This is Part 2 of a two-part blog post. If you haven’t already, read Part 1 (December 1st), where I introduce the concept of ‘difficult landscapes.’
On Planning and Improvisation
When I started Kinder Inquiries in April of 2024, I told everyone I had a plan and showed them my little dummy book with penciled in words relating to the letters of the alphabet. Half of the pages were blank. None of the pages spelled out the detailed ideas floating around in my imagination. It is difficult to explain a book’s direction when only 10% of your plan is visible to others and 90% of your work is improvised while standing at the press. Thankfully, my MFA committee members at the University of Iowa trusted my proposal and let me do my own thing.
Kinder Inquiries, “Alphabet; Kinder inquiries”
At first, I embraced the fact that alphabet books are recognized as pedagogical tools with built-in structure that can be used to convey a moral tale. The sequence of letters from A to Z offered the pacing of the pages and rhythm of the text. I mostly followed alphabetical order, but there are specific instances where I blended or disrupted the sequence to make a point. For example, the book does not end with the letters and symbols W, X, Y, & Z. When I reached the letter Z, as I had planned, which contains the number 0 and the word “zero” repeated over three pages, I did not sense that the story had the proper sense of closure. Consequently, I added another page that jumped to the letter G to address the ongoing march of development in my hometown: How many gardens once grew under that 3-car garage?
Kinder Inquiries, “W”
Kinder Inquiries, “Z is for zero”
The guiding structural element of Kinder Inquiries was conveying a true story that took place in 1974, the year I started kindergarten. I also knew that I wanted to print most of the pages with a base layer using large wood type.
Press lock-up for “B is for before”
To begin printing the book, I started with formulaic language that had a distant voice. “Ages & Ages Ago...” [nonspecific period in the distant past] and “Before you were even born...” [a bygone era existing outside of the lived experiences of the imagined reader]. From there, I printed with metal rule and metal dotted lines to reference elementary school lined papers. Learning to write, we copied the shapes of the printed letters: “Aa Bb Cc” and so on. After that, I printed the words of a sentence to begin my moral tale, “A beautiful creature....” [romanticizing and obfuscating the narrative with vague language].
Kinder Inquiries, “ABC is for A beautiful creative”
By the fourth letter of the alphabet, I wanted readers to know the central tragedy of the moral tale: the mysterious death of a beautiful creature. Printed in large wooden type, like a headline in a newspaper: “In 1974, A Beautiful Creature Died!” The irony of alluding to headline newsprint is that this true story was never reported, and the death of the beautiful creature was never investigated. In fact, the death of the ornate box turtle in our kindergarten classroom was never discussed, other than the initial and factual report of the beautiful creature’s death over the winter break.
Kinder Inquiries, “D is for died”
Following the opening pages, with intentionally cloying shades of bubblegum pink and Milori blue, the mood shifts to a darker grey print that announces death in a somber tone. This headline news formatting “IN 1974, a beautiful creature DIED” is followed by a sudden and improvised explosion of color found on the center spread for letters Ee Ff Gg. The turtle has died, but we as readers don’t yet know why or how. We may never know why or how. But we know how this makes us feel.
Kinder Inquiries, “Ee Ff Gg”
The resulting print was a breakthrough moment for me as an artist using letterpress. I successfully used multiple layers of transparent and opaque inks (9 or 10 print runs) to create an emotional landscape expressing the sorrow of a child who has been told that her turtle died. These pages also include the critical insight of an adult who has recently discovered a crucial scientific fact: under normal circumstances, box turtles hibernate and burrow underground in November.
There is no way I could have planned the Ee Ff Gg page spread in advance. Rather, I printed and then responded intuitively to the ink that was on the page, deciding to add layers that could express emotions and key ideas.
Influential Voices from the Fields of Pedagogy and Critical Literacy
Because I have a professional background in the field of literacy, I wanted to blend theories of critical literacy pedagogy into the creative development of my book.
Now that Kinder Inquiries is complete, I can look back and identify three theoretical voices from the field of literacy education who influenced my creative process. The first voice is that of Dr. Daniel Okubit, former Education Sector Program Manager of Peace Corps Ethiopia (who was my supervisor from 2011–2014, when I served in the U.S. Peace Corps). The second voice comes from translated works by Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire (1921–1997). The third and final voice is that of Dr. Louise Rosenblatt (1904–2005), a literacy scholar and university professor who lived and worked in the United States.
Press lock-up for “U is for under normal circumstances”
As I was composing and printing this book, I regularly recalled the voice of Dr. Daniel Okubit who often said, “a lesson plan is not a straitjacket.” Dr. Okubit encouraged Peace Corps English language teachers who were working in Ethiopia’s rural government schools to leave room for education to become more expansive rather than more constricted. By doing so, Dr. Okubit was pushing against educational norms, empowering teachers in Ethiopian schools to respond to the creative energy, the intellectual capabilities, and the lived experiences of their students.
I refer to Paulo Freire’s notion that “reading the world” precedes “reading the word” using large wood type and transparent pink ink. Freire’s Word/World connection suggests that critical literacy and lived experiences are dynamically interconnected. Rather than quote Freire directly, I included his concepts to ask future readers a question: What does it mean, to read the world? And how does reading the world relate to reading words on the page?
Kinder Inquiries, “P is for place”
Finally, I was motivated to create this difficult alphabet book because of my interest in transactional reader response theories as described by Dr. Louise Rosenblatt. When I was a graduate student in the College of Education at the University of Iowa, I took a semester-long course on Reader Response Theory. I imagine that my alphabet book is an intentionally challenging text designed for imagined readers who will willingly engage in transactional relationships with my book, despite its difficult terrain. In other words, I was motivated to create a book [the text] that acted as one protagonist whose purpose was to engage with an unknown person [the reader] who is the second protagonist. These two elements work together as equal participants to create a new and unique response [the poem]. (If you are interested in these ideas, I recommend Rosenblatt’s book, The Reader, The Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of Literary Work.)
Like Rosenblatt, Freire, and Okubit, I conceptualize the act of reading as a transactional event that is unique and specific to any individual reader’s identity. I see our identities as continually unfolding/evolving as we are idiosyncratically molded by various social and cultural contexts.
When I decided to create Kinder Inquiries as an intentionally difficult alphabet book, I knew I was embracing future ‘poems’ that might be created by readers I will likely never meet. This gave me a sense of artistic freedom. Because I never considered my intentionally difficult text to be a separate and static entity, I felt liberated from the pressure of printed book as authoritative text. The moral tale of Kinder Inquiries will come to life in the future, thanks to the dynamic potential of intelligent and unique readers. As Rosenblatt suggests, these readers will engage in transactions with the text to create new and insightful poems.
Jennifer Miller (she/her) is an artist and an English language educator currently living in Iowa City, Iowa. Her creative projects are inspired by history, archives, mapping, linguistics, phenology, and ecology. She holds an MFA in Ceramics (2000) and an MFA in Book Arts (2025), both from the University of Iowa.
