What is a Nozzlewock? And however did I come up with the idea for this creature that headlines my poetry collection BEWARE THE DRAGON AND THE NOZZLEWOCK?

Here is the somewhat strange origin story of how the Nozzlewock originated and how it took over the book! Along the way you will get a peek into the creative process, and maybe marvel at how little things turn into bigger things in unexpected ways!

My previous poetry book, A HATFUL OF DRAGONS, received a lot of acclaim for being a very visual poetry book. When it was time to conceive a follow-up poetry collection, I proposed making the next one entirely visual, using a graphic-novel format.

​I created a proof of concept with 3 poems, successfully pitched it to my publisher (Astra/WordSong), and signed a contract to produce a 128-page book of funny poems in a full-color, graphic-novel format.

But now I had a problem. I had no content for this new book other than those first 3 poems, no title, no central theme, and no idea what the book was really going to be! The first order of business was to write more poems for the book. But where to start? As many authors know, the tyranny of the blank page is very, very real.

I thought back to my book A HATFUL OF DRAGONS for inspiration. One of my personal favorite poems in that book is a poem titled The Flippy Floppy Flappers.

(To see the ending of the above poem, track down my HATFUL book). 
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The Flippy Floppy Flapper poem was inspired by two creatures I had once painted into a mural. 

Back then I had thought the creatures looked so energetic, they deserved a poem of their own. (And that resulting poem is a lot of fun to read out loud - try it!). All creatures in the mural were interpreted from drawings submitted by young children. Here's the one that inspired the Flippy Floppy Flappers:   

And here is the original drawing that inspired this character. Maybe it was meant to be an elephant, but that's not how I interpreted it back then - instead I saw it as a creature with a trunk or hose on the top of its head.

This creature looked interesting. Perhaps it had some kind of suction tube on the top of it's head that could suck things up. If yes, what would it be called? I brainstormed names:

• Hose Head?
• Vacuum Head?
• Vacuum Hose Head?
• Suction Head?
• Nozzle Head?
• Schnozzle Head?
• Schnozzle Suck?
• Nozzle Suck?
• Nozzlesuck?
• ....????

Clearly this creature would be sucking things up with that giant hose. But would it be benign or fearsome? Would you need to be warned about it? What form would that warning take?

The thought of 'warning' reminded me of Lewis Carol's Jabberwocky, which has this particular 'warning' stanza in it:

               “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
               The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
               Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
               The frumious Bandersnatch!”

Aha, I thought, I love writing parody poems. Could I write a parody of Jabberwocky for my new book? Especially if I called the creature, not a Nozzlesuck, but a Nozzlewock. With a little tinkering I came up with this:

               “Beware the Nozzlewock, my child!
               The nose with super-vacuum strength!
               Beware its manners—coarse and wild!
               Beware its titan length!”

That looked promising. But to be rendered in comic format, the poem would need to have a ‘narrative’, that is, it must tell a story. What if I could go 'meta', and have a poem which referred to the Nozzlewock-parody poem indirectly? A poem within a poem! And then maybe, while someone is warning about the Nozzlewock, the actual Nozzlewock shows up in the poem itself?!? 

What if this was a classroom setting, with a teacher instructing students about the Nozzlewock. Something like this:

Here you see the teacher's monologue as one poem, and the jabberwocky-parody poem inset on the pages as something the students would be looking at. But when I tested this concept on some trusted readers, it fell flat on its face – no one would figure out a sequence in which to read the poems - the layout was too confusing. So much for my bright idea! 
 
But then I realized if I separate the two poems, I would be two poems closer to finishing the book, instead of just one. Hooray! :) 

So the jabberwocky-parody poem would get its own spread. And how about I illustrate it in the form of a medieval manuscript, thus implying that the Nozzlewock was a creature of old that had been warned about through the ages? This is what the poem looks like in its final form in the book, rendered as a spread from a fictional book titled Ye Olde Book Of Nozzlewocky. 

BTW it was a lot of fun to emulate a medieval drawing style, with flat faces and weird-looking animals: 

​And then the second poem, I could render in a more modern setting, a present-day classroom that looks like this:

I still wanted to go meta, so towards the end of this second poem, the Nozzlewock shows up and basically sucks up the entire setting, including the teacher. 

Saves me from having to write a proper ending, right? Not so fast. There was no closure in having the teacher disappear up the nozzle. Someone might have to rescue him. Aha! Was that the making of a third poem? I added this illustration to the poem:

Later in the book, the kids keep spying the Nozzlewock in action, which only makes them more determined to find a solution. 

In search of a solution the kids eventually stumble upon that ancient tome, Ye Olde Book of Nozzlewocky:

In the book they find the solution they are looking for, which happens to be its own poem – (sorry, not revealing it here, find it in the book!) – and now, oh happy day, I had one more poem for my book! Eventually the kids figure out how to outsmart the Nozzlewock and we have several happy endings.

By the time I finished writing the book, the Nozzlewock had became a dominant recurring character in the book and I wondered if I should just call the book ‘NOZZLEWOCKY: And Other Funny Poems’ or maybe ‘THE NOZZLEWOCK: And Other Funny Poems’. My publisher’s team suggested the title BEWARE THE DRAGON AND THE NOZZLEWOCK – they thought the word ‘Nozzlewock’ by itself was too unfamiliar and would be hard for people to search or ask for, whereas Dragons are popular and the combination of a popular term and an unfamiliar term might be more intriguing to prospective readers. And I have to agree, they were right!
 
And if anyone was wondering about the origin of that ancient tome, Ye Olde Book Of Nozzlewocky, look for the answer on the very first page of the book.

Look closer:

No, even closer:

Closer!

Yes, it is the Dragon, ancient enemy of the Nozzlewock, who penned that tome!
 
I now look back and think, if I had never painted that mural, or if that one particular kid had never made that particular sketch of the creature with a trunk on its head, this book would have turned out to be something completely different!!
 
Strange how things come to be, but there you have it. (And if anyone knows the kid who made that drawing, let me know so I can send them a complimentary copy of the book!)

Please check out BEWARE THE DRAGON AND THE NOZZLEWOCK if you haven't already. It should be available in all book channels, and you can also ask your local library to add it to their collection.

If you have already read the book, do please consider leaving a positive review online (Goodreads or Amazon).

Previous Nozzlewocky blog posts:

• Nozzlewocky - Breaking the Rules of the Comic Format

The Boston Globe has named BEWARE THE DRAGON AND THE NOZZLEWOCK as one of the 75 BEST BOOKS of 2024 across ALL CATEGORIES of books across all ages! Wow, what a high honor indeed!

BEWARE THE DRAGON AND THE NOZZLEWOCK is an unconventional book by any sense. The tagline for the book says ‘A Graphic Novel Poetry Collection Full of Surprising Characters’. Mathematically speaking,

(funny poems) x (comics) x (surprising characters) = (fun)CUBED

My entire childhood was spent reading comics. Even my earliest introduction to classic literature (e.g. Count of Monte Cristo, Black Beauty, Robinson Crusoe…) was in a graphic novel format. If only I could have explained to my parents then that “reading too many comics” was helping me to improve my comprehension and vocabulary, develop my critical thinking skills, learn how to process multi-modal information and interpret complex narratives, and spark my overall creativity!

My previous poetry collection book, A HATFUL OF DRAGONS, received a lot of praise for being very visual. For NOZZLEWOCK I decided to go all in and make the entire book in comic format – except I also decided to have fun by ‘breaking the rules’ of the very same comic format. My hope was that not only would this create delightful unexpected surprises for readers, but would also show kids that you don’t have to follow convention just for the sake of following convention, and maybe challenge them to question assumptions every now and then. The following are a few examples of ‘breaking the rules’. 

Example 1: Drawing outside the lines.

In the image above, the ghosts are ‘escaping’ the panel boundaries, and you can see a trace of the panel edge through their translucent bodies. Having a panel doesn’t mean the content must stay confined within it!
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Later when the roles are reversed, the ghosts are the ones confined to the panel, but not the blue-haired girl. The panel boundaries have now become a visual metaphor for the narrative!

Example 2: Using the Comic Panel Itself as Content
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​In the visual above, the panel is part of the narrative: the fiery super-hero has managed to set the panel on fire and melt away the edge!
 
Example 3: The Physical Page As An Extended Surface
In the poem below, we have “A dozen squids all leaking ink”. That leaked ink has to go somewhere, right? Well, why not all over the physical page itself?!? The mess adds to the messy nature of the poem! 
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​Example 4: Non-Linear Jumps in the Narrative
Everyone has heard of time travel, time loops, and time paradoxes. But what happens if, instead of jumping through time the protagonist jumps through the panels of the comic?
You may have to read ‘The Panel-Porter’ poem a few times to figure out exactly what is going on, but when you do, you will be very pleased with yourself!

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​Example 5: Mixing Formats
Concrete Poems are a popular form of poetry where the words themselves are shaped to help visualize the poem. Would concrete poetry belong in a comic-format book? Imagine the bewilderment of these two visual characters when they encounter an unexpected concrete poem. It creates a surreal ‘meta’ moment where the characters can question the nature of their book versus other poetry books!

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​Example 6: Panel Sequences
We are used to reading comic panels sequentially. But what if the creators of the book make a mistake and jumble up all the panels so they are out of order? This happens in the poem titled ‘T.T.T.S.U.I.T.M’ – readers are asked to find the right reading sequence themselves. But wait, there are only TWENTY TRILLION possibilities to wade through! (Please be patient with your young reader as they work through this problem)!

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​Example 7: Blurring The Boundaries Between Physical Pages
The following is one of my favorite sequences from the book. The kids have a problem they must solve using their senses and their wits. They smell the smoke. (Where’s that smoke coming from?) They feel something hot underneath the page. (The page is hot?!?) They cut through the page. (They cut through the page?!?). They find what they need. (What’s on the other side of the page?!?)

​Note: the kids wouldn’t have cut the page if they hadn’t smelled the smoke. But they wouldn’t have smelled the smoke if they hadn’t cut the page. (Perhaps this narrative will serve as a great segway for future philosophical discussions about the nature of ‘free will’?)

​Anyway, here’s what’s on the next page – a completely independent poem about a Phoenix!

​Note the cuts on the left (through which smoke is exiting) and the hand that came in to grab a feather!
 
I hope you enjoyed this brief visual peek into BEWARE THE DRAGON AND THE NOZZLEWOCK. Between the comics and the poems, there is enough visual and literary fun to engage all young readers and have them re-reading the book repeatedly.

Kirkus Reviews labels the book as “Juicy, joyful, and just right for reading aloud!”.

Booklist’s recommendation is to “Hand this to any kid, even the poetry-reluctant, who are looking for a laugh.”

School Library Journal describes it as “A delightfully eccentric and quirky collection of poetry”.

Librarian Betsy Bird thinks this is “One of the finest, funniest poetry books you’ll have encountered in a long time.”

​I hope you will have a chance to check out this book. Trust me, you will be surprised! 😊

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Note: This blog post previously appeared on the Nerdy Book Club website in November 2024.