Melissa Kruger’s Wherever You Go, I Want You To Know has been a staff favorite at the Westminster Bookstore. It’s a beautifully illustrated rhyming book that teaches children that loving and following Jesus is the most important thing in life whatever they do and wherever they go.
We interviewed Melissa on the Afterword Podcast after her book came out, and wanted to share a lightly edited excerpt of their interview here. Host Jonny Gibson (who wrote another staff favorite, The Moon is Always Round) and Melissa talked about the inspiration behind Wherever You Go, I Want You To Know and gave a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at the writing of both their children’s books.
JONNY: Where'd you get the idea to write Wherever You Go, I Want You To Know?
MELISSA: My daughter was heading off to college. She was a junior in high school. The kind of strange part of the story is I broke my ankle and I was home from church one Sunday, so the house was quiet– which is rare. I was journaling and I had just finished praying for her. There's a lot of pressure on high school students: Where they'll go to school, the grades they're making, how they're going to score on these tests. And you start thinking as a parent, “What did I teach them? It all went so fast.” “Did I teach them how to clean the toilet?” “Did I teach them to cook anything?” “Do they know anything about life?” And what settled in my soul is: Have I told her the one thing–doesn’t matter what she does, doesn’t matter where she goes– does she just know: All I really care about is that she loves Jesus. Does she love Jesus? So it kind of welled up from thinking about my child going off to college.
JONNY: It’s got a lovely title: “Wherever You Go, I Want You to Know.” I noticed the alliteration “wherever” and “want,” and the end rhyme “go” and “know,” then the five syllables balancing it out. So it's a perfect little refrain which you repeat throughout the book and that's what makes it so memorable. Did it take you long to come up with that? Or was that something that came inspirational and quickly to you?
MELISSA: Actually, it’s funny. [That refrain] was the very first thing I had written. I don't know anything about writing poetry, so it was just the thing that came to me, this little rhyme. It just sounded right, if that makes sense. But I didn't really plan it.
JONNY: It's a lovely little book and it's poetic all the way through. So did it take you long to make everything rhyme all the way through?
MELISSA: I had marked out and written different bits [in this little journal], and it just kind of came together. I wasn't thinking of a children's book when I was writing this. You know, I found myself doing that through the years. We actually lost a child to miscarriage and I wrote a poem for that child. Someone had told me, “Find a way to mark that child in your heart.” You don't have a grave; how do you honor that child? So I woke up at two in the morning when I knew I was losing the baby and I wrote this poem. It was called “Child of the Womb.” It just came out, and that's kind of what happened in this instance. It was the groaning of the heart and the putting forth of what we think. It just kind of happened.
JONNY: I actually think a lot of writing is actually inspired– not in the sense of God-breathed, but I really do think good writing is often something that's inspired in the best sense of the word, where you just get that urge to write something down–that feeling, “I got to get this down,” “I need to write about this particular thing.” Even though it goes through many drafts before it's fine-tuned, the original inspiration is what actually makes it so good.
JONNY: What do your kids, Emma, John, and Kate, think of it?
They've had so much fun with it because we did start editing it [together]. Katie Morgan at The Good Book Company helped, saying, “Can you add in some things about life circumstances, [like] failing or succeeding?” So I remember one car ride, I was getting the kids to help me. I was like, “How does this sound?” We just had so much fun as a family working on it together. They were laughing at different parts and so it's been really fun to get to do with them.
JONNY: There are beautiful illustrations by Isobel Lundie. Did you have much input to that? Tell us what the process is like between the author and the illustrator.
MELISSA: So they sent me a few different illustrations from a few different illustrators, and when I saw hers, I just loved it. I loved how it was whimsical and fun. The first picture I saw was this picture of the king. “You could cook meals for a king” was the line, and the little girl was holding all this food but her foot's kicked out and there's a teacup sitting on the foot. I was like, “Oh this is perfect.” It just was so cute and whimsical, and I love that about it.
MELISSA: I know you did a kid's book as well. Did you work with just one illustrator through that process?
JONNY: A bit like you, they sent me a couple of examples and I said I want Joe Hox (who had illustrated for New Growth Press) because the kids’ book I did was a true story about us losing our daughter Leila, and a conversation with [my son] Ben and me. So I wanted me and Ben to look like us, and [my wife] Jackie to look like she did.
Joe was really good. He was so sensitive to the whole progression of the pregnancy, but he really built up the excitement that Ben was expecting. (For example, Ben had a T-shirt on: “I'm gonna to be a big brother.”) Joe just added touches that we never asked him to, but we thought he was so sensitive to all the expectations we had–that we were about to have a little girl join the family, and then she didn't in the live sense of the term “family.” But he was excellent. There was one time he had me wearing slightly pink pajamas, so I had to ask him to change those because I thought, “My mates are never going to let me live this down if they see me in pink pajamas.” He was great and there were some things where I said, “Could you fix this or change that?” He was very flexible.
We actually have a funeral scene at the back of the book because we had a funeral for Leila [with a] white coffin at the front. I sent Joe a photo of my family and friends who were at the graveside and I said, “Would you mind putting people in that look like this?” So basically at the back of the book, it's our whole extended family drawn into the church scene. So that's really nice for all of us who were there to remember that day which was bittersweet as we said our final farewell.
I think an illustrator of a kids’ book really makes it. Your poem is really well done, but if you didn't have good illustrations the book would sort of flop. The words would fly, but the pictures would just not capture. Whereas Wherever You Go, I Want You To Know has got both. It's got great words and great illustrations.
MELISSA: It was so surprising because some of the things Isobel couldn't have known– there's a picture of a boy with a big zucchini or something, but my son loves to grow watermelons and he will come in with these huge watermelons. And it was so funny because she couldn't have known that, then you see it in the picture and you're like, “That's perfect!” It's really fun. I found it a more fun process than any other book because pictures are a lot better than editing words.
JONNY: Do you have any other kids’ books planned as a result of producing your first one?
I have an idea for one that I've discussed with a friend and so we're thinking through it. [Editor’s note: Melissa has had another children’s book come out since this interview titled His Grace Is Enough: How God Makes It Right When We've Got It Wrong and Lucy and the Saturday Surprise.]
I love children's books. My mom was so great– I had books around my house all growing up, wonderful books that stick to me. There's this book called The Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings and it's really a book about envy. I find it interesting that that was my first book. The moral formation that happens through children's book is pretty profound. It wasn't a book in the Bible, but it was just a story that told right and wrong. I think there's a real place for that in the Christian world, just telling the stories that make us love what is good and hate what is evil without necessarily being a Bible story.
Watch the full conversation here: The Afterword [Episode 4: Melissa Kruger]
Watch a full reading of Wherever You Go, I Want You To Know:
