Bookology Magazine

Mark Ceilley

When Mark Ceil­ley shared that his next book was a pic­ture book offi­cial­ly licensed with Queer Eye, the tele­vi­sion show now stream­ing on Net­flix, we were curi­ous about the expe­ri­ence of writ­ing for a well-known brand with well-known men who are makeover consultants.

In the book, The Fab Five — Karamo Brown, Antoni Porows­ki, Bob­by Berk, Tan France, and Jonathan Van Ness — are por­trayed as chil­dren who already have their fab­u­lous tal­ents. When they meet a young boy, Mason, who is feel­ing fear­ful of invit­ing friends to a birth­day slum­ber par­ty, the Fab Five embark on a mis­sion to help Mason build self-con­fi­dence and to pre­pare for the most amaz­ing sleep­over possible.

Mark Ceil­ley has taught Pre‑K, Kinder­garten, First and Sec­ond grades and is cur­rent­ly a Read­ing Inter­ven­tion­ist. He holds an MFA in Writ­ing for Chil­dren and Young Adults from Ham­line Uni­ver­si­ty. His first book was Cin­derel­liot: A Scrump­tious Fairy­tale, co-writ­ten with Rachel Smo­ka-Richard­son and illus­trat­ed by Stephanie Laberis (Run­ning Kids Press).

Mark Ceilley
Mark Ceil­ley
Slumber Party Magic!
Queer Eye: Slum­ber Par­ty Magic!

How did it come about that you wrote a sto­ry about The Fab Five, famil­iar to mil­lions from the tele­vi­sion show Queer Eye?

Mark:   My edi­tor, Julie Matysik, who I worked with on Cin­derel­liot: A Scrump­tious Fairy­tale sent me an email in Jan­u­ary 2022 ask­ing me if I would be inter­est­ed in writ­ing the book.

Are you a fan of the show? Did you con­scious­ly incor­po­rate their per­son­al­i­ties into the story?

Mark:   Yes, I am a big fan of the show! I love watch­ing it! Before I wrote the first draft, I researched each of the Fab 5. I also watched many episodes. From my research I found inter­est­ing facts about each of them, their back­ground, inter­ests, etc. From watch­ing the shows, I observed their man­ner­isms, ges­tures, and speech pat­terns. I took many notes. I then tried to incor­po­rate real life char­ac­ter­is­tics into the boy char­ac­ters in the sto­ry.  I tried to bring out their per­son­al­i­ties in a real­is­tic, child-like way.

Since Queer Eye is a brand, what para­me­ters did the pub­lish­er give you for the story? 

Mark:   The pub­lish­er gave me a gen­er­al sto­ry line. So, I knew ahead of time what the plot would be and how each char­ac­ter would help Mason, the main char­ac­ter hav­ing a birth­day party.

This pic­ture book reads like an episode of Queer Eye for the ele­men­tary school read­er and fan. What did your teacher self bring to the project? 

Mark:   In all of the pic­ture books I’ve writ­ten (some are not pub­lished yet) I write it from a lens from both child and teacher.  Since I’ve taught ele­men­tary school for over 25 years, I have a feel for how kids act, what they might say, and so on. My teacher self looks at a sto­ry won­der­ing things such as would a child say or do that? Is that devel­op­men­tal­ly appro­pri­ate for a child of a cer­tain age. I also looked at word count: would the sto­ry be too short /too long to keep their atten­tion? Is there enough action and a vari­ety of set­tings that kids would find interesting?

The book is light-heart­ed and fun and yet it has the emo­tion­al ele­ments of the show: address­ing fears, evok­ing con­fi­dence, tak­ing pride in rec­og­niz­ing new skills. How much revi­sion went into this man­u­script to make it so heartwarming?

Mark:   It took approx­i­mate­ly three to four revi­sions until we got to the final man­u­script. The revi­sions were minor such as word changes/deletions, clar­i­fy­ing a con­cept, and expand­ing the dia­logue or actions of a char­ac­ter. All the edits and revi­sions made for a stronger and sat­is­fy­ing sto­ry. Writ­ing this book was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence for me. The whole process was col­lab­o­ra­tive. I am proud to be a part of writ­ing a book that incor­po­rates themes of friend­ship, kind­ness, coöper­a­tion, and build­ing self-confidence.

Thanks for shar­ing your expe­ri­ence with us, Mark. So many of us are fans of the show … we’re in awe of your role in bring­ing a Fab Five sto­ry to kids and fam­i­lies. We love that it’s a con­fi­dence-build­ing and tal­ent-rec­og­niz­ing book, which is what Queer Eye is all about!

Queer Eye: Slum­ber Par­ty Mag­ic! A Fab­u­lous Pic­ture Book
writ­ten by Mark Ceil­ley
illus­trat­ed by James Jef­fers
pub­lished by Run­ning Press Kids / Hachette Book Group, 2023

Slumber Party Magic!
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

2 Comments
Oldest
Newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Diane Kress Hower
Diane Kress Hower
6 months ago

Mark, con­grat­u­la­tions on a great inter­view. I enjoyed hear­ing more about your process.

Reply
David LaRochelle
David LaRochelle
6 months ago

Con­grat­u­la­tions, Mark! I enjoyed get­ting a glimpse of what it was like work­ing with an estab­lished brand of char­ac­ters. I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing this, your lat­est book!

Reply
wpdiscuz   wpDiscuz

Search

Recent Articles

Features

COLUMNS

Resources

Advertise

Follow Us

Facebook Twitter

Many of the books on this website can be purchased from Bookshop.org, an online bookseller that supports local, independent bookstores. Bookology and local booksellers receive a small commission for each book sold. Thank you for your support.

Copyright 1990–2024 Winding Oak LLC • All rights reserved. Privacy policy.
headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota • working throughout the USA