My parents had both gotten sick and after my mom passed, I wrote a series of essays-my way of grappling with grief and conflicting emotions. My first attempt was in the form of a personal essay for adults. Watercress in its final form took me years to write. Wang: Even for a writer, a text like this doesn’t often happen. What made you choose to adapt such an emotionally heavy story into a picture book text? I remember you telling me that Watercress was originally written for adults and was much longer. At the time, I just knew I felt more at ease and that was really important. Although it’s only in retrospect that I would describe it that way. After those discussions I felt much more comfortable, like I had permission to do the job. At the time we spoke I was trying to get into the mindset of the characters and hearing your stories really helped. It was good for me to hear about your family’s story for a lot of reasons. I am very glad that we had the chance to talk early in the process. But a text like this doesn’t come along very often, so I just had to do it. I always feel a great responsibility to the author when I illustrate a book, but I was especially anxious because I was basically illustrating you as a child. I was a little afraid to do it because it was heavy and because it was autobiographical-especially because it was autobiographical. I took on Watercress because it was so good and I couldn’t say no. Jason Chin: Yes, my first illustrated book was Chinese New Year by Judith Jango-Cohen, and I actually illustrated the Nian monster in it, which, for anyone who doesn’t know, was the title of your first book. What made you decide to take on an emotionally heavy book like Watercress? Did your Dad talk you into it? :) But yours was nonfiction and since then you’ve mainly written and/or illustrated nonfiction books. Andrea Wang: Hi, Jason! I just discovered that both of us started out doing books about the Chinese New Year, which I think is a fun coincidence.

Jason chin gravity