Writing for Those with Disabilities: Author Interview with Tanya Saunders

You began writing children's picture books due to the hearing loss of one of your own children and founded AVID Language to publish books for deaf children. How would you describe the difference between your picture books and standard picture books?

The key difference is that all our books feature main characters with hearing loss, some of whom wear assistive hearing devices like cochlear implants or hearing aids and use spoken language, while others communicate using sign language (and some do both). 

The books ensure that children with hearing loss can see themselves represented in books, which helps to build their self-esteem and sense of identity. The books also play an important role in creating awareness among other children of both the opportunities and challenges faced by deaf children in today’s world – that’s why our strapline is: “Inclusive books for children with (and without) hearing loss.”

Another key difference between standard picture books and ours, is that we integrate speech and language development strategies into our stories, which help parents to implement and children to practice what they have learned in therapy without even realising it. Such strategies include audition before vision (hearing the word before seeing the image that it describes), practicing auditory closure (where the adult reading the story would pause, prompting the child to complete the sentence) and strengthening auditory memory (the ability to recall multiple details of what they have heard.) 

Our books, all written by parents of deaf children and/or by teachers of the deaf also support the development of social and cognitive skills (particularly emotional intelligence and theory of mind) – all wrapped up in colourful, engaging and aspirational stories featuring fun and positive characters with hearing loss just like them, so children don’t even realise they are learning as they go along.

How long did it take you to write that first book? How many rewrites did you do?
Tricky question, because when I first started writing my books, I was not intending for them to be published. When I was teaching my daughter, who is profoundly deaf and wears cochlear implants, to listen and speak, I discovered there were not enough children’s books available featuring positive role models or characters with hearing loss…so I started writing homemade books for her, which not only featured characters with cochlear implants like her, but also integrated strategies to help her focus on her speech and language goals at the time. 

For example, when she was struggling to articulate the sound “b”, I wrote her a story full of words beginning with “b”, because the more often you hear a sound, the sooner you will be able to say it. To cut a long story short, when my daughter’s Auditory Verbal therapist saw these homemade books, she asked if I would consider publishing them so that more children could benefit from them. The rest, they say, is history… but yes, once I decided to start publishing the books, they definitely needed polishing up and all of them have gone through quite a few edits along the way.

How did you go about finding an illustrator?
Starting out with a budget of precisely zero, initially I did all the illustration work myself. I have a self-taught (and constantly learning!) graphic design background and did a lot of writing in my previous career (though not for children), so I tried to pull together all the skills from my former life and combine them in my new publishing venture. Now that we are a little further down the line, I have started to commission professional illustrators to work on many of my books, including to re-illustrate some earlier ones, although I still illustrate the Adventures of Ling Ling Bird series myself.

For my book, Mr. Mellow Like Yellow, which is a celebration of colour and exploration of different personal preferences, I discovered the illustrator, Lorena Villegas-Cid, at a market stall in my hometown. She was selling her bright, colourful, and humorous paintings. When I saw them, I just knew she was the right person to bring the irrepressible and eccentric Mr. Mellow to Life. When I asked Lorena if she wanted to illustrate my book, she almost said no, as she had never illustrated a book before. I reassured her that I was also just learning as I went along, and anyway, I did not want illustrations that looked like they had come off an assembly line. Happily, in the end, she said yes and together we have created the most delightfully quirky book!

I found Faith Broomfield-Payne, an enormously talented illustrator, on Facebook, also in a moment of serendipity as I wasn’t actually looking for an illustrator right at that time. I had started working on the manuscripts for my Farmyard Heroes series of books (C.I. Quest and Icky Sticky Stuck! published so far), when I saw one of Faith’s artworks posted online, and immediately I knew that she was the right match for my books, so I messaged her and we started working together last year. So, for me so far, finding illustrators has been a combination of luck and going with my gut feeling. 

What was the hardest part of putting together your books?
I really enjoy the process of putting together my own books, as well as the books of the other authors I work with. We are now translating our books into other languages, too (Spanish and Danish so far) and this presents exciting and new challenges. Translation is an art in itself – it is important not to be too literal in the translations, but rather to stay true to the essence of the stories and the flow of the language, while not losing the speech and language strategies integrated therein and still keeping everything within the acceptable length for children’s picture books. It’s usually all too easy to write too much, but much harder to cut things back.

How much do you do the work of your books now?

I still take the lead in doing the final layouts for all my own books as well as for the books I publish on behalf of other authors and illustrators. Now that we have a group of authors publishing under the AVID Language umbrella, we often act as each other’s editors and pre-publication critics. This is such a constructive and fun environment to work in, especially as we all share the same goal but have very different styles in our writing and illustration choices. I am also lucky to have an amazing business partner who brings a different perspective to all our projects and, being bilingual Spanish-English, takes the lead on the Spanish side of the company, which has its own dedicated website and identity.

What’s the best encouragement you’ve had from readers?
It’s hard to choose only one example, but as the mother of a deaf child who knows from personal experience how truly important it is for our children to see themselves represented in books, it is always the feedback from other parents which is the most moving and validates everything I am trying to do with AVID Language. 

Here’s one comment that stands out, which was written about my bestselling book, Ling Ling Bird Hears with his Magic Ears: "My two-year old son finally GOT IT and kept pointing to the birdy’s magic ears and then to his own and getting so excited! Representation matters, y’all… (For anyone wondering, many of our children call their cochlear implant devices their “magic ears”.)

Marketing is the biggest key to getting sales. What is the best marketing source you've used that has produced more sales rather than just clicks?
Again, we don’t have a marketing budget to speak of, so we rely a lot on social media. Facebook is mainly where we reach fellow parents, and LinkedIn is where we reach professionals working with children who are deaf, but Instagram is becoming increasingly influential for us too. Because we work in such a specific niche, word of mouth is extremely important and is helping us to grow, small step by small step. 

We gain so much satisfaction from the fact our company is growing simply because people like our books and not because we have tons of money to throw at marketing, and it gives us great credibility, but it is also tough, because there is so much more we could do, if we had a big marketing budget, which would allow us to grow much faster. We certainly have no shortage of ideas for ways to grow our company in future, not just with new books but with other resources too.

What do you know now about publishing you wished you had known sooner?
I often wish I had started publishing a long time ago, as I really feel like I have found my “thing”, so rather than there being something I wish I had known sooner, I wish I had started sooner … but I am also aware that my prior experience in other areas brings important elements and skills to my publishing work, which I may not have had, had if I started publishing earlier … everything has its time. Not coming from a formal publishing background, I have to some extent made up my own formula as I’ve gone along, learning along the way and doing things in a way that works well for us as a small niche publisher.

What is the best writing advice you’ve received or could give?
With children’s picture books, which is a highly over-saturated market, I believe it’s important to find a specific niche and to ensure that you can authentically cater to that niche, by which I mean that you have real lived experience of that subject area. (In my case, for example, I am the mother of a deaf child, and all my writing is informed by the experience of parenting her alongside her typically hearing twin sister.) This helps to bring visibility and credibility to your work, which otherwise could get lost as a tiny droplet in the vast ocean of children’s picture books already on the market.

Are there any other points about writing you would like to add?
I think many writers are introverts by nature and so, while getting a book published is what they dream about and work for, day and night, it can also be a terrifying experience – putting their creation out there in the public eye for all to see – making them feel vulnerable and exposed. Despite this, and hard as it can be sometimes, I think it’s important to stay true to yourself and your own style and vision. Be your own writer and people will respond to that authenticity.

What is the next book coming out? Can you give me some details?
My next book, which is coming out this month, is called Ling Ling Bird Loves Christmas (the latest in my Adventures of Ling Ling Bird series). The book provides a fun and engaging way to pre-learn Christmas vocabulary before the festivities begin, while celebrating the holiday season through the five senses as Ling Ling Bird (who is deaf and wears cochlear implants) and his family explore the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures of Christmas. This book will be joined by three more new titles over the coming months, including the absolutely charming, Some Fairies Wear Hearing Aids, a magical story written and illustrated by Penny Gill, a wonderfully multitalented teacher of the deaf.

That's all for today's interview. Even if you don't know a child who is hearing impaired, I hope you'll check out these books and share the links with others who could find these books helpful.
Website: https://www.avidlanguage.com/books 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/avid.language/