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Orders keep coming in for Salina Yoon’s children’s books

July 15, 2014
Salina Yoon at a book signing event at Children's Book World, in Los Angeles, on June 28th, 2014. (Courtesy of Salina Yoon)

Salina Yoon at a book signing event at Children’s Book World, in Los Angeles, on June 28, 2014. (Courtesy of Salina Yoon)

By Tae Hong

Salina Yoon’s 5-year-old son went outside to play one day and returned home with a pinecone. It should have a box to live in, he said, and will you please cut a little blanket for it as well?

It prompted Yoon, a prolific 42-year-old author and illustrator of more than 150 novelty books, to write a story about a penguin who embarks on a journey of friendship with — you guessed it — a pinecone.

“Penguin and Pinecone,” Yoon’s first picture book, published in 2012, was lauded by reviewers and readers alike for capturing a “genuinely loving heart.” Publishers, charmed by the story and its simple, bold illustrations, requested more. And more is coming — she’s now working on her fifth Penguin book and an early reader series after having introduced a new character in April for a new Bear series in “Found.”

"Penguin and Pinecone." (Courtesy of Salina Yoon)

“Penguin and Pinecone,” published by Bloomsbury. (Courtesy of Salina Yoon)

Yoon finds that the best art is the kind that makes people happy. She found it as a junior designer with a publishing company out of college, where the process of creating novelty books — short, interactive pieces for young children — so enamored her that she began making them herself after quitting the job and getting married to Christopher Polentz, a fellow artist.

In their San Diego home, she has the support of two readers in her target audience: her boys, now aged 9 and 10.

It was while she was cranking out 10 to 12 novelty books a year that the transition to picture books like the Penguin and Bear series took place. As she found herself reading more and more to her then-5-and-6-year-old kids, the thought came naturally: why not write one?

And now that they’re older, they’re her built-in critics.

Their feedback to her questions — Does this make sense? How do you feel about this character? Is this the ending you hoped for? — is invaluable.

“They don’t hold back,” Yoon said. “Because I’m his mom, [my older son] doesn’t worry about hurting my feelings. He’s very honest, and that’s what I appreciate. It’s the unfiltered critique that I like so much.”

“Penguin and Pinecone” may have begun as a partial challenge to herself to push herself and to try to write a 40-page book instead of a novelty book’s usual 10, but it’s spread worldwide, with translated books published in, among others, Portuguese, French, Italian and Korean.

Although she says it was completely by coincidence that the book got picked up by Korean publisher Gimm-young at an international book fair, the fact that her work has resonated with so many different cultures is as a pleasant a surprise as any.

"Found." (Courtesy of Salina Yoon)

“Found,” published by Bloomsbury. (Courtesy of Salina Yoon)

Yoon’s love of children’s books is borne more from her affinity for “cute art” and less from the sort of childhood nostalgia that might be expected of a picture book author.

As a 4-year-old who had just immigrated to Los Angeles from Korea, she never saw classics like “Goodnight Moon” and “The Velveteen Rabbit” sitting on bookshelves in her home. Her parents, for one, could not read or speak English.

“I don’t have that nostalgia that comes with looking at a classic children’s book like other American-born adults might have,” Yoon said. “But because I couldn’t read or speak English at the time, I looked at the pictures more. I paid more attention to the art and it made me want to draw more, because that was the way I could communicate in the English-speaking world.”

Graphic design and illustration were natural choices for her, but she soon found that her bright, “cute” style of art, perfect for children’s books, were seen with distaste by her classmates studying magazine and newspaper editorial illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

“They looked down upon it, sort of as frivolous. If anyone ever talked about children’s books, it was always about how no one can make a living doing that. You only do it for the love of it,” she said.

Yoon has proven them wrong — most recently, she joined the faculty of this year’s Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators summer conference, which will be held Aug. 1 to 4 at the Century Plaza Hotel in L.A., in an effort to share and discuss children’s book creation with attendees.

“I’m one of those people that, when someone tells me I can’t do something, I want to do it more,” she said. “I have a pattern of trying to prove people wrong if I really believe in something, and in this particular case, well, if I’m really passionate about it, if I really love it and work really hard at it, then why can’t I make a living off of it?”