Today we are excited to share a guest post from author Nic Yulo,
Out of the Blue!
Read on for more about Nic and Out of the Blue!
Meet Nic Yulo!
Nic Yulo is the author-illustrator of Patch of Sky, as well as a video game writer and film writer-director. She lives in New York City with her pup.
About the Book: Out of the Blue
Coral has big dreams about grand adventures—but it’s hard to go after these big dreams when you’re the smallest in the class and feel completely invisible. During a school trip to the aquarium, Coral finds a kindred spirit in Kraken, a small octopus who knows that being invisible isn’t always a bad thing.
When Coral finds herself in the aquarium after everyone else goes home, she learns that being seen isn’t always about how big you are.
~ Guest Post ~
It’s tough being a kid.
Everyone else seems bigger, older, and smarter. No one takes you seriously. It’s almost as if you don’t take up any space at all. You feel powerless to change the world around you despite the very big dreams that seem to be beating in your chest. The world is so big, but you are small, and when you are faced with all that ‘bigness’, it becomes very easy to forget just how special you are.
I might not be so small anymore, but there are still many reasons to feel small when you live in a big city. Life here is one of visceral and overwhelming proportions. Weaving through narrow streets that break into sprawling avenues or venturing from tightly packed apartments to rows of cloud-piercing skyscrapers, getting lost amidst the fishbowl of sounds, smells, cars, and crowds, can be exhausting. There are moments when you feel invisible, especially when those same big dreams still beat in your chest.
The inspiration for Out of the Blue came from a very enlightening, no pun intended, conversation with my wonderful agent Alexandra Levick. I was working on another narrative project involving oceans and had been compiling research and interesting tidbits I encountered along the way. When the conversation naturally turned to the fascinating world of octopuses, we both agreed that there might be a story to be told. I knew pretty immediately which octopus I wanted to feature—the diminutive Dumbo or Flapjack octopus. What excited me about this tiny octopus, other than its adorable appearance, was the opportunity to play with proportion and scale, ‘smallness’ and ‘bigness’.
Kraken is a deep-sea octopus whose coloring renders him invisible to predators. For Kraken, invisibility is a very necessary survival mechanism—a superpower. Enter Coral, a little girl who has felt invisible her entire life. Coral has always had big dreams, but she is used to being overlooked by her classmates. To her, invisibility is a weakness she can’t seem to shake off. So, she hides, very much like Kraken the octopus does, but much to her detriment.
Both Kraken and Coral are small, particularly when set against the backdrop of the expansive aquarium around them. They find each other on happenstance, and it takes Kraken showing Coral the benefits of his invisibility for her to be able to come out of her shell and recognize the same resilience within herself and what special qualities she has to offer, allowing her to take control of the narrative and finally be seen by her classmates.
Figuring out just how to distill a difficult, almost abstract concept like ‘invisibility’ was tough, but experimenting with inverted color palettes, the use of negative space, and centering bioluminescence as a representation for literal and metaphorical illumination, proved to be a very fun and rewarding process.
I feel like Out of the Blue is a natural companion to my debut picture book, Patch of Sky. Both books feature little girls as they discover a new level of awareness and change their perspective on a pressing issue. Both stories, by the end, have the girls overcoming their limitations and making a positive difference on the world around them, with the help of their precocious animal besties.
It has been an absolute dream come true to work on these stories and be able to imbue STEM concepts in a manner that is digestible for early readers. After reading, I hope everyone leaves these little bits of sky and sea feeling uplifted and ready to take on any challenge that might come their way.
Coral has big dreams. So do I. So do you. And I hope you never forget that regardless of how overwhelming the world might feel or insurmountable the path may seem, you don’t have to feel big to make your dreams a reality. That’s the thing with ‘bigness’. When everything feels so much bigger than you, that only means there’s much to be discovered and so much more to be excited about.
Title: OUT OF THE BLUE
Author/Illustrator: Nic Yulo
Release Date: 07/25/2023
Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers; Penguin Young Readers
ISBN-10: 0593353870
ISBN-13: 9780593353875
Genre: Self-Esteem & Self-Reliance, Animals, Imagination & Play
Age Range: 4-8
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I need this for my son.
This looks beautiful! I’d love to share it with readers at my school.
This book looks great, think my twins would love it!
The cover is fun and I can’t wait to read this book.
Looks like a book I would have adored as a child!