In person or online, engaging with readers is Ruth Ohi’s favourite thing to do

From the moment you meet her, Ruth Ohi’s fondness for children is obvious. She may be discussing how her daughters’ experiences inspire her picture books. Or how to cultivate a familial love of reading through Reading Nights. Or how she engages and connects with young readers in author workshops. No matter the topic, her delight effuses. 

Ohi lives in Toronto and published her first books in 1989, after graduating from the Ontario College of Art and Design. More than 3o years, 50 books and numerous awards later, she remains one of Canada’s most beloved and prolific authors. Her books include No Help Wanted!, Scribble, Shh! My Brother’s Napping, and the beloved Fox and Squirrel series. Despite a full schedule, she regularly hosts author visits to schools and festivals because that is one of her most favourite things to do. By some serendipity, she “just fell into” doing them years ago.  She now feels “very lucky…very fortunate” to be able to interact with young people this way – particularly since she grew up in a book-loving family and enjoyed weekly trips to the library, yet recalls no authors visiting her school – an experience her daughters enjoyed and who remain avid readers. 

As a visiting author, the impact of the workshops has been “very much an eye opener”. Looking back, she recalls that she did not begin hosting the workshops for a specific reason, such as wanting to promote literacy. “I didn’t know any of that,” she admits. “Now I understand, oh my gosh, it makes such a difference because the kids get excited about their own stories, their own artwork, their own visual storytelling, and it makes writing and the whole world of books more real to them.” She hopes that, if they get excited about one book, they will get excited about other books.: “That’s at least how I see it working with kids that I meet.” 

At this year’s Word on the Street and Telling Tales literary festivals, Ohi is engaging virtually with her young readers. From their homes, they can chat with Ohi and author Ted Staunton about their newly released picture book Friends for Real, published by Scholastic Canada.  Friends for Real is her first work as an illustrator “for the first time in a long while”. She has known Staunton for a long time. He was one of the first people she met at a literary conference long ago, and they have been meeting at different conferences and festivals over the years. “One day he emailed me and said he’d like to do a project with me. He said that he works best being inspired by images, so I said okay, well, I could show you three or four sketches and see if they do the trick.” Staunton used one of the images – a sketch of a girl standing and holding a line in one hand that ran off the page – to come up with the story for Friends for Real, and submitted it to Scholastic Canada. “And they loved it.” The image that sparked Staunton’s imagination opens the story, which centres on Emma, who puts her favourite toy Squeezy on a line, and takes Squeezy everywhere with her. One day, she loses Squeezy. In looking for her lost toy, she finds a new friend, Frank. Within the story’s simple narrative reside universal themes of helpfulness, friendship, kindness, empathy and caring. Ohi’s charming illustrations provide nuanced details and subtext that diverse readers will relate and connect to.

Kindness is a prevalent theme in Ohi’s works. It could be deemed her guiding principle as author, parent and citizen. “It takes sometimes so little effort to be kind,” she smiles, “and you feel better.” She notes that while we cannot control the actions of others, we can control our reactions: “And my reaction – I found this for my own mental health – is to just assume the best. I try and apply that to everything. I’m hoping that people assume the best about what I intended. I have to do that for others as well. ” 

In conversation, Ohi marvels at the countless acts of kindness she has witnessed over her life: seniors receiving help to do or remember something; people stepping aside to let others pass on the sidewalk; cars allowing other cars in, and drivers raising their hands in thanks. In fact, kindnesses have inspired her to compose a new book, Choose Kindness, due out from Scholastic Canada next summer in the culmination of more than a decade of work.  The timeless premise is that “when you do a kindness, you make someone else’s day better. Just by doing simple things, your help to them can affect them, impact their day, and help them be better for the future”. 

The book features woodland creatures, and a different style, which Ohi is “very excited about”. There are few words, with a lot being told in the pictures behind the scenes. Many of the incidents depicted in the story are based on kindnesses Ohi has noted in her life and her children’s lives. Her special interest is in the “chain reaction of kindness” that one act can catalyze. Choose Kindness opens with a bunny named Bunny who wakes up feeling out of sorts and does not want to get out of bed. He goes to school unhappily and encounters various characters over the course of the day. The story closes with the last character going back to a few characters who chose to go their own ways, and extending a simple invitation to join them: “In other words, no grudges. Try and treat other people the way you’d like to be treated. Err on the side of kindness!”

Over her consequential career, thousands of children have attended Ohi’s workshops. And although she prefers interacting with them in person, she has pivoted seamlessly to virtual visits, which afford everyone “a front row seat” for her eagerly observed drawing demos. She values her time with children so highly that she takes pains to “change up” her presentations, customizing them for specific audiences while keeping them fresh for herself: “I want to stay enthusiastic. I don’t want to be a broken record: ‘Hi, my name is Ruth Ohi. This is my house. This is my dog. This is how I do it’ because if I do, I might as well not be there. They might as well be watching a video. I try and keep it interesting for myself as well, because I think that’s important, too. I can stay sincere. I can stay authentic. It’s so important for me to be authentic with the kids!” 

Of course, Ohi keenly misses the immediate feedback from an in-person audience of children. The distancing of the virtual environment certainly “took some adjusting”. With a lot of parents opting to leave their cameras off, she often cannot see the children’s reactions, which makes her wistful for “that energy.  I get excited, and then they get excited, and I tie my presentations to their reactions.” Having worked with children for so long, she can adjust her presentation so easily to what they are interested in. In a virtual world, her imagination is called on for double duty: “what I do now is I picture their excitement.”

Meeting Ohi leaves no doubt that what you see and what you hear in conversation is what you get: a creator who feels she has been blessed by her lot in life. No complaints, only kindnesses. “When I get a call, I don’t take anything for granted because it really is a privilege to engage kids and to be part of that time in their lives.”

Learn more about Ruth Ohi and her books on ruthohi.com.

© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2020