Readers and writers: How Barbara Kingsolver’s daughter got her to team up to write first children’s book

Barbara Kingsolver and her daughter Lily remember the day “Coyote’s Wild Home” was born at Barbara’s farm in the Appalachian region of southwestern Virginia.

This beautiful new picture book will be published Tuesday by Emilie and Dana Buchwald’s Edina-based Gryphon Press, and it’s a coup for a small publisher to attract an author such as Kingsolver, winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize and the British Women’s Fiction Prize for her novel “Demon Copperhead.”

But Barbara didn’t want to talk about her previous literary honors during a conversation about “Coyote’s Wild Home,” co-written with Lily. She was concentrating on the new book and giving affectionate prompts to her daughter to help her tell their story.

“I had just written a letter to Emilie for my secretary to type saying I didn’t do picture books,” Kingsolver recalled of turning down Buchwald’s invitation to write a book for Gryphon Press.

Then Lily, who was visiting from her Florida home, came into her mother’s kitchen, and that letter never got sent.

Lily: “I thought this project sounded like so much fun.”

Barbara: “Then Lily poured out the whole story in a few minutes.”

“Coyote’s Wild Home” is Barbara Kingsolver’s first children’s book, Lily’s debut as an author, and their first collaboration.

Their story, illustrated with stunning digital paintings by former St. Paulite Paul Mirocha, is especially timely as we city/suburban folks are seeing more of the animals in our neighborhoods and don’t know what to do about them.

In the book, two youngsters have adventures. A coyote pup is being taught to hunt for the first time with his Auntie, and Diana is camping in the forest for the first time with Grandpa. Kingsolver’s lyrically written message is about co-existence, that we are all predators, and that wildlife have a right to live as much as humans do.

Auntie Coyote shows the little one how to use their hunting tools such as patience, camouflage, sharp teeth and quick legs. The hungry pup pounces on a vole, but misses. Meanwhile, Diana tries her hand at fishing, only to come up with weeds. Both youngsters need more teaching. And Grandpa does a good job as he shows Diana how to read animal and bird tracks and understand what scat (that’s poop) can teach about an animal.

“They’ve got no business with you and me,” Grandpa says of the forest’s wildlife. “They just want to stay safe. We’re visitors here, but this place is their whole world…”

Grandpa gently explains that animal predators like coyotes are not cruel, as in the age-old stories featuring creatures like the Big Bad Wolf. (In real life they are often shot, trapped, harassed, poisoned. In Wisconsin there is a controversial contest for the most dead coyotes. Minnesota’s 40,000 coyotes are unprotected and may be taken at any time by shooting or trapping.)

Like so many readers, Emilie and Dana are fans of Barbara Kingsolver’s books, especially “Prodigal Summer” (2016), in which one character is a forest ranger passionate about coyotes. So when the mother/daughter co-publishers decided to do a book about coyotes, Kingsolver was the writer they wanted.

“Coyotes are a very important subject for Barbara and ‘Prodigal Summer, in my opinion, is her most lyrical book,” Emilie said. “Barbara wanted to do a book with her daughter and Dana and I wanted to do more books about whether we can co-exist with coyotes and other predators. We are faced with the fact we have totally ruined so much wilderness and wild land and more is taken every year. Where will wild beings go if they can’t share land with us? In ‘Coyote’s Wild Home’ there is reference to land taken and trees cut down in the wild Appalachian forest.”

Dana: “We are not saying people should interact with coyotes. They are not dogs. But this is a nuanced and complex issue. Killing is not the answer. Scientists know that if a lot of coyotes are killed the survivors just breed more.”

These are some of the issues Emilie wanted to explore when she established Gryphon Press in 2006 after retiring as publisher emeritus and co-founder of Minneapolis-based Milkweed Editions. Then she was joined by Dana, a lawyer, producer, director and theater performer as well as senior humane policy volunteer leader for the Humane Society of the United States.

Gryphon is dedicated to promoting the animal-human bond through publishing high-quality children’s picture books with topics ranging from the horrors of puppy mills to welcoming a new puppy and the need for spaying/neutering. The press’s motto: “A Voice for the Voiceless.”

“Coyote’s Wild Home” joins two other picture books in Gryphon’s series about wildlife, both written by prominent scientists.

“Jake and Ava: A Boy and a Fish” is by Jonathan Balcome, author of four books on the inner lives of animals, including “What a Fish Knows.” He has published more than 60 scientific papers and book chapters on animal behavior and animal protection. “A Warbler’s Journey” is by Scott Weidensaul, naturalist and author, finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for “Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds.”

“We had sent a copy of ‘A Warbler’s Journey’ that Lily admired,” Emilie says. “She loved the idea of a children’s picture book and had a way of doing it by making it a dual story, one that informed the lives of all concerned. It was a lovely idea.”

In the back of “Coyote’s Wild Home” are facts about coyote migration (they moved from southwest to northeast), their background, habits and lifestyles. There are also suggestions for how coyotes and humans can co-exist. Everyone involved in the project was adamant that it be scientifically correct so the Buchwalds had scientists do fact-checking, with special help from Project Coyote, an organization that advocates for the animals.

The Kingsolvers and Buchwalds give lots of credit for early critical success of “A Coyote’s Wild Home” to digital paintings by Paul Mirocha, who worked with both Barbara and Emilie in the past, creating covers for some Milkweed Edition books and interiors for a couple of Kingsolver’s books, including “Small Wonder” and “Prodigal Summer.”

Mirocha, who says he grew up “in the woods in Como Park playing Tarzan and war games,” now lives surrounded by desert in Tucson, Ariz.

He and Kingsolver go back to the early 1980s when she was a science writer at the University of Arizona working on a doctorate and Paul was a graphic artist in science and land studies. “Barbara would bring me sketches of data charts on graph paper and I would draw them up nice and pretty for our scientific reports,” he recalls.

About a year ago, Emilie contacted Mirocha asking for his help in getting in touch with Kingsolver to see if she would be interested in doing a book on coyotes.

“I knew Barbara didn’t do kids books and said ‘no’ to almost everything but I agreed to help Emilie,” Mirocha recalls. “Barbara emailed me a month later (about the project) but I was busy and didn’t expect it to happen anyway. I would do anything for Barbara and she said, ‘We want to work with you.’ ” So did Emilie and Dana.

The first thing Mirocha did after accepting the assignment was spend a week at the Kingsolvers’ cabin, where the Virginia landscape is so different from the arid Arizona desert.

“There are too many leaves here,” he joked to Barbara and her husband, Steven Hopp.

“I had a wonderful time walking around in those woods and the whole book came out of that week,” Mirocha recalled. “It was like scouting a movie. There were specific sites that inspired each scene in the book — stumps that are coyote dens, dense canopy, a dark tunnel with light at the end when Diana and Grandpa walk through it in the book, grassland, two different meadows. I freaked out about the diversity and exploding life. I felt like it was an enchanted place.”

To capture the motions of Auntie Coyote and the pup, Morcha studied photos, videos and movies showing the little ones jumping and playing.

“I also wanted to show why you don’t mess with Auntie Coyote,” he said. “She is formidable, powerful. but to the pup she is affectionate and protective. They have a warm emotional relationship. Her picture on the cover is both fierce and beautiful.”

Mirocha says the Navajo believe the coyote is a spirit animal and a recent encounter with one might have made him a believer.

“I was driving to the airport at 4 a.m. two blocks from my house in Tucson when a coyote crossed my path,” he recalled. “I thought, how often does that happen? I honked and the coyote slowed down. In the highlights it looked at me for a,micro-second across a parking lot. It was some kind of sign.”

Mirocha loved working on this book with the mother/daughter teams; Emilie and Dana, Barbara and Lily.

“There was something special about this book,” he said. “The visual and the language put together is what makes a picture book. Neither by itself is interesting. But integration of visuals and words make this book flow.”

“Coyote’s Wild Home” will launch at 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 4, with a virtual event co-hosted by six bookstores around the country including Red Balloon Bookshop in St. Paul. The program will feature Barbara Kingsolver and Lily Kingsolver talking about their book with New York Times bestselling author Eliot Schrefer, twice a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. He holds a master’s degree in animal studies and is on the faculty of the Fairleigh Dickinson and Hamline MFAs for creative writing. $24. For registration information go to redballoonbookshop.com/events.

The authors

Barbara Kingsolver trained as a biologist prior to her career as a writer of best-selling novels, poetry, and nonfiction. Her work has earned a devoted readership and major literary awards including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal. She and her husband live on a farm in the mountains of southwestern Virginia, which they share with sheep, poultry and countless wild creatures, including coyotes.

Lily Kingsolver grew up where the Appalachian Mountains ignited her passion for wild creatures and the places they live. She has shared her love of the wild as a naturalist and educator in state parks and zoos in Virginia and the Space Coast of Florida, where she is currently working on a graduate degree in environmental education.