In the latest children's book from mother-daughter duo Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton, a village subdued by a mysterious purple fog finds joy again by serenading an audience of appreciative houseplants.
The protagonist is young Piccolino, whose father is the maestro of the town opera house. Even though the fog is keeping people at home, the pair continue cleaning the empty building. One day Piccolino tinkers with the piano, and notices that the drooping plants in the lobby seem to brighten at the sound of music.
So they embark on a mission, collecting every houseplant they can find and enlisting orchestra members for a special concert. When the day comes, the unsuspecting musicians take the stage and tune their instruments. Then the velvet curtains open to reveal an auditorium full of greenery.
"The astonished musicians began to play tentatively at first, but gradually building in strength and tempo as the joy of making music again lifted, their spirits and the plants responded in kind, nodding and swaying, their stems standing taller and firmer, the leaves rustling in appreciation," the book reads. "And then the fog itself began to lift."
As whimsical as it looks, and as fanciful as it sounds, The Enchanted Symphony is inspired by a true story.
In June 2020, after several quiet months, Barcelona's Liceu opera filled its more than 2,000 seats with plants for a string quartet performance that was also live streamed for humans and quickly went viral.
Andrews and Hamilton were inspired by the photos and videos of the event: the red and gold opera house packed with lush green leaves, the announcement asking audiences to silence their cell phones, the way the houseplants seemed to stir with applause at the end.
"We often write books about the arts and about nature, and this seemed to be such a perfect marriage of those two passions of ours," Hamilton said. "So we tried to imagine what might cause an opera house to be filled with plants instead of people. And we came up with the little fable that is The Enchanted Symphony."
Andrews, Hamilton and illustrator Elly MacKay pulled back the curtain on their creative process in a Zoom interview with NPR shortly after the book's release in September — the first time all three had spoken face-to-face.
"I think that a lot of times illustrators and the writers of books don't get enough time to chat and talk to each other, and quite often it goes straight through the editor or the publishers," Andrews said. "But in our case, we love talking to our illustrators. And in this case, it was a delight because Ellie got everything that we asked for and then some."
The authors didn't want the book to be specifically about the pandemic. Instead, they were going for more of what Hamilton describes as "a fairy tale with a timelessness to it." That's why they created the fog.
Hamilton said it represents not necessarily the virus but "anything that threatens to distract us from those kinds of simple pleasures that really happen to be the most meaningful in life." And that's one of the messages they hope readers will take away from the book.
"We hope readers will, first of all, take a new curiosity or appreciation in music and in nature, of course," Hamilton said. "But we also hope that it will invite readers to think about what matters most to them, what values are important enough to be a primary focus in their lives."
Creativity makes the mother-daughter partnership sing (and tea helps too)
Andrews and Hamilton wrote the book — one of three they penned during the pandemic — at Andrews' dining table.
Their typical process involves a lot of brainstorming, outlining and writing out loud, a fair bit of "finishing each other's sentences" and copious amounts of tea — always PG Tips English Breakfast.
"If I can say it on public radio, don't ever forget the benefit of a bathroom break or a break to make a cup of tea," Andrews added. "Because quite often we'll be stuck ... And when we come back, one of us will say, 'I got it. I think I know the way out of this.' And it's that tiny break giving your mind the freedom to create on its own without being pushed in any direction."
Hamilton and Andrews have written more than 30 children's books together. When they first started, decades ago, they lived on opposite coasts and would spend hours writing over the phone until their necks were stiff. Andrews would begin at 6 a.m. in her nightgown, spritzing herself with perfume to feel more awake.
Hamilton said they work so well together in part because they both come from creative backgrounds, collaborated in mediums like theater and film before they took up writing and have a "shared sensibility about storytelling and creative problem-solving."
Andrew thinks it's also because they have different strengths. She described her daughter as "the nuts and bolts of our books" and herself as "more the flights of fancy."
They say their philosophy in moments of disagreement is "the best idea wins," regardless of who came up with it. And they learn something new with every book.
"I think overall what we have learned most from working together is ... the degree to which being creative casts a kind of a magic spell on our relationship, on our lives," Hamilton said.
They say the time spent problem-solving together, running up against a deadline, takes pressure off other stressors that mothers and daughters typically face, from busy calendars to health concerns to family drama. It distracts from the tensions of everyday life, they say, and also helps them get through them.
"It's like creative weightlifting," she added. "It strengthens our relationship."
The illustrations look layered. They started as a mini 3D set
Andrews and Hamilton said they fell in love with MacKay's work "because of its luminosity."
"We knew we needed to find somebody who could manage to convey both the fog and the world hidden behind, blanketed by the fog," Hamilton said. "But then when we found out about what her particular technique was, we were completely blown away because it completely supported the theme of our story."
MacKay starts by building miniature sets, complete with the scenery and characters. Then she lights and photographs them, giving the images a more three-dimensional quality.
She said this book posed a particular challenge because she had to create a theater inside of her miniature set.
She thought about things like how to layer the houseplants further away from the stage to create a sense of depth and how to filter light through the branches of a tree onto the kids playing beneath it. She also grappled with the balance between the vibrant colors that are so necessary in kids' books and the muted mood of parts of the story.
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