Karen Kappen
Author
The writer speaks;
the poet sings.
From a very early age, Karen enjoyed playing with words. At the age of three, having already been taught how to write her name, she began rearranging the letters and writing it backwards. Elementary school reinforced a love of reading and writing, and formally introduced her to poetry, resulting in her first poems, including “Stray Dog,” which she wrote in 6th grade. It also revealed a perfectionistic streak that would result in not only a good deal of angst but also a helpful attention to detail and love for exactness in her creative pursuits.
Middle and high school resulted in her first mortifying attempts at writing a novel as well as an assortment of poems. While she enjoyed reading and analyzing poetry in English class, she ultimately expressed her exasperation with this clinical dissection in a poem called “Analyzing Poems.” Meanwhile, her love for wordplay found another outlet in various word games, especially Boggle, which she is infamous for winning even when scored against the sum total of her opponents’ points.
Having begun piano lessons in second grade and taken part in nearly every musical opportunity offered through school, Karen’s musical competence was developing alongside her creative writing. She elected to study music education at Clarks Summit University (formerly Baptist Bible College). This advanced study of musical structures, along with her piano professor’s careful efforts to teach her the art of making piano music sing and dance, shaped much of the way that she approaches the writing of poetry.
When her first child was born, Karen discovered a surprising amount of time where her hands were busy but her mind was free, and she began devoting some of this time to writing. During this time, she also perused some of the poetry that had won recent national contests and was disappointed and disgusted with what she found. The iconic poetry crafted by the skilled wordsmiths of the past has all but disappeared in today’s academic circles. Those classic lines of verse, often defined by their structures- the form, meter, rhyme, and the careful selection and placement of words necessary to speak earnestly within these narrow constraints- had a cadence that was part of the stories that they told. The poems lauded by academics today as “sophisticated” and “compelling” despise the delicate articulation of truth, moral, or beauty; are consumed with sensationalizing the popular contentious ideas of our culture; and forsake order in the pursuit of innovation and originality. The lyrical poetry of the past has been replaced with meaningless but glorified texts that have been granted permission to disobey the conventions of both poetry and prose.
Pushed over the edge by a winning poem that consisted of a few variations on the word “chirp” physically spaced out on the page to represent birdsong, Karen channeled an uncharacteristic surge of vexation into a single piece of free-verse satire entitled “This Poem Shouldn’t Win Any Contests,” and then abandoned the supposedly scholarly world of poetry. While wrestling with the value of creating poetry, she took a sabbatical from writing, focusing her literary criticism on quite the opposite material, her son’s board books.
Though some of the children’s literature that she encountered proved to be reasonably good, and the occasional book was exceptional, Karen observed that much of what is being put in print for children is quite poor. Many books lack art that is beautiful and inspirational for a child and lack stories that have any substance or benefit for a young learner. Within about a year of rejecting the academic world of poetry, Karen decided to pursue writing for children, having realized that there is an opportunity for her to help meet the need for excellent children’s literature. With self-publishing options becoming increasingly accessible, there appeared to be a path forward that wouldn’t bear the limitations of traditional publishing, so Karen teamed up with promising young artist Ian Fetterhoff to create their debut book, Penelope Piper and Other Tongue Twisters, which will be launched in 2025.
To explore a world as you invent it is to make art;
to weave story and art together is to illustrate.
Not yet out of high school, Ian’s skill in drawing has already set him apart from his peers, his eight siblings, and all of the normal people who specialize in smiley faces and stick figures. By about four years old, he liked to perfect his coloring pages and regularly filled the family chalkboard with inventive drawings, especially ones of strange architecture and stick people who lived in adobe-styled houses. Inspired by the creativity of Dr. Seuss, among other influences, he started to develop his characteristic style that exists where the possible and the impossible meet- where there’s just enough reality to make it believable and just enough fantasy to make it enchanting.
Though predominantly homeschooled, Ian had one formal art class during 5th grade. His art teacher, an accomplished pencil artist, impressed upon her students that the photograph-quality excellence of her work was achievable for one who wished to learn even though, at the time, it seemed out of reach. Throughout his elementary and middle school years, Ian experimented with various traditional drawing media and styles. As he struggled to achieve life-like depictions, he explored caricature and cartoon.
Within a couple of years, Ian expanded into digital art using a drawing tablet given to him by his parents as a birthday gift. Through constant experimentation and requests for feedback from his family, Ian carefully and somewhat obsessively refined his skill. Like any good learner, he studied the works of what he identifies as the “brotherhood” of artists past and present, and he loves pieces that are rich with meaning- art that makes the viewer think and study it more. In an increasingly postmodern world, he is not always pleased with what he finds. He specifically recalls with disgust one museum experience where a green canvas splashed with purple and dotted with pink had “more digits than a phone number” on the price tag.
As he strives to avoid creating meaningless art, Ian likes to try to make people laugh with his drawings. He introduces unexpected characters and situations and creates scenes alive with implications, like a mug teetering at the edge of a table. He also enjoys creating something that can only exist in its own world, like a machine that operates simply because it is defined as doing so. Merging beauty with whimsy, Ian’s work is the sum of many influences yet uniquely his own.
Having forsaken his earlier dreams of becoming an actor or a pirate, Ian is interested in a much more realistic career as a professional artist. United with author Karen Kappen in their mutual derision for slant rhymes, Ian debuts his first illustrations in Penelope Piper and Other Tongue Twisters, which will be launched in 2025.