Hoops <\/em>is historical fiction inspired by the true story of a high school girls basketball team from Warsaw, Ind., that had a Cinderella season not long after the 1972 enactment of Title IX. <\/p>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s a graphic novel, a genre Tavares has long admired but never tackled before, and it has, conservatively, 20 times as much artwork as he is used to producing.<\/p>\n\n\n\nChildren\u2019s book illustrator and author Matt Tavares \u201997 poses in his Ogunquit, Maine, studio. He latest book, Hoops<\/em> \u2014 his first graphic novel \u2014 is inspired by the true Cinderella story of a girls high school basketball team in mid-1970s Indiana and its fight against gender inequality in the early days of Title IX. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nPicture books, his usual medium, are typically only 32 pages long, and often, there might be a single drawing or painting that covers two of those pages at a time. Hoops <\/em>is 224 pages long and as with most graphic novels, often has several frames on a single page. That meant Tavares had to generate a lot of art. \u201cProbably like a thousand pictures,\u201d Tavares says.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere\u2019s nothing boastful in his tone (but with Tavares you get the sense, instantly, that he\u2019s never going to be a boaster). It\u2019s more like a seasoned marathoner telling you about their first 100-mile run. You know they prepared for it and they wanted to do it, and yet still, it was grueling. And maybe on some level, even they <\/em>can\u2019t believe they got through it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cDefinitely there were some days where it felt sort of scary and terrifying that I didn\u2019t know what I was doing,\u201d Tavares says, sitting in his kitchen in the southern Maine town of Ogunquit. It’s a late summer day, and he is in the final proofreading phase with Candlewick Press, his longtime publisher, for Hoops<\/em>, slated to arrive close on the heels of the 50th anniversary of Title IX. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve been doing picture books for a long time, and I love making picture books, but this was like, this…\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nHis voice trails off as he ponders how hard the process was but if you filled the space the words might be: Really. Hard. Thing. \u201cI almost couldn\u2019t believe they were letting me do this,\u201d Tavares says. \u201cLike, I have a family to support, this needs to be good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTwo hundred-plus pages of all artwork,\u201d says his friend and fellow children\u2019s book author, Chris Van Dusen (author of picture books like The Circus Ship <\/em>and Down to the Sea with Mr. Magee<\/em>). \u201cIt is just crazy. But he is passionate about his artwork and this story. I kept saying, \u2018You are a better man than I.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\nTavares didn\u2019t start the project with intentions to make a graphic novel. But he wanted to do justice to an important story, one about gender equality in sports. In 2016, when he first learned about the 1976 Warsaw Tigers, he\u2019d been spending \u201ccountless hours\u201d watching his two young daughters, Ava, now at Bentley College, and Molly, now at Wells High School, play basketball. \u201cIt was definitely something that felt personal to me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n
Tavares\u2019 graphic novel, Hoops<\/em>, dramatizes the struggle for gender equality in high school sports. (Candlewick Press)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nHe\u2019d discovered the Tigers and their star player, Judi Warren, in the pages of the National Book Award finalist We Were There, Too! Young People in U.S. History<\/em>, by Phillip Hoose. In the early 1970s, \u201cmost schools had sports programs for boys but very little to offer girls,\u201d Hoose writes in the 2001 book. Basketball-crazy Indiana had its huge statewide high school basketball tournament, made famous by the 1986 movie Hoosiers <\/em>\u2014 but just for boys. It wasn\u2019t until 1975, by coincidence the year Tavares was born, that the impacts of Title IX permeated Indiana to the point where a statewide competition for girls basketball was considered a necessity.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEven then, at Warsaw High, the girls team was hardly a priority. The \u201cLady Tigers\u201d had neither uniforms nor a bus to take them to games. They had to practice at the grade school (at dinner time), and when they asked the boys\u2019 basketball coach for equal access to the gym, he told them they\u2019d have to be able to fill the gym with fans for that to happen. Then they went on to (spoiler alert) win the state championship.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n
This page from Hoops <\/em>recalls when the boys’ coach told the girls’ team that they could not use the high school gym until “you can fill it” with fans. (Candlewick Press)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nWith Hoose\u2019s blessing, Tavares contacted and interviewed Judi Warren, and through her, several of her Tigers teammates. Their stories felt rich, filled with details and a thread of persistence and true love of the sport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tavares\u2019 work in general tends to the historical and biographical, with a speciality in origin stories. In Growing Up Pedro<\/em>, he told the story of Pedro Martinez\u2019 journey from the Dominican Republic to baseball\u2019s Hall of Fame. In Henry Aaron\u2019s Dream<\/em>, readers learn about Aaron\u2019s childhood in Alabama, through his time in the Negro Leagues to his Major League Baseball debut. He illustrated a book about the vision for and completion of the Statue of Liberty and wrote and illustrated another about the Great Blondin, the 19th-century tightrope walker who crossed Niagara Falls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n“What makes Matt great is how true to himself he is in his work. He puts himself into every page.\u201d<\/p>\nMo Willems<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nTavares\u2019 first book was Zachary\u2019s Ball<\/em>, published in 2000. A revised version of his Bates studio art senior thesis, the book became a regional sensation, chosen by the Boston Red Sox for a reading day event and named one of the 100 classic New England children\u2019s books by Yankee <\/em>magazine. He has written and illustrated nine more of his own books, along with illustrating a dozen more authors. They\u2019re all intimate works, every face and detail lovingly conceived of and executed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cMatt\u2019s work is great not because of the detail or the research or the compositions that he creates,\u201d says Mo Willems, the author of such treasured children\u2019s series as Knuffle Bunny <\/em>and Elephant and Piggie<\/em>. \u201cThose are the things that make him good. What makes Matt great is how true to himself he is in his work. He puts himself into every page.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn 1997, Tavares reviews an illustration from his senior thesis in studio art. Tavares revised the thesis to create his first book, Zachary\u2019s Ball<\/em>, published in 2000, which was named one of the 100 classic New England children\u2019s books by Yankee <\/em>magazine. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nBy 2018, two years into the project, Tavares realized he needed more pages for Hoops<\/em>. \u201cThe story he had in mind really suited a longer format,\u201d says his friend Ryan T. Higgins, a Maine author who Tavares mentored when he was still at the self-publishing stage (today Higgins is a New York Times <\/em>bestseller, five volumes into his Mother Bruce <\/em>series). Higgins and other writers in their friend group encouraged Tavares to try a graphic novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTavares was already seriously intrigued by the genre, especially by the way his daughters Ava and Molly were reading them. \u201cJust devouring them, and then reading them again.\u201d In his childhood, the only graphic novels were essentially comic books, and looked upon as some lower form of literature. Now they were widely respected and they could also reach a broader audience, appealing to older and younger kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But how to go about it? He read and reread Understanding Comics <\/em>by Scott McCloud. With the word balloons and timestamps and multiple panels per page, he decided he needed to change his artistic approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cI felt like the art needs to focus more on clarity and just simplicity. Just tell the story and get the information across. As opposed to in my picture book art, where I would try to get into every little detail and make, you know, fully rendered paintings. Logistically, I knew, if I\u2019m ever going to finish this book, I have to figure out a simpler process.\u201d He threw away countless sketches of Judi, his main character, as he pared down the imagery.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn creating his first graphic novel, Tavares decided he needed to change his artistic approach. \u201cI felt like the art needs to focus more on clarity and just simplicity. Just tell the story and get the information across.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u201cYou have to redraw the same character a couple of hundred times, and it\u2019s a matter of figuring out, what do the characters look like? What shape are the faces? What are the eyes? Are they going to be dots? There\u2019s so much personality in those simple lines. To be able to express a full range of emotions with just a few lines is in a lot of ways more powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tavares looked at the work of colleagues, like that of Willems, a multiple Caldecott and Emmy winner, and considered how much simple, seemingly quick sketches could convey. They\u2019ve swapped art in the past, and two of Willems\u2019 Elephant and Piggie <\/em>sketches hang in Tavares\u2019 house in Ogunquit while an original drawing from Tavares\u2019 Lady Liberty <\/em>hangs at Willems\u2019 house, part of a \u201cwho\u2019s who of contemporary illustrators as a reminder for me to do my best and be my most authentic,\u201d Willems says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cMore people might connect with Elephant and Piggie [as they are] than if they were a specific, realistically drawn human character,\u201d Tavares says. \u201cThat\u2019s something that kind of took a while to get through my head. Now I look at these little cartoon characters I drew for Hoops <\/em>and I feel like I get across all the information I would want to get across, but it\u2019s just kind of boiled down to its essence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nHoops<\/em>: He had much more space to develop the characters. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nAlong with the stylistic change, he was making a digital leap. A few years before, Higgins had given him a high-tech hand-me-down that would turn out to be a vital tool in his creative process, a Wacom drawing tablet. \u201cA number of people had suggested digital artwork to him,\u201d Higgins says. \u201cI think I was the one who was most persistent. I like the idea of Matt trying new things. His traditional art work is so intricate and lifelike. I just know how long that artwork takes him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When they first met, about a decade ago, Higgins was selling self-published books out of the back of his car. \u201cIt was at a very important time in my life where I needed to see someone who did that job on a very successful level,\u201d he says, joking that he latched onto Tavares. \u201cI drew a lot of inspiration from him. When I had a book that I wanted to present to publishers, he was the one that really helped me navigate that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So he was more than happy to teach Tavares how to use the Wacom. And working digitally has been revelatory for Tavares. In his home studio, tucked behind the family\u2019s living room, Tavares pulls up a few pages from Hoops <\/em>onto the screen to show how the Wacom works (he\u2019s since upgraded from the one Higgins gave him). \u201cI can do all these amazing things that I can\u2019t do on a piece of paper.\u201d Like move faster, and more nimbly. <\/p>\n\n\n\nHe grabs a copy of 2022\u2019s Twenty One Steps: Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier<\/em>, which he illustrated for author Jeff Gottesfeld. \u201cI drew the soldier on one piece of paper and I drew the background on a different piece. Then I scan them in. If it\u2019s all on one piece of paper, I can\u2019t move the soldier unless I start over.\u201d The Wacom gives him the digital freedom to play around. While tackling this new genre for Hoops<\/em>, that leeway was essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cIt was great to see him get into it,\u201d Higgins recalled. \u201cHe just sort of lit up and had this fire to him.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen I try something new, it\u2019s like my brain awakens,\u201d Tavares says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part of Tavares\u2019 joy was the gift of more space to develop the characters in Hoops<\/em>. While he changed some of the timeline of the Warsaw Tigers story, he used much of what he learned from those conversations with Judi Warren and her two close teammates as inspiration. For instance, their real-life quirky pre-practice habit landed in Hoops<\/em>. \u201cThey would all eat baby food before practice,\u201d Tavares says. \u201cIt was like something they could eat that wouldn\u2019t make them feel sick. And it just turned into like this fun, just weird thing that high school kids do, you know?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\nTavares’ studio is tucked behind the family living room in his home in Ogunquit, Maine. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nHe cherishes some of the quieter moments he illustrated, as when Cindy, Judi\u2019s best friend, starts dating someone. \u201cAnd all of a sudden Judi\u2019s alone after school. And I just remember illustrating that scene where I can show her bored and just kind of annoyed. It was so cool to be able to just take that time, to get into those little quiet moments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s now been 25 years since Tavares had his last formal art instruction, at Bates, where he took \u201cfundamental art classes,\u201d courses in drawing, painting, sculpting, and color theory. After graduation, he moved into self-teaching mode, revising his thesis project, which was black and white, getting feedback from art directors, and, after Candlewick bought Zachary\u2019s Ball<\/em>, continuing in that vein. \u201cI learned a lot just by doing,\u201d he says. The five Lupine Awards, the Maine Library Association\u2019s highest honor for children\u2019s book authors, hanging on his studio wall are a testament to how well he\u2019s taught himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt’s been 25 years since Tavares had his last formal art instruction, at Bates. The five Lupine Awards, the Maine Library Association\u2019s highest honor for children\u2019s book authors, hanging on his studio wall are a testament to how well he\u2019s taught himself. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nAs he goes, he\u2019s working through a short list of professional goals. One was to make The New York Times <\/em>bestseller list. \u201cLike one week,\u201d Tavares says. \u201cJust get on there.\u201d Dasher<\/em>, the story of a young reindeer who escapes from a traveling circus with dreams of finding Santa and the North Pole, took him there on multiple weeks, climbing as high as the No. 3 spot on the children\u2019s list. \u201cSo that was pretty amazing, just to get that call from my editor.\u201d (A sequel is in the works.)<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnother is to win a Caldecott honor (the American Library Association prize for excellence in children\u2019s books). \u201cLike, I don\u2019t want the gold,\u201d he says, smiling. \u201cJust at least a silver one. One time.\u201d Higgins says his friend also quietly aspires to have a truly iconic holiday picture book, in a similar vein as The Polar Express<\/em>. Higgins believes Tavares will get there. \u201cI think Dasher <\/em>will end up being like The Polar Express<\/em>,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTaped to the wall in a corner of Tavares\u2019 studio is a testimonial from another loyal fan. It\u2019s a list created by his daughter Ava when she was a pre-teen, titled \u201cTop 10 Reasons You Are the Best.\u201d It\u2019s worth noting that four out of the 10 listed are book-related.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You make fabulous books.<\/em>You let my family be the first people to see your new books.<\/em>You teach me how to draw.<\/em>You are the best children\u2019s book author and illustrator. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bestselling children\u2019s book author-illustrator Matt Tavares \u201997 makes a creative leap for his newest book, a graphic novel inspired by the true Cinderella story of a girls basketball team in mid-1970s Indiana.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1283,"featured_media":152275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"An illustrator of 23 picture books, 'Hoops' is Tavares' first graphic novel.","_bates_seo_block_robots":true,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":152072,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[7,11010],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1283"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152070"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152444,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152070\/revisions\/152444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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