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How a Boston cartoonist turned her love for cities into a children’s books series
From Boston to New Orleans, cartoonist and author Sage Stossel's 'On the Loose' children's book series is proof that cities can be loved by all ages.
From their walkability to their diverse offerings, cartoonist and author Sage Stossel has a love for great American cities.
Stossel grew up in Belmont, and even as a kid frequented the nearby big city of Boston. She fell in love with the standout architecture, the hidden alleyways, and busy streets.
Her career has been spent commenting on the happenings of cities, mostly Boston through her cartoons with local and national outlets, like The Boston Globe and The Atlantic. But it’s her book series, “On the Loose,” that has given her the opportunity to share her love for these bustling metropolises with a different kind of audience: children.
She’s taken families around the North End, helped them navigate the T, placed them in line at Geno’s for a cheesesteak in Philadelphia, and among the bright lights of Times Square in New York. And the plot of each book is the same for each city: The zoo animals somehow got out, are now among the cities’ most iconic locations, and the young reader has to find them in a jumbled crowd of people and activities.
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Her first book, “On the Loose in Boston,” was put on former Mayor Marty Walsh’s suggested youth reading list in 2016. But now for the first time, she’s taken her young readers down South to one of America’s most historically and culturally significant cities, just in time for Carnival season: New Orleans.
Boston.com spoke with Stossel about her newest book, how it highlights her love for cities, and how she drew New Orleans during a pandemic.
Boston.com: You do a lot of local news and political commentary illustrations. What inspires you to do each drawing?
Sage Stossel: I like to be a fly on the wall and pick up the vibe of things and try to make sense of it. It’s issues that affect the people where I live and affect me — things I’m curious about and that I hope or expect other people might be curious about, too. It’s kind of a way of processing the world around me.
What was the idea behind the “On the Loose” series?
An idea occurred to me many years ago, for a little poem when I was living in Harvard Square, about Harvard Square, and I wanted to do pictures for it and make it a children’s book. Then I realized Harvard Square was really hard to draw. I put it aside, and after I’d started doing cartoons for a while, I had gotten a lot of practice having to draw on a regular basis, so I decided to dust it off and stand out in Harvard Square and do pictures. I found a place I pitched it to locally (and) I was excited they took it. They had me do “On the Loose in Boston.”
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Amusingly they originally pitched the idea to me of like an adult joke book. They wanted it to be ‘Where’s Whitey Bulger?’ I wasn’t sure about whether that would be very tasteful. And also I thought, “What if they find him?” So I’m glad I didn’t go with that and instead with the children’s route. It’s been really fun to immerse myself in cities that I love and spend time with them.
You mention it’s in cities you love. How does this work for and translate to a kids’ book?
I did think that the idea of something for kids where the zoo animals have wandered into the city, and then kids have to find them in iconic locations — the kids can be absorbed on each page for a little while. I invest a lot of time in each scene, and hope that it’s fun for the kids to hunt around and find things and note the little vignettes happening in different places around the page. The pictures have to be kind of like a big jumble with things that are hard to find. I feel like there’s a certain type of urbanist landscape that lends itself to it — like walkable kinds of places. And it’s that type of place that I happen to love, which are when there’s just a variety of different types of buildings and a varied landscape.
You’ve taken your readers to a few places — one book includes navigating the T, but another takes them as far away as DC. New Orleans is the first southern entry in this series. Why did you choose it?
Well, it was partly because my publisher was interested to have me do it. But also my dad (did) and stepmom now spends part of the year in New Orleans. So it’s a place that I have become familiar with, and it was a place that meant a lot to me. My dad died a few years ago. And it was one of the last places that we were all as a family together.
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My stepmom is good friends with these guys who are tour guides, and she was able to advise me. There’s like all these quirky things she fills me in about the city. Like there’s a pothole near her that is so big that they put a statue of Jesus in it, and it’s called pothole Jesus, and they like to decorate it for all the carnivals. The mix of cultures, music spilling out of every doorway, flowers over the balconies, it’s a magical place.
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Another thing that made this book different in the process was I worked on this one during the pandemic. I couldn’t go to New Orleans to do the actual work. For all the other books, I would go and stand in the street with my sketchpad. I was actually able to do it with Google Street View. I feel like I spent the pandemic in New Orleans in a way, even though I was in my pajamas in the bleak Boston winter.
Where in New Orleans do you take us, and what animals do you use?
There’s elephants eating all the beignets. I did one scene that was in the bayou just to have a different landscape, even though it’s not right in the city. And then Jackson Square. I did it in the Presbytere where they have exhibits of the Mardi Gras outfits upstairs. And of course Bourbon Street. Sometimes I hide people that I know. I put my stepmom in there, and the ghost of my dad is hiding, looking out a window. I did Louis Armstrong Park since it’s the birthplace of jazz.
What’s great about these books is it teaches kids about cities they live in or nearby, or it shows them places they’ve never been. But New Orleans isn’t always viewed as a family-friendly place, though you really do include things that a family could do. Was it intentional to show that cities are a great place to take a family, or even raise a family?
Personally I’m kind of like a city lover myself. I love to be in cities, and I love having everything right there. And I want to show the city as a place that’s … like a kid’s playground where there’s always things to see. It doesn’t have to be that it’s during Mardi Gras or during a festival.
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With New Orleans, it’s not a place that people would think first thing to take a child, but … there are kids that live there. There are all these museums and exhibits and things that are geared toward children that people might not think of first when they think of New Orleans.
I will confess that when I drew the picture of Bourbon Street, there were things that I had to change — signs to make it more G-rated, but that’s the only little adjustments that I had to make. There is a lot for families to do.
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