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David Furst: You listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm David Furst in for Allison Stewart today. We continue talking about books for children with the latest picture book from one of our most treasured actors, Dame Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton. The book is titled The Enchanted Symphony, and it tells the story of a young boy named Piccolino and his father, who is the conductor of the orchestra in their village. One day a mysterious purple fog appears. Everyone hides inside, plants start to die, and Piccolino and his father devise a plan to help heal their village with music.

Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma, have collaborated on many children's books and on Julie's book, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years. To celebrate their latest book, Emma and Julie will be speaking in Sag Harbor at the Bay Street Theater on Sunday. Tickets for that event are on sale right now. Emma is the co-founder of that theater, by the way, but right now, I'm so glad to be able to welcome Dame Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton to All Of It.

Dame Julie Andrews: Hello, David. Good morning.

Emma Walton Hamilton: Hello, David. Thank you for having us.

David Furst: Hello. Julie, The Enchanted Symphony, first of all, it's a gorgeous book. The illustrations are incredible. The story is quite magical. This was inspired by something that you saw during the pandemic. Can you tell us more about that moment of inspiration?

Dame Julie Andrews: I can. I think that we often do try to celebrate the arts or write about music, especially we-- that's part of our mantra in a way, but we write also about nature for children, which I'm passionate about. In the last three years, we were so confined to the home with the COVID and pandemic and everything. We were very aware of the impact that it had on the arts. As you can imagine, theaters, and movie houses, and galleries were closed. Nothing was going on. Audiences were really unable to benefit or enjoy the live performances of anything.

We were also aware of the degree to which we, Emma and I, turned to nature and began to think about things and what other people might be doing and so on. One day we came across this -- Why don't you take that part darling?

David Furst: Well, one day we came across this image, which led us to a video of an extraordinary concert that had taken place in a small opera house in Barcelona, The Gran Teatre del Liceu, and the image was of an entire auditorium filled, instead of with people in the seats filled with houseplants.

Dame Julie Andrews: You're nodding your head, David.

David Furst: Filled with houseplant?

Emma Walton Hamilton: Houseplant, one and every seat, all the way up to the [crosstalk]

Dame Julie Andrews: All kinds and shapes. I mean, they were in every box on the gallery, in the orchestra seats, everywhere.

David Furst: An incredible image. You can't let that go.

Emma Walton Hamilton: No. It was extraordinary.

Dame Julie Andrews: We saw it and thought, "Oh my gosh." Now, we didn't want to say it was the pandemic or anything, although that was inspired by the pandemic because the theater was so empty.

Emma Walton Hamilton: There was a little quartet that was performing for this audience of houseplants. The theater had just reopened and this was a way of celebrating what they had been through and the challenge of finding audiences and so forth. We were so inspired by that image that we thought, what kind of story could we write around that image? That's where it led us.

Dame Julie Andrews: Our fog that comes across the village and completely incases it and shuts down everything is not meant to represent the pandemic in any way, but more really, how would you say darling, to represent--

Emma Walton Hamilton: Distraction, ennui.

Dame Julie Andrews: Taking things for granted.

Emma Walton Hamilton: The ways in which we can easily get distracted by things in life that pull us away from simple pleasures and the things that matter most to us. For us, those things have always been the arts, and nature, and family, and community. You can read the fog as similar to a pandemic or you can read it as just a creeping-

Dame Julie Andrews: Lethargy in a way.

Emma Walton Hamilton: -distraction.

David Furst: Looking at that image in the book of the plants in the theater, I think, "Oh, what a fanciful image for a children's book, but hearing that it's grounded in a real event is quite amazing.

Dame Julie Andrews: Yes.

Emma Walton Hamilton: It is quite amazing. We do tell the story of the real event at the back of the book, in an author's note. We are so thrilled with the way in which our amazing illustrator, Elly MacKay, brought the imagery to life. It really needed somebody who could capture the transparency of the fog without losing the other qualities of color-

Dame Julie Andrews: And the village.

Emma Walton Hamilton: -and so forth, and the village, and also who understood the nature of theater and the value of theater. What's so interesting about her and the way she works--

Dame Julie Andrews: I was hoping you were going to say that.

Emma Walton Hamilton: She builds her illustrations as sets. She creates these three-dimensional scenes, and then she lights them, and then she photographs them. All the images in the book have a kind of a dimensionality to them because they literally were built in 3D and then she photographed them afterwards.

Dame Julie Andrews: It's this amazing, stunning idea as to how to illustrate a book. I've never seen that before.

Emma Walton Hamilton: Yes, I know. She's quite amazing.

Dame Julie Andrews: Yes, and she's lovely.

David Furst: It's such a beautiful opportunity for an artist too, with such an incredible image as the plants in the theater and this mixing together of the magic of music and the magic of nature.

Dame Julie Andrews: The other thing for us is it's such a joy when the production of the book comes through and we see-- I mean, we do research in great deal as to who we might like to have illustrate, and what the book should look like, and size, and text size, and placement of words on the page. To see all of it coming together and then thrilling us as much.

Emma Walton Hamilton: We are particularly thrilled because this is a new venture for us with a new publisher. This is our first book with Abrams Books for Young Readers, and they have, of course, an amazing reputation for beautiful books. That was particularly thrilling for us.

David Furst: Emma, there is a son and a father at the center of this story, and here you are writing these books with your mom. Is that a connection and a relationship that you wanted to also maybe subtly touch on in this book?

Emma Walton Hamilton: That's interesting, David. I don't think it was conscious on our part,-

Dame Julie Andrews: No, it wasn't.

Emma Walton Hamilton: -but it is a recurring theme. The first books we wrote together with the Dumpy the Dumptruck books, and we did have a grandson and a grandfather in those books. We often write about family connections and family relationships.

Dame Julie Andrews: Yes, most of the text has to be from the point of view of somebody young enough that the readers can identify with. That seems to be the way we-- we've done that a lot.

Emma Walton Hamilton: We have quite often. I think that's more what it's inspired by, is needing a protagonist who is the same age as our target audience as our reader, our picture book reader, but of course, given that age, there are limitations on what they can do by themselves. We often find we need an adult to accompany them for some of the activities.

Dame Julie Andrews: Or guide, or push from behind or something. Also, I think in a way, I'm a very proud member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic board, and of course, we have the wonderful conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who has an adorable son. Now, maybe somewhere in the back of our minds, we were kind of--

Emma Walton Hamilton: Yes, I think so. We did ask Elly to keep him loosely in mind when she was illustrating the maestro. You may see some similarities there.

Dame Julie Andrews: I don't think there's any similarity in terms of the way they turned out, but the kind of freedom--

Emma Walton Hamilton: Just the curls, the brown curls, I think.

David Furst: The initial inspiration. Emma, did your mom pass on her love of music to you?

Emma Walton Hamilton: Oh, absolutely. Music and literature. All the arts actually. We're a very arts-centric family, so it's no accident that I grew up loving the same things.

David Furst: Well Julie, you're going to be speaking with Emma in Sag Harbor at the Bay Street Theater on Sunday.

Dame Julie Andrews: Yes.

David Furst: If fans at these events suddenly want to talk about, oh, I don't know, The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Victor Victoria, The Princess Diaries, your work in Despicable Me, and so many other things, are you okay with that?

Dame Julie Andrews: Is this being filmed on that day, darling?

Emma Walton Hamilton: I don't know the answer to that, but we are unfortunately not allowed to talk about those things at the moment because of the strike.

David Furst: Because of the strike, of course.

Emma Walton Hamilton: Yes. Of course, always happy to talk about those things, but sadly, we are both members of the Writers Guild and we are both members of SAG-AFTRA, and we can't discuss any projects that are supported by those unions in solidarity.

Dame Julie Andrews: It's a truly odd feeling, but anyway, we can talk about how many books we've written and different styles.

Emma Walton Hamilton: The importance of the arts and the value of the arts.

Dame Julie Andrews: We certainly can talk about that, yes.

David Furst: Talking about the importance of the arts, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Talking about projects in the pipeline and also in the past, you can't really get into.

Dame Julie Andrews: Right.

Emma Walton Hamilton: Not anything that is affiliated with either of those unions, alas.

Dame Julie Andrews: We had a lovely book come out last year, The First Notes about the man Medieval age in the 10th century, I think who founded the scale based on the-

Emma Walton Hamilton: The solfège.

Dame Julie Andrews: -the solfège.

Emma Walton Hamilton: Do-Re-Mi.

Dame Julie Andrews: Do-Re-Mi. Then we have another one coming out in-

Emma Walton Hamilton: In the spring.

Dame Julie Andrews: -in the spring.

Emma Walton Hamilton: 24. We have another picture book coming out, which is actually very much inspired by Bay Street Theater and an event that took place there so you can see recurring themes.

David Furst: Julie, you have been writing books for kids for a really long time. When did you decide that that was something you wanted to try your hand at?

Dame Julie Andrews: Oh, I think--

Emma Walton Hamilton: Mid-'70s?

Dame Julie Andrews: Well, mid-'70s, I wrote a couple of books on my own. I did them for different reasons. I wrote a book for my stepdaughter, our eldest child, who was raised in a city more than in amongst nature. Funnily enough, that one's very much still in print called Mandy. That was dedicated to her. Following that, I got so lonely having loved the creative process that I wrote a second book. Then one day, I was talking about my biographies, my memoirs, and I was asked if I had, by any chance, something for very young children.

I went back home and I said, "Let me think about it please," especially boys. I went back home to Emma and said, "Emma, your son is such a tiny kid, and he's only, what, one or two--

Emma Walton Hamilton: He was one at the time.

Dame Julie Andrews: If you wanted to get something from the library for him, what would it be? You said--

Emma Walton Hamilton: No contest, it has to be a book about trucks because he was completely obsessed in that.

Dame Julie Andrews: And that you couldn't find any.

Emma Walton Hamilton: Yes. At the time, I could only find more nonfiction, informational picture books about trucks. Mom said, "Why don't we try writing one together?" That was our first time.

Dame Julie Andrews: We had the best time. I can't tell you what fun it was.

David Furst: The go-to source for writing a book on trucks, Julie Andrews.

[laughter]

Emma Walton Hamilton: Exactly. Just what you would imagine.

Dame Julie Andrews: No, not at all, but the fun of it. Then actually, it's about life on a farm, in a very, very old dump truck that's in the weeds and weeds and how it's restored by grandpa and his grandson. The great fun was all the characters in the village and the people around. We drew on family a grea deal.

Emma Walton Hamilton: We learn as much from writing our books as I think anyone else does from reading them because--

Dame Julie Andrews: Some of them take a ton of research, some of them [unintelligible 00:13:14]

Emma Walton Hamilton: That was 35 books ago, David.

David Furst: Oh my goodness.

Emma Walton Hamilton: We've been busy.

David Furst: Well, Emma, I have to ask you, what is the process like writing a book with your mom? Do you sit down and write it all at once or is there a lot of meal interruptions? How does that work?

Dame Julie Andrews: There are lots of tea. That's for sure.

Emma Walton Hamilton: Yes. Lots of tea. We generally are planners rather than pantsers, as we in the writing industry, people who fly by the seat of their pants, we like to come up with an outline first and know what the general idea of the story is-

Dame Julie Andrews: And the research.

Emma Walton Hamilton: -and do the research. Once we've done that, then it's really a process, a very organic process of writing out loud and finishing each other's sentences. We sit together whenever possible, or via Zoom if we must.

Dame Julie Andrews: We do finish each other's sentences, actually.

Emma Walton Hamilton: In the old days, we were often on the phone together, which was very bad for our necks.

Dame Julie Andrews: Yes, I was in California at the time when we began.

Emma Walton Hamilton: Exactly.

Dame Julie Andrews: Now, I'm closer to Emma, and we meet as often as we possibly can.

Emma Walton Hamilton: We think out loud, and we write out loud, and I'm the scribe, and I type away and transcribe as we talk. Then we generate a rough draft.

Dame Julie Andrews: She's very computer savvy, which is what I'm trying to be, but I'm no good at it, and Emma is, and so you get all the hard, hard work.

Emma Walton Hamilton: It's evolved over the years, our process, but I think what was the happy surprise to us was that we had complementary strengths, different strengths. We had no idea when we started if we would be competitive or argumentative, or any of those things.

Dame Julie Andrews: Or compatible even.

Emma Walton Hamilton: It turned out to be a really wonderful way to nurture our relationship.

Dame Julie Andrews: You're the nuts and bolts of the structure in the first act, in the second act, the third act, and I'm more the flights of fantasy and the beginnings and the ends of chapters, and the end of the book, and the winding up, and the imagery.

Emma Walton Hamilton: The interesting image, yes.

Dame Julie Andrews: Not always, we now do-- I don't think, truly, that I could write anything without you, Emma, these days. I feel so strongly about that. It's like that strength that helps give a structure in a way.

David Furst: There are a lot of flights of fantasy in this magical book, grounded amazingly in reality when we come back to that amazing image in the Symphony hall with the conductor and the musicians playing for a theater full of plants. The book is called The Enchanted Symphony. What a treat it has been to speak with both of you. I can't mention the movie by name, but I was in Salzburg, Austria this summer, recreating scenes.

Dame Julie Andrews: Oh, I see. What a lovely photograph.

David Furst: Recreating scenes from this magical film with my sons.

Dame Julie Andrews: [unintelligible 00:16:11].

[laughter]

David Furst: Dame Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton will be speaking in Sag Harbor at the Bay Street Theatre on Sunday. Tickets for that event are on sale right now. Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton, thank you so much for joining us.

Dame Julie Andrews: Thank you, David, for your passion in all things children's books too.

David Furst: Good luck with the book.

Emma Walton Hamilton: Thank you. Bye bye.

Dame Julie Andrews: Bye-bye, and thanks so much.

 

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