, and I was not allowed to have long hair because of the snarls. And now I understand that, but like as a kid, I wanted to be a ballerina, and ballerinas must have long hair in my world. And so she would cut my hair and it was kind of scary. It was, do not enjoy it. I've watched my nephews and niece; I've watched them get their hair cut by their mothers. And

they have, I like, I totally understand. And, and when I did research again, like these clippers, um, and, they asked me when, when my publisher asked me what kind of, do you want the electric kind or the, no, no, no, no, I want the scissor kind. I want clippers, like no electric things for like, they are, I mean, that's what they look like. They're sharp. They're pretty long And so I sent them a picture. This is what they should look like. That's what I want. I watched videos on farmers sharing their sheep with the old clippers. I watched them too with the electric ones, but I just wanted the, the, the, the, the actual scissor type clippers and they'd look very sharp. And so I gave that, I gave that as a, a fear for my little sheep. And yeah. And so he runs away. He tries to hide at first and that doesn't work. He ends up in a cave just like Shrek the sheep. I don't think he lives there for six long years.

Valerie - It doesn't look as full as Shrek the Sheep.

Maria - And that was the other thing that I think was nice about being able to fictionalize it is that I could make it. But we do have like the year pass. if you watch the, like it's very spring-like and this is something that I know my editor and I talked about. Like the trees in the back are all have like, they're apple blossoms or cherry blossoms or some sort of fruit trees, you

know growing back there. And then by the end, it's very autumn-like. so the illustrator, Sayani Mukherjee, she did a beautiful job with the illustrations. just, I love them. I love everything about them. And yeah, so.

Valerie -Barnaby, like the illustrator did an amazing job on just keeping the cute sweetness of Barnaby and just his wiggle dances but also communicating that fear that we all kind of have in different situations. Now, what's kind of,

do you hope kids walk away from with this book?

Maria - Well, I hope that they know that, you know, even if something scares them, that it's, you have to know who your shepherds are. And that's one of the, know when we were coming up with the activity guide for this, one of the questions is like, who are the shepherds in your life? And definitely your parents, like aunts and uncles, like teachers, pastors, you know, different, you could be a babysitter, whatever. I think it's good that kids know that there are shepherds that even when they ask us to do something that's a little scary, that we can trust them. And that's one thing that Barnaby does have to, he has to learn how to trust his shepherds. And ultimately the good shepherd is Jesus and that's who we ultimately trust. But he does put in, God puts in, lower shepherds. This is why it's kind of neat that I have two shepherds in the story. They're called the small shepherd and the tall shepherd. I don't name them but let me see if there's a good picture with them. The small shepherd is obviously a little boy. They don't

get named, but the small shepherd always calls the tall shepherd dad. It's sort of a hint to, you know, just here we are. This is maybe our parents. And then this is dad. This is our God. It's like Jesus or God, that he's the father of us. So I kind of snuck that in there. And most people, no one has mentioned that to me. And now I'm saying it here. So maybe people will mention that. But that was sort of the idea behind that.

Valerie -It's fun to see the different layers that you put into it, because it's not just about, you know, being obedient, you know, or to trust your shepherd, but it's also about, you know, the shepherd's looking for Barnaby and, you know, also the fear of the shearers and that even the scary thing can be for our good. Because what with what I know about sheep a little bit, you know, They're also shorn because they, you know, bugs can get in there and you know, I don't know, can get gross really hot and it can get yucky really fast. that idea that white fluffy sheep are beautiful and pristine is really just not what sheep are. So they're shorn so that they're kept healthy so that the shepherd can see are there wounds? Is there infection? Is there something wrong that needs to be cared for? And you know, it's a lot of times with, you know,

Maria - It's hot. It can be really hot. Yeah. Yeah.

Valerie- What, John 15 says about, you know, I am the vine, you are the branches. And they're talking about pruning. Like a few years ago, I was going through just a hard time and got pointing me to this verse and I just was pruning a bush in my backyard and I found a wasp nest and we have a lot of kids, excuse me, a lot of kids in our backyard often. And so I was like, well, if I hadn't trimmed this tree, I would not have found that wasps nest and kids in the neighborhood could have gotten stung and I don't know if they're allergic or not. And so it could have gone really bad, really fast. And I love that about thinking about our shepherd and thinking about, know, sometimes it may not seem like the best thing that we're walking in, but God's working in it. He has a reason for it and that he's going to, he has good plans for us, even if we have to walk through a valley of the shadows of death for a little while. He's still going to come on the other side and take care of us. And I love that about Barnaby's story and communicating that to young kids.

Maria - Yeah, that is, I mean, there's so much that I think you could go with like different ways with this. And that's what I love about being able to do storytelling is being able to fit little things in there like that. So yes.

Valerie - That's sweet. Now you mentioned an activity book. What do you have in your activity page for Barnaby?

Maria - Yeah, so my publisher and I came up with, now I'm thinking, what did we put in there? we did like a, I think we did like a match, a matching game where like a memory. So we did little cards where the different matching, the small shepherd and different things of Barnaby. I think we did like a little board game as well. So yeah, that's all, that's actually all getting ready. I'm getting ready for that for my next newsletter I think I'm going to be offering that as a free bonus for anyone who is subscribed so yeah you can get that

Valerie - Very neat. Now what can we expect next from you, Maria?

Maria - So I'm working on a bunch of different, I have a few picture books out there that are on submission and I'm actually, working on some middle grade novels as well. I'm sort of in a couple planning sort of one that I'm not sure if it might be a mystery or not. And then I'm sort of in the revision that my agent's actually already seen this other one. So she wanted some revision. We'll see, I'm hoping to get those onto submission and we'll see what happens with that.

Valerie - Think what is it with authors? You're always working on something, right? Small, long, everywhere in between, always working on something, too fun. Well, you mentioned your newsletter and where can people find out how to join that and find out more about you?

Maria - Yes, yes. Absolutely. So my website is www.mariaantoniawrites.com and yes, you can sign up for my newsletter. I have other freebies on there as well that people can download for free and it has all the links to my books and just information about me and all sorts of things.

Valerie -And think I even saw Speedy the Kid pictured on your website also.

Maria - Speed of the Kid came out a couple years ago as a magazine story and yes, that was a fun, it turned out well. that's exciting.

Valerie - We will make sure to have those links in the descriptions for our listeners for sure. Thank you for joining me today, Maria.

Maria -Thank you. Well, thank you for having me, Valerie. It's been fun to be back.

Valerie - It's always fun to chat and I love Barnaby and can't wait to see more. And thank you for joining Maria and me on this episode of the Bookworthy podcast. Check the show notes for any books or links that we discussed and let us know in the comments what's your favorite thing about summer. And be sure to check out Bookworthy's Summer Reading Challenge. You and your kids can compete and complete the challenge. I know it. Check out the Summer Reading Challenge at www.ValerieFentress.com and be sure to like and subscribe, so we can discover more great books together.

Happy reading.