Am I Becoming a Children’s Book Writer?  … I Think So!

Tuesday 12 November 2024

I thought I was being funny, answering King Arthur’s earnest question: “What’s next after your Katyn book?” 

I quipped, “a children’s book… (cue in my laughter) … no, better yet… a children’s coloring book (continued laughter).”  King Arthur wasn’t laughing.  I didn’t understand.  I thought I was witty.  Honestly, I hadn’t thought beyond my Katyn manuscript. 

When I neared completing the first draft of my the Katyn manuscript, I was tired, both physically and mentally.  I couldn’t see beyond Katyn.  At that moment, I couldn’t imagine starting a new project, starting from the beginning, and starting out so unprepared and unsure.  Writing my Katyn manuscript tested me in every way.  I gained a deeper respect for those artists like: Herman Melville, Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Sylvia Plath, and so many others who truly suffered for and due to their art. 

King Arthur’s reaction to my supposed joke was: “what a brilliant idea; yes!”  He exclaimed, “YES!” again, indicating to me that he was serious. I wasn’t.  I didn’t know what to say or do.  Deeply curious about my self-perceived faux book proposal, he drew his chair closer to mine, eagerly awaiting my assumed working ideas on this supposed new project of mine. 

The problem was: I had no new project proposal, and certainly, if I had one, it wouldn’t have been a children’s book. 

I tried again, repeating the apparently unfunny joke.  He didn’t laugh; instead, he only redoubled his expression, even adding, “you need to do this.” 

I stopped laughing, feeling embarrassed that my joke fell flat.  Everything about his demeanor insisted that my spontaneous, very unconscious exclamation must be taken seriously by me.  For King Arthur, it was no laughing matter.

I stared at King Arthur’s face, attempting to psychoanalyze him.  “Is he serious?” I thought.  “He’s the one being unfunny, not me,” I thought to myself.  When I muttered a disbelieving “No,” he just looked at me as though I had no other choice but to write a children’s book.  My answer of “children’s book” was so self-evident to him.  For me, a children’s book not only was preposterous but impossible.  Me?  A college professor who taught war crimes and heavy philosophical and political dilemmas was… to write a children’s book? 

For King Arthur, a children’s book as my next project was an inevitable and necessary outgrowth of being in the darkness of war crimes and literary existential crises far too long.  I have been working on the Katyn manuscript since July 2007, the moment I stepped foot on West Point’s historic grounds.  Sixteen years had gone since I plunged myself nearly to the bottom of the abyss of the Katyn Massacres, chasing after behemoths, leviathans, and other dangerous creatures existing in those deep waters. 

Moreover, for King Arthur, he understood that writing a children’s book would serve as a therapeutic counterbalance to the dark material I had wrestled with since my graduate school days.  If I include the time that I gave to writing my Herman Melville/boredom dissertation with to drafting my Katyn manuscript, then I devoted twenty-three years to being in the depths! 

Even years before he died, Steve warned me that I may be plunging myself into the dark waters for too long without respite.  Even Ania worried I may be harming myself psychologically, emotionally, and mentally for swimming in those waters for too long.  Even Ethan and Nicholas sensed something may not be all well with me for diving and rising too quickly from those depths.  And King Arthur inferred from all of my existential symptoms that I should, must turn my bad joke into a good, healthy, and creative decision.      

However, while sitting on King Arthur’s Texas porch, this decision to write a children’s book made no sense to me.  “Who, me?  Doom and gloom Dan is going to write a children’s book!” I cried out.  King Arthur raised an eyebrow, smiled, and tilted his head, miming a “Yea” look.  “You’re serious!” I gasped. 

What I thought was a momentary self-effacing, ironic poking fun at my own “doom and gloom” tendencies in my teaching, scholarship, and perhaps even in my personality was slowly becoming a breakthrough, one that King Arthur witnessed transpiring and clearly supported full-heartedly. 

King Arthur saw more clearly what my unfunny joke truly was instead.  For him, a children’s book wasn’t a possibility, not a “maybe,” but an idea that must now be worked on.  This idea was something he wouldn’t forget.  From that moment onward, he would remind me: “So, what did you come up with?”

I wasn’t at all prepared to think about children’s book ideas.  I still needed to work on revising the Katyn manuscript, which took an additional year.  As I type this blog, I still need to update the editorial corrections to the manuscript before sending book proposals to the publishing world.

When I shared this life-changing moment—yes, it is life-changing because, as King Arthur puts it: “the dawn is rising.  It’s no longer night-time for you… You need to live in the sun now”—with other friends, I hoped that they would find the humor, thereby convincing me that writing a children’s book was silly and that I should stick to what I know best: “dark” themes.  I thought if they laughed, I would persuade myself that I was crazy for not thinking more carefully answering King Arthur’s question.  They, too, like King Arthur, didn’t see or hear the humor; it wasn’t a laughing matter.  It was no joke. 

Ever since that June 2023 talk with King Arthur, I have been warming up to this idea of writing a children’s book.  The first overcome hurdle was: myself; yes, I can write that kind of a book.  After all, I like scholarly and artistic challenges.  I consider writing children’s books to be the most difficult genre of all to write in. 

Writing about the existential dangers that Melville’s literary characters encountered while wrestling with boredom was intellectually and personally demanding.  I became more philosophical.  Midway through the dissertation writing process, I felt that academically my Melville boredom project was going to be the most arduous intellectual project I would ever devise.  This insight was shortsighted, and quickly (even thankfully) subsided.   

Then came my “Eureka” moment.  During the semester when I defended my Melville dissertation, I wanted to end my graduate studies by teaching a special course.  Given how competitive teaching an American literature course was in the department—many American literature graduate students all wanted to teach basically the same course—I determined to teach something completely different: the literature of the Holocaust.  No one had taught this course in years.  And, more importantly, no one thought to do so again.  What inspired me to teach a literature of the Holocaust course is covered in my Katyn manuscript, but I think I should dive more deeply into it here. 

While teaching that Holocaust course, I realized that my Melville dissertation was no longer difficult.  I found something that made Moby Dick look small: war crimes.  I even won a summer fellowship for Holocaust educators and scholars.  The universe seemed to agree with my new, even radical shift in subject specialty and direction.  Then, the most decisive moment in my career and intellectual development and scholarship happened: working at West Point.  Feeling and responding to the inspiration of West Point’s spirit in residence, Tadeusz Kościuszko, I knew the moment I heard his command to work on the Katyn Massacres would challenge me, pushing me to the brink. 

Initially the Katyn book was to be a straightforward and very scholarly book on war crimes, realpolitik, and war culture.  Only when I recognized the importance of two life-changing experiences (my FSB interrogation and the racist attack on one of my cadets in Russia while studying the Katyn Massacres), I realized I would be writing a memoir, not a “boring” academic book. 

Moreover, I didn’t understand or sense what such a project would entail, or how such a project would change me, and more importantly, how this kind of project could darken and even hurt me.  After all, writing about evil doesn’t uplift one’s humanity or brighten one’s disposition, both as a scholar and a private individual. 

Although I am not the type of college professor who teaches about daffodils, meadows, and raindrops, I realize that not all children’s books are about talking puppies or candy canes.  What draws me closer to accepting that not only can I write a children’s book but should write one next is the idea of happy endings.  The skeptic in me immediately shouts about tragedies, but the optimist in me also is speaking loudly about possibilities and joys.  And I should start paying more attention to him as an artist.