William Joyce is the author of the KPBS One Book Kids selection for 2015, "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore."
Just as the One Book, One San Diego selection for adults aims to unite a community through the written word, One Book for Kids offers children throughout San Diego County the opportunity to read, talk, explore and dream about one book together.
Joyce’s book tells the story of a man who encounters flying books after a storm devastates New Orleans. The storm makes the words disappear in his own book that he’s writing. Joyce won an Academy Award in 2011 for a short animated film based on his book.
Joyce, who is from Louisiana, said Hurricane Katrina did the same thing when it hit New Orleans — it made words disappear from books.
“Going through the streets after water had receded, you found huge drifts of books,” Joyce, told KPBS Midday Edition. “You find these mounds of books that have floated out of libraries, houses, all wiped clean of their words because they were covered by mud.”
Joyce, whose main character is based on his mentor and publisher William Morris, said he learned telling stories could be healing for the victims of the storm.
“It kind of hit me – being able to tell your story could in a way, as terrible as the story had been, could be curative,” Joyce said.
Joyce said he realized his love for books when he was 5 and read "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak. Joyce met Sendak at a book signing event for Joyce's book "Dinosaur Bob" that coincided with the 25th anniversary of "Where the Wild Things Are." Joyce now calls Sendak a friend and mentor.
"It's not often in your life that there's a transformative event and you get to end up meeting the person who was sort of the catalyst of that event and then befriend them, but that happened to me. I still think it's one of the coolest things in my whole life," Joyce said. “Maybe there’s a kid somewhere in San Diego this book may mean something to. I hope I get to meet him.”
