Kate Feiffer

Colored in Shades of Pink: Kate Feiffer Debuts Book for Children

The Vineyard Gazette October 25, 2005

By JULIA RAPPAPORT

Oak Bluffs second grader Maddie Alley loves pink. She has pink stuffed animals, pink rugs in her room and she drinks pink lemonade. The colors in her wardrobe range from princess pink to bubble gum pink, from rose to carnation.

The other day her mother, Island artist Kate Feiffer, pulled a shirt out of her daughter's closet. Maddy looked at her mother and shook her head. "Mom," she said. "Of course I will not wear that. It has absolutely no pink in it."

Kate Feiffer says her daughter, to put it lightly, is pink-obsessed. Her passion for pink does not, however, come close to that of Madison's. Madison is the pink-worshiping star of Ms. Feiffer's first children's book, Double Pink, which came out earlier this month.

An exaggerated version of Maddy Alley, Madison is so in love with pink that she slowly turns everything in her room a different shade of the color. Painters come and paint the walls and ceiling of her room pink. She gives away all of her stuffed animals, except the pink ones. The only clothes that she wears are pink.

Finally, one day, while her mother is not looking, she turns
herself pink. She calls her mother in to show off her work, but her
mom cannot see her. Madison has blended in with everything else in the room.

"Is this you?" her mother asks over and over, unable to find
her daughter. Madison jumps and spins and hops to try and attract her mother, all to no avail. She sheds a single tear, which washes away a stripe of pink on her face. Finally, her mother recognizes her and plants a ruby red lipsticky kiss on her cheek.

Ms. Feiffer's wrote her first children's story, Shoe Schnook, for her shoe-loving niece ten years ago. Since then, she has continued to dabble in children's writing, but it was not until she launched the tale of the pink-obsessed Madison that she decided to try to go somewhere with it. "I decided this one had something," Ms. Feiffer says, "so I kept pushing."

She wrote the story about two and a half years ago. She submitted it to a few publishing houses before receiving a call from Paula Wiseman at Simon & Schuster. Ms. Wiseman commissioned English illustrator Bruce Ingman to draw Madison and all of her fabulous pink paraphernalia, and Ms. Feiffer's first book was published. "I was very lucky," she says.

Ms. Feiffer now lives on the Island year-round, although she says it did not come easily. She grew up spending summers on the Island as "a barn rat at Pond View farm." Come August, she would
return to New York City with her parents. "I tried to convince my
parents to live here year-round," she recalls. Or, at the very least,
"to find a way to get a pony into our apartment in New York."

After college, Ms. Feiffer remained in New York City, working as a research editor at a photography agency. She left her job after a few years, uncertain of her direction. A short time later, she came to the Island for a spring weekend at her childhood summer home to clear her head and regroup. That weekend, through mutual friends, she met Chris Alley, an engineer at Schofield, Barbini, and Hoehn. Little did she know, the Vineyard would never be just a summer place again.

Soon Ms. Feiffer moved from New York to Boston and began work as a freelance producer. Having grown up with a father, writer and cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who worked from home and a mother, Judy Feiffer, who worked a nine to five job, Ms. Feiffer had come to value the freedom inherent in freelance work.

She remembers seeing her mother return home exhausted and stressed at the end of the day. Her father, on the other hand, stayed home and took a nap at ten o'clock each morning. Ultimately, Ms. Feiffer chose her father's lifestyle.

The flexibility of freelance work came in handy as her romance with Mr. Alley continued. They tried to spend as much time together as possible, but Ms. Feiffer kept her apartment and job in Boston and Mr. Alley remained on the Vineyard. Even after Ms. Feiffer, "the city mouse," and Mr. Alley, "the country mouse," were married in September, 1996, Ms. Feiffer refused to become a full-time Island resident.

"I was expecting that I would be entirely alone," she recalls. It was not until the birth of Madeline, two years after their marriage, that Ms. Feiffer finally tossed in the towel of an urban life and moved to the Island.

Since moving here, she has had to work hard to live the kind
of life that she wants to live. She realizes that she is not alone in
this struggle. "There are a lot of women who came to the Island
because they wanted to be here," Ms. Feiffer says. "Now they have to create their own opportunities and make it work."

For her that has meant living a juggling act - picking up work when and where she can. She has been working on a documentary film, Matzo and Mistletoe, and equipment and tapes line the bookshelves and clutter the corners of the small loft office in her Oak Bluffs home. When not working on her own projects, she does freelance writing for various Vineyard publications and freelance publicity work for the Martha's Vineyard Hebrew Center. "It's a typically Vineyard patchwork," she says.

The Vineyard's flourishing art scene has helped her to
recreate an urban life in a small Island setting. "We all go to each
other's gallery openings and screenings," she says. "People here
embrace the arts."

And in fact, Ms. Feiffer does often spend a significant amount of time alone. In the morning, after Chris has gone to work and Maddy to school, she grabs a cup of coffee - or two or three - and heads up to her office. Until 2:30 p.m., when Maddy gets home from school, she spends equal amounts of time "working on the film, writing, and procrastinating."

Later in the day she has time to play or paint with Maddie or
run errands. During this down time Ms. Feiffer feels the pangs her
old city life. She misses Thai food, having a bookstore that is open
until 11 p.m. and going to movies no one has heard of. "I have urban lust," she admits, "but I love being here."

She manages to get her urban fixes during frequent visits to New York City and Boston. The rest of the time she relishes her "loud household and quiet life" on the Vineyard. She has also fallen in love with children's books, and expects to write more - many more.

Family is her inspiration. Her parents encouraged her creativity, her husband brought her back to the Vineyard, and her daughter inspired her first successful book. They have also been her collaborators.

Maddy was part of the team that produced Double Pink, and throughout the creative process, Ms. Feiffer consulted with her
daughter on all things pink.

"She knows that she inspired it, but also that she was part
of its creation," she says.

Ms. Feiffer's father, who also recently published a children's book, A Room with a Zoo, will illustrate her next book. It will be different working with her father, she admits, but she adds: "I am very excited."

Kate Feiffer, Maddy, and all things pink will appear upstairs at the Bunch of Grapes today from 3:30 to 5 p.m. The author will read and sign Double Pink. She will also speak at the Bunch of Grapes on Dec. 16 at 7:30 p.m. and sometime around Valentine's Day at Riley's Books in Vineyard Haven.

Posted with the permission of The Vineyard Gazette