♪♪ -In partnership with the friends of the UNH library.

This is the New Hampshire Authors Series from the Dimond Library at the University of New Hampshire.

♪♪ -Marty Kelley lives in New Boston.

He writes and illustrates hilarious books for kids.

Books like Twelve Terrible Things, The Messiest Desk, and Spring Goes Squish!

Books that make you think that though he appears to be a grown up.

[faint chuckling] He may in fact be a nine year old in disguise.

He's a New Hampshire native, married with two children three chickens and a duck.

He welds sculpture from metal, paints portraits, he co-produced a super cool punk rock version of his book Summer Stinks.

He used to be a second grade teacher.

Now he visits schools and talks to kids about writing and drawing.

He has yet to find the perfect title to describe his position, but for now, we'll call him Marty Kelley, creator of alternate realities for the mind and eye.

[chuckling] Welcome, Marty Kelley.

-Thank you very much.

[applause] -I thought maybe we could start by looking at one of your books, which is, your humor is, can be dark-ish for children.

-Yeah, I like to wise em up early to the dark side of things.

-Well, what I noticed about your books is that you really show the world through the eyes of children how the world seems to them and nowhere is that better illustrated than in your book, Twelve Terrible Things.

So I wondered if you'd read a little bit to us from that book and show us a little bit?

-It starts off with a warning.

Please read this.

I'm warning you.

If you turn the page, you're going to see some terrible things, some really terrible things.

This book is full of them.

Didn't you read the title?

Just about everything in this book is terrible.

You're probably going to turn the page anyway, aren't you?

Okay.

Go ahead.

You've been warned.

[Rebecca chuckles] I'd like to point out I got a scathing email from somebody who had a two year old that had this book.

-Yeah?

-Read to the child and said it was totally inappropriate for two year olds, and what was I thinking?

Because it was scary.

-But didn't they read the warning?

-There's a whole warning here, and it has 129 words in it -Maybe you should have put-- so I thought a little overview first wouldn't have been out of the question.

-I think you should have written not appropriate for two year olds.

Next time, you'll know.

-Oopsie.

See, it's not funny they're scared already I can tell, there’s nothing under the bed.

There's nothing under the bed.

There's nothing under the bed.

[laughter] Say AHHH... That's the one all the adults moan about.

Hold still, I'm almost done.

[chuckling] Oh my goodness, just look at those cheeks.

[laughter] My stepmother's family is Italian, and this is my memory, this is not-- This is a-- This is all the people in that family combined into one.

The ones I never knew that would come up and pinch my cheeks when I saw them.

-Oh!

-I've got one last surprise for the birthday kid.

[Rebecca chuckles] -It is scary.

-That's the plan.

This must be our new student.

-Ohhh.

-Oh, I know, I know, the poor kid scarred for life.

We're only seven out of 12 here people.

No, we are not there yet.

-I love this picture.

You have to look closely.

Look at her.

Look at her face.

-That would be my daughter [chuckling] -Who's in the second row?

That would be me, my wife, my son's sneakers made it into that book, -And she's touching him!

-That's what all of our car rides are like.

That's what it was like on the way up here today.

[chuckling] Goodbye, Goldie.

[laughter] [Rebecca imitates toilet flushing] [laughter] I'd like to point out that's the best toilet I have ever painted.

[laughter] It took several tries to get that right.

-That's a beauty.

-Thank you.

Come on already, Jump!

What do you mean you don't like gravy?

Everybody likes gravy.

[laughter] -It's on his hands.

-It's-- Yeah, there's a lot on-- There's a lot of gravy and a big can of a big gallon o’ gravy.

Industrial strength.

Smell this doofus.

[laughter] -He’s smelling the sock of course.

-Yeah, well, that [Marty chuckles] there could be a lot of things he's smelling frankly.

[laughter] Yeah.

This was a disappointment for me, actually I had to come up with some kind of happy ending for the book that I really didn't want, -But it circles to the beginning because you -It does, it does.

know the next thing that happens is-- -He drops that ice cream too.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-I thought it was the same ice cream.

Oh no or is it a different what's a well it's the same color.

-I didn't really think too much about which ice cream, it is -the same color -Which proves my point-- -I thought this through a lot, -point that artists don't really know what they're doing.

-No, we fake it a lot.

[laughter] -Well, I think this is a wonderful book.

-Thank you.

-I love this book.

It makes me laugh even as I gasp and we heard the audience sort of [Rebecca gasps] and then laugh.

So that's what you want?

You have a zombie picture that I thought we could talk about a little bit with things that go a little too far.

-Things that go a little, yeah, that one was a little a little too far.

I do lots of, lots of stuff that's not going to get published, for various reasons.

That being a prime example of one that I'm hoping I can find a publisher willing to, to do that, but it came from I had a photograph of my daughter on my back on Halloween, and I was dressed up as a zombie, and she looked all cute and she was happy.

And I thought, what if this happy little girl went for a zombie ride instead of a pony ride?

And her parents are back there with the camcorder and they're all happy and she's not actually going to get eaten or anything so-- -No, she’s just riding on the zombie.

So is this how ideas come to you often just a moment in life and you sort of stop and say, this could be a drawing, this could be a book?

-There are a lot of times like that yeah, it's things that I have seen or things that I hear about or, things that I just entirely make up out of nowhere.

But it's those small sort of inspirations that can lead to something.

-That you notice?

I think that's what the artist does, is notice the artist notices and just wait a minute, put that away.

-Right.

-That could be useful at another time.

-Yeah and I keep a, I do keep a sketchbook with me all the time.

-Keep a sketch book?

-Whenever, whenever I have an idea, I'll write it down because I have a terrible memory.

I don't know if you suffer from that too, but.

-Yeah.

-I do.

[chuckling] All my great ideas are gone.

-I'm never without my little book that I write, I write the ideas or the things that I hear a lot for my work a lot of it comes just from stories people tell me.

Just listening to that and making a note of that.

-Yeah.

And then capitalizing on somebody else's work.

-Absolutely.

[Marty chuckles] -They're not going to do it.

You might as well do it.

-They just leave it out there -Well, I understand that when you visit schools and you do a lot of that, a lot of visits to schools, -If I don't, I have to get a real job so, I do this.

-No, we don’t want to do that.

The questions that kids often ask are, how old are you and where did you learn to draw so good?

-Wicked old, art school.

-Wicked old, -Art school.

-I I'm-- [Rebecca chuckles] -That's how I answer them too, I'm 38.

I went to art school at the school the Museum of Fine Arts down in Boston.

It was actually an animation-- That was my major down there was animation.

-Animation?

-Yeah and I burnt out on that very quickly and became a teacher then.

-You became a teacher and-- -And burnt out on that, too.

I just have a short attention span.

-How long were you a teach-- You were a second grade teacher?

-I was a second grade teacher for seven years -For seven years?

-That's where all my hair went.

[chuckling] -And when, how did you make the transition into, into books?

-I was, I was doing that at the same time, actually.

I was, I was writing the books while I was teaching, and started visiting schools and wound up having to turn down schools because there were only so many sick days I could take as a teacher and decided to-- -So you had to quit your job?

-I did, I had to quit my job and go for the fun stuff.

-So you were visiting schools even before your first book was published?

-No, right after the first book a teacher from a school up in Salisbury actually approached me and said, do you do school visits?

I said, sure, and I didn't even know what school visit was.

So I signed up for one and went and did a little online research and found that I should be talking about my book.

[Marty chuckles] And it spiraled into a career.

-School visits.

-Yeah.

-Just Googled.

-What is a school visit?

-Well, here's a testimonial.

One of the children from one of your school visits wrote.

Hey Mr. Kelley, you were so funny that my friend wet his pants laughing.

[chuckling] -That was a first grader from Swanzey, New Hampshire.

-Yeah, the teacher was not as thrilled as I was with that actually [laughter] cause that was, that was true and she came up and she complained that maybe I could tone it down a little bit.

[chuckling] I, I thought that was the best-- -What is it that kids laugh about when you?

-I talk about boogers, I think that's it.

I found if, yeah-- I found if I just go, I don't even have to say anything else I go in I say boogers-- -There’s some boogers in one of your books I noted.

-One?

No there’s boogers in most of them.

[laughter] I kind of shoot for the lowest common denominator.

-How do you spell booger?

-B o o g e r I know you would go for the a h at the end.

-I do-- a boogah.

[laughter] -It's not a boogah.

-I know that kids are better at reading pictures than adults.

Is that a truth?

-I think so they spend a lot more time on it.

I, have interaction with adults and invariably if they're going to look at my book, they go, oh, and they start at the back and they go, oh, oh, that's adorable.

And then I never talk to them again.

-Yeah?

Because it's not adorable.

-No, your books are not adorable at that.

-I appreciate that, thank you.

-You however, [laughter] could be described, as, cute.

-Only in small doses.

-In small doses.

In small doses.

Well, another of your books, and this is also a recent book.

-This is-- Yeah, this is very recent.

-Very recent.

The Messiest Desk.

-I feel like I'm doing an infomercial.

-And you think, now what do you think this would be about, The Messiest Desk?

You know, I thought messy desk, maybe something spilled on top, some papers crumbled up inside.

But in the mind of Marty Kelley, no, you have to take it a little too far, don't you, Marty Kelley?

-I did.

-What, would you read and show us some of The Messiest Desk?

Brace yourself.

-Brace yours-- this actually, this one started, the idea for this one came while I was teaching.

This one's kind of been kicking around for, for several years and I had one student in my class one year in particular, who was just absolutely the biggest slob I have ever run across in my life, it was gross, and it like flies buzzing around and it was nasty.

And I always used to tell him if you don't clean that desk, something in there is going to come to life, and it's going to eat you.

And it never did.

-That was sensitive of you.

-And that disappointed me.

[laughter] So I wrote this in an effort to scare-- actually when I first wrote the book, the first version of it, this got edited heavily by the editors that reel you in.

The first version of the book, the boy got eaten by his desk, and they sent in the army and planes and dynamite and all kinds of stuff, and the kid never came out, and I just figured that was a good ending.

That's what he deserved.

And then the editor called me and she got on the phone and she said, okay, I read the book... Is he dead?

[laughter] And I never even considered it and I said, well, yeah, I guess so.

-See we need editors to ask those questions.

And then you said, then she said do you think this is a good message for children?

-Yeah, you know, one of the-- -That they might end up dead in their second grade class?

I thought it was a fair moral to present.

[laughter] -But she reeled you in?

-She did she actually, the first version of Winter Woes that I did was, was called Yellow Snow Tastes like Lemonade.

[laughter] It didn't go over well.

[laughter] -That's not true.

-No, I know [chuckling] I've heard that's true, I-- [chuckling] It didn't fly.

-It didn't fly.

-Though I'm hoping someday-- -Titles are hard.

[Marty chuckles] So here's the story, The Messiest Desk.

-Before I even do that-- -An innocuous title.

-It is, and you mentioned kids reading books earlier the pictures this one, this is is another example of a picture that has a lot of stuff in it.

I like to sneak stuff into my drawings, all the, all the paperwork on the teacher's desk has names on it.

It's my friends names.

There are some papers that have names with stories written about it.

I wrote the stories about my friends, or a couple of them have my kids names on it.

They wrote the -You can spend an hour just on this picture, but my favorite is the mug that says-- -Life is adequate.

[laughter] That's mine.

Stay away from that one.

[Marty chuckles] So yeah, there's, there's, and I think kids were more likely than adults to spend a lot more time just kind of perusing them and looking through.

-But you're not the teacher in this because he has facial hair.

-Yeah, that's my brother.

-That's your brother?

-All the people in here are my friends.

Several of the characters in the book are sitting out there today.

[Marty chuckles] -Raise your hand if you're in the book.

[laughter] Oh, there we go.

-Lookit, they're all the ones that have just turned bright red.

-And that's so clever, because now they'll buy the book.

-Yeah, then there's nothing they can do about it that's my favorite part.

[Marty chuckles] -Yeah, all of them to get them out of circulation, depending on how badly I portray them.

[Marty chuckles] The kids in Mr. McPatrick’s class had messy desks.

It's true.

And it wasn't just the children's desks.

The teacher’s was messy too.

But Benjamin Putt had the messiest desk there had been since desks were invented, and the horrible thing that happened to him was something he could have prevented.

One Friday morning, just before snack, Mr. McPatrick said, okay, class, let's clean these desks before the mess can spread.

Benjamin Putt peered into his desk at the mess that was crammed deep inside, the thousands of pencils and crayons and books and some snacks that were withered and dried.

The carton of milk from last month's lunch, and homework and math tests galore, and the foul green goo from the depths of his desk that was oozing out onto the floor.

Mr. McPatrick, said Benjamin Putt, I really don't know what to do.

How can I possibly clean up my desk when it looks like it's almost brand new?

Benjamin Putt, the teacher exclaimed.

You simply have got to be joking.

I can't even stand to look at your desk, and the smell makes me want to start choking.

That giant mess you call a desk smells worse than month old cheese.

It's the filthiest desk in the whole wide world, so clean it out now, please, Mr. Mr. McPatrick seemed rather upset so Benjamin Putt started working.

He shoved his left hand way back into his desk, where the nastiest items were lurking.

This is where it starts getting scary.

-Yeah.

-Benjamin Putt started pulling stuff out from deep in his mess of a desk.

The papers and books were sticky with filth, and the smell drifting out was grotesque.

He reached way, way into the depths of his desk in order to pull more junk out.

Then Benjamin Putt started jumping around and he started to shriek and to shout, help my desk is grabbing my arm!

It's got me It's holding me tight.

Benjamin Putt tried to yank his arm free.

He pulled with all of his might.

It's got me!

It's got me!

It's pulling me in.

Somebody help me, please!

By the time they realized it wasn't a joke, he was in his desk up to his knees.

[Rebecca gasps] -That's a horrible picture with its little legs sticking up like that.

-Yeah that was, that's gruesome.

That’s right where he died in the other version, too.

[laughter] It was all blood spraying out and everything.

-Oh!

-I'm joking.

[laughter] It occurs to me this must be very different than a lot of the other readings you've had on this show.

[Marty wheezes] -Yeah, I would say.

I would say it’s a little bit different, from some-- -Do you want me to keep going?

-Yeah, well, we need to know what happens in the end, you could skip forward.

-Okay, he’s stuck in the desk, everybody's horrified, oh, no no, no.

-What are we going to do?

-I'm paraphrasing here.

Nobody will climb into the desk to get him, call the principal she’ll get him out.

This is where the booger starts.

-This is my favorite, the principal's line.

You got to hear what the principal says.

-Call, the principal pounded the top of the desk and she started to yell and to shout.

Come out of there now or you'll stay after school!

But Benjamin didn't come out.

[audience chuckles] A lot of the stuff that's in here, this is one of the few, all the work that I do is in watercolor, except in this book there's a lot of collage here, so I was able to rip up my kids homework and their tests and put it in the book.

Then they had to do it over again, it was funny.

-Will she, call the principal, she can save our poor lost student.

The principal came but wouldn’t climb in.

She thought that it wouldn't be prudent.

[audience chuckles] Nice rhyme Marty.

-Thanks.

[chuckling] -Student prudent.

-I you got to grasp sometimes and go with-- I have a rhyming dictionary that's very well thumbed.

[Marty chuckles] So they call the janitor, the nurse, the lunch lady who tries to tempt him out with delicious school lunch apple pie, gravy free pie I might point out.

And then Julie Lemaire comes to save the day.

Grabs the plunger, grabs the nurse's light, eats the pie, climbs in to get him.

[Marty sighs] [page turning] She started to throw all Ben's stuff on the floor.

It was quite a remarkable sight.

The pile of junk rose up higher and higher.

It soared to a towering height.

She found 800 spelling lists from weeks and months gone by, 12 gooey wads of chewed up gum, a cockroach, a spider, a fly, some moldy, dripping rotten fruit, about 12,000 ants, nine things they couldn't identify, and someone's underpants.

Do-- [laughter] See that's the thing is-- -I like the underpants.

Kids laugh at that don’t they?

-First graders laugh.

-We all laughed.

-Old mature people like us laugh because underwear is always funny.

-And just the word underpants, is a funny word.

-I put them in there too-- -Oh there they are, they’re right there in the picture.

[laughter] -Deep ins-- [Marty wheezes] [laughter] It gets worse even.

Deep inside the desk, she found the boogers that Ben had collected.

They couldn't believe the mess in his desk, it was worse than they ever expected.

The desk started shaking and making some noise.

It was sort of a slurp and a smack.

Then Julie yelled out, okay, clear the way I've got him I'm bringing him back!

All the grunting and groaning and terrible moans filled the students and teacher with dread.

Then Julie emerged, pulling Ben from the desk by the plunger attached to his head.

With one mighty heave, they all yanked the boy out he was slimy and gooey and wet.

It's all right, I'm okay, said Benjamin Putt, is it time for recess yet?

[Rebecca laughs] That's all kids care about.

Their friend could get eaten, I don't care, I want recess.

I’m missing my-- -And snack.

-Yeah gotta have the snack.

It's been a month or maybe more since that terrible, frightening scene.

Now, every desk that's in that room is always neat and clean.

-Very nice, very nice Marty Thank you.

[applause] So, how is-- this [applause continues] is a hard question.

-I'm ready for it.

-How is kid humor different from adult humor, or is it solid?

-How is kid humor different from adult humor, or is it solid?

-You just saw it it wasn’t.

[laughter] You mentionunderpants and you’re gold.

-Yeah, with everybody, but we just don't want to admit it.

We're more sophisticated.

-I’m okay with it.

I'm, I’m, I'm okay with my admiration of underpants, and boogers.

-And boogers.

-They're magic.

-They are, and pie also is magic.

Any mention of pie.

-Yeah.

-My book happens to be called Live Free and Eat Pie.

-We could do one together, booger pie.

[laughter] That's just nasty, [laughter continues] -I think-- -I mean, boogah pie, sorry.

-It could be a bestseller, but then I’d have to-- -Everybody would feel guilty reading it they’d be like, hrmm.

[chuckling] -Booger pie, booger pie.

-I don't I don't think there's much difference between kid humor and adult humor.

-You know, -I think you're right.

-When I write for adults, which is rare, I use bigger words.

-I aspire to before I die to write a book for kids.

Do you aspire to write a book for adults?

-I would like very much to do that yeah, I'm working on one.

-Are you?

-Yeah, about teaching, and I'm combining all the horrible things that happened in seven years of teaching and making them one year.

It's a very thick, angry book.

-Is it a novel?

-A novel-- well, no, I'm kind of setting it up like a journal, Like a daily journal.

-It’s like a journal?

-Yeah and this year I'm working on it because my kids are in school, I'm trying to write every day that they're in school as, so I can sort of have the progression of the school year.

I won't forget things like holidays and then important stuff that comes up.

-Yeah.

Does it have a title?

-I, the title I have right now is 180 Days.

-180 Days.

-Tales From the Teachers Room, or Tales of a Recovering Second Grade Teacher or something like that.

-Oh my gosh-- -I'm not sure, but I'm only at the 16th day so I can't get too excited about this.

-So you’ve got a structure, that's fantastic!

-I don't-- we'll find out.

-We’ll find out, it's, it's worrisome, not, not for you so much but I think for, for a lot of artists, if you're really good at one thing and clearly you're really good at this, then we, we have the impulse to do something else, immediately, do something else, E.B.

White always wanted to be a poet.

You know, the greatest essayist in the world wanted to be a poet.

Playwrights want to be novelists.

So you're, you're going to try it and see how it goes?

-I will yeah.

And I don't-- it's fun if nothing else, I enjoy what I do, which is important to me because it's, it's-- -I think that's like, if it's fun, if you're having fun doing it, that's that's a sign.

If you're miserable doing it, that's a sign to give it up.

-Right.

-Yeah.

-Which is where the teaching book came from.

The misery and pain and report cards.

-So you gave it up, -I gave it up -and you moved on.

Well, I know you're serious about the message of writing and, and art for kids, or I think you are when you go into schools and you work with them and you work with teachers and, you know, it's it's fun to show the books and the kids laugh and you show something of the process and talk about your life as an artist but what is it that you've, you're trying to convey to them?

What is it that you hope these students will take away?

-I really, I think that the writing can be fun, which to me is the most, I want to, I really I'm one of those, I know whenever people go in and give lectures about stuff like, well, I'm a writer but when I was a kid I didn’t write and I really did I didn't enjoy writing in school.

For myself, I was always fine with it but then when it came to writing at school, it was always these terrible, boring things to write about, and I, I when I go in, I am serious about the writing aspect of it, but I try to make it very fun for them.

I always give them a lot of free rein, and let them-- and a lot of the times I'm in a classroom, teachers are horrified because the kids will go I want to write about boogers.

Knock yourself out, I don't care.

And the teachers are, oh, we don't do that in our school.

-We don't write about boogers in our-- -I've heard some terrible things that they don't write about.

Yeah, they they won't allow it and, you know, no wonder the kids don't like to write, because if it's a second grade boy or whatever, they want to write about boogers or things blowing up.

-How does it work the words and the pictures?

Does one come first?

[Marty chuckles] [inaudible speaking] -I typically-- -Type the words, thank you -Marty.

-I'm here to help.

[Rebecca chuckles] I typically do the, the words first or have an idea for the words first, and we'll have the story basically hammered out the structure of it.

I might not have all the all the tweaking and editing and revising done.

And then I'll go back through and I, generally will spend several months on the words.

And then once it gets purchased by a publisher, I'll go back and start on pictures.

And that typically, about a year on the pictures.

I do lots of sketches, lots of photographs, like I showed.

For me, it's a lot easier to have the words done first, when I'm doing the writing, I sort of have a picture running through my head.

-Your first book, how did that happen?

-The first book was Fall is Not Easy, and actually the idea for that was given to me by my sister in law who said, oh, you should write a book about a tree that doesn’t know how to change colors and I really wasn't thrilled with the idea at first I and I was working on another book, and her idea just kept kind of coming back, and I actually wrote it very quickly, embarrassingly, quickly, like probably it was finished in a week or so.

The words I, this is a very simple book and then the pictures it just all these ridiculous pictures of a tree in the fall that can't change colors properly and actually, the second publisher that I sent it to bought that one I was looking for, submission guidelines for publishers, and they said they wanted offbeat rhyming books, and I thought, there's, there's the place.

-So you did all the words and the pictures before sending it out?

-I did, yeah which was the wrong way to do it, yeah I wound up having to do all the pictures over again because I did them in the wrong format, but I didn't know, and, I'm a little smarter now.

-They're they're pretty technical.

-They are.

There's a lot of math involved in this which-- -So you've been through the teaching career and you left that and do you see yourself doing this for the rest of your life?

-I hope so, yeah -Or is it going to be music?

What’s-- -I would do the music too, I worked with my good buddy Steve Blunt on a CD, and that was a lot of fun, we had it was a ball working in the studio, and we did a lot of shows at libraries around the state this summer.

This, this is still my first passion doing this, but it would be great-- -You've written a song, is it a song called Summer Stinks?

-It's actually, It's the book Summer Stinks it's those words that when Steve approached me about it, he does great kids music and I suggested we do a punk song because that's the kind of music I like.

And it horrified him at first, but he got right into it, and it was it was a lot of fun.

-You horrify a lot of people.

[chuckling] -Yeah thanks for pointing that out.

[laughing] -Marty Kelley, thank you very much.

-Thank you very much.

-It's been a pleasure.

[applause] ♪♪