Minutia in "Finding Cozy"

For Those Who Like finding "Easter eggs"

Film and video-game buffs tell me that an "Easter Egg" is a message, image, or feature hidden in a video game, film, or book that becomes "inside information" known only by those who are know to look for them. Alfred Hitchcock used to include a cameo of himself in each film, just for fun. That is a form of "Easter egg."

These elements are typically incidental and non-essential to understanding the story itself, but If you are reading here about the book "Finding Cozy"  you might enjoy finding these "Easter eggs" in the book. It was Natalie and Colton's idea to include them, and I'm so glad they did. I'll share them below in order of appearance (page order) 

(pp 1-2) I made the tire swing in the willow in 1986 from a motorcycle tire which looks more like the car tires from the 1930's. My goal was replicating the swing that hung outside The Waltons house. I have always enjoyed Earl Hamner's vocal narrative style. (He wrote and narrated the TV show.) So while the tires wing is a little detail on the page, it's a significant easter egg. That tire swing hung behind "the little blue house, then in the willow on Lovejoy Avenue, and now at our current home in Michigan. My grandkids still swing on it....The little blue house is based on the first home we owned at 104 Berkshire Road in Waterloo, Iowa. We moved into that Cape Cod when our first-born was barely crawling. Her two sisters joined her there over the next 13 years. In this house is where "Cozy Rabbit" stories began.

(pp 3-4) The flower pot on the porch step is my wife's. She has a green thumb for flowers and plants that pot and many others around the yard each year. The blue house had a matching dog-eared fence, but Julie always wanted a white picket fence. It never happened. (Thirty-some years later, the new owners removed the fence and the trees and painted the house yellow. It's still charming.) ....The house we've called home for over 20 years, has a limestone walk made of random-shaped flat pavers that I brought back from Julie's parents small farm in Kansas. (Each time I went I brought back about a dozen until the path was complete.) Colton had a similar flatstone path in his childhood yard.... The dog is modeled after Natalie and Colton's labradoodle, "Rooney," 

(pp 5-6) The flower pot is replaced by an uncarved pumpkin which, upon turning the page, is carved, suggesting that the month of October has passed. The opening four "spreads" of the book move from summer to fall to winter. Because spring is missing, we include that season in a brief dream later on. The mention of spring also plants a seed for a sequel to the story. The actual juniper that "housed" a wintering rabbit was outside a bedroom window of our house (it has since been removed), but we chose to change the layout of the fictional house to facilitate the interior scenes. 

(pp 7-8) This moonscape spread is one of my favorites. The brief lines in verse help transition from "back story" to all the magic that comes with a lake effect snow-day in West Michigan. (Safety Note: The candles in the window are electric. We used to put them in our windows each year, but now they adorn my daughter Emily's house.) The other purpose of this spread is to contrast the vastness of space to the tiny specks we call home on the dot we call Earth (a contrast that is essential to the story's theme). Less essential is the inclusion of the constellation "Lepus" (the rabbit) found to the left of the moon.

Fridgid air blows across state of Michigan making "lake effect" snow. 

(pp 9-14) The  glare of sunshine on snow is almost blinding, and thus begins the subtle contrast of glaring "reality" what occurs under the juniper, which those reading the story will understand.... Lake effect snow is different than a regular snow storm in that those  down-wind and closest to the "source" lake may see a foot or more of snow while inland areas get only a few inches.... The original event happened on a snow day with my daughters and me, and thus the story does the same. My wife and I have worked together in two different schools for 40 years. I confess that we've never out-grows the joy of a snow day. (The anticipation has been dampened by the extended pandemic closures of 2020. Even as schools across the north are in "virutual mode," however, some leaders still understand the  magic of a snow day.)

(pp 15-30) To avoid "spoiler alerts," I'll not share much from these pages, but did you know that healthy rabbits cannot shed tears as we know them. This is not to say they cannot whimper but that such responses do not produce tears.... The mention of "tents" was essential to these pages and the story's theme. Kids make tents. Drape some blankets over some tables and chairs, and you've got an afternoon of play (and maybe even a special sleep-over with friends). My siblings and I used to do it. Beyond being blanket Bedouins, the author, editor, and illustrator grew up camping in real tents all across the state. Granted, we "glamp" in trailers these days, but the coziest camping memories of my childhood took place when seven sleeping bags filled the floor of a six-man tent. It was then my own mother say, "Isn't this cozy!" as she turned off the big flashlight. (Mom was always last to get in her sleeping bag.)... The beach scene in the book is at Grand Haven State Park with the landmark pier and lighthouse in the background.... I've seen snow-crumbs attached to the fibers of a mitten many times. For that reason, as a kid I hated wearing knit mittens during a snow fight. I've actually packed a snowball that meshed so tightly with the yarn fibers that the mitten flew off my hand with the thrown snowball. In this case, the snow-crusted mitten becomes a symbol of the starry sky and "tiny spaces" mentioned earlier on the moonscape spread and more significantly during this scene in the book.... There is a related detail on page 31 that I'll not discuss here. It becomes clear in the book itself.

(pp 33-36) The bright / dim contrast now transitions from outside to inside:  The story mentions that Kenzie's mother is a teacher who is therefore home on this snowday, but her focus is on domestic things, making cocoa, doing laundry, and fine-tuning her seasonal decorating. This is not meant to "stereotype" the role of mothers but to merely reflect the autobiographical realities behind this story and be true to the real people who have merged into these fictional characters. In these pages hide some true "easter eggs."... Notice the pictures on the far wall beyond the dining room table.... You'll also see a pfalzgraff  bowl of M&Ms which is a trademark staple in our home. Our family has eaten off those dishes (and that very dining room table) for over 30 years.

(pp 37-38) On the back of the book there is a short poem that ends "...somewhere between dreams and doubt" which echo my thoughts from another poem called "Wonder Is" , a poem that contrasts the difference between "knowing" and "not knowing."... While writing "Finding Cozy" it was not my intent to blur the lines between the animal world and human beings but rather to create a tone of wonder. (My reasons are explained in paragraph 8 here.) .... Page 37 in the book describes a window view like a snow globe freshly shaken. It also include the words "a dizzied, dancing feeling..." that makes Kenzie lose her balance. Those two words dizzied, dancing may or may not ring a bell, but they are similar to a line in Joni Mitchell's song "Both Sides Now" from her album called Clouds (1969). To fully understand the mood of that "looking out the window" page, listen to that song while looking at Colton's beautiful illustration. I hope it makes you ponder that time in your life when "reality" clashed with the imaginative yearnings you had as a child. In the movie "You've Got Mail," that same Joni Mitchell song sums up the conflicting personalities of the two main characters. My use of "dizzied, dancing" was meant to subliminally trigger that sense of bewilderment as Kenzie looks out the window.

Click to enlarge.

(pp 39-40) While living at the little blue house in Waterloo, Iowa, a dear friend gave us a  Department 57 piece called Berkshire House. It actually looked like a slightly bigger version of our home. For the next several Christmases, I bought another house from that collection until our village populated the broad mantle of our fireplace. An abrieviated version is seen on the mantle in the book If you look closely in this picture, you'll see a rabbit in the juniper in-front-of the Berkshire House.

[Side Note:When we lived in Waterloo, a major employer was the Rath Packing Plant (home of Black Hawk Bacon) Three of the four most common breeds of pigs raised in Iowa are Berkshire, Yorkshire, and Hampshire. All three pigs have roads in Waterloo named in their honor. The Rath plant closed in 1985, putting the fathers of some of my students out of work. Sometime later the Black Hawk Bacon trade mark was purchased as one of the last assets of the company. Do you remember it? It's still available at Wal-Mart]

The second house in our village is called Shingle Creek. It reminded us of my sister Kathy's house in Michigan. It had the center porch and shingle siding. You may recall that house was destroyed by fire one year ago, three days after Christmas 2019. I've written about that sad and happy fire. How can a fire be sad and happy? Well, I just put it in book form someday. It was Colton and Natalie's idea to include these two homes of the many on our real mantle. At the right of the mantle in the book are a school and a church, which together have shaped our family from the beginning. The village on the mantle pays homage to the "cottage rows" that provide the setting for this story. 

The nearest cottage rows to us are a short walk away at "Smith's Bridge Bayou" For decades U.S.31 was called "West Michigan Pike," From 1911 through the 1920's, the pike grew to become one of the nation's most traveled "tourist roads," stringing together 300 miles of countless beach towns from New Buffalo to Macinac Island. Resorts from that era still exist like Lakewood Club, Maranatha, Portage Point, and Bay View near Petoskey. Similar cottage rows enjoy the rivers and lakes all across the state. When I was a kid, "Water Winter Wonderland" was imprinted on every Michigan license plate for more than ten years. "Finding Cozy" attempts to wrap a deeper message in that slogan.

A century after the cottage boom of the 1920s, many of those quaint summer homes have become family residences year-round. Whenever I meander through cottage rows, they exude the charm of their original intent, which lends to the fantasy element of this story. 

Also on that "family room" page, you'll notice a tube TV with a VCR. The videotape is a well-known holiday classic. Hint: in the pictured scene, they are singing about about cozy things like "warm woolen mittens" and "snowflakes that stick to my nose and eye lashes." 

The tree is trimmed with real ornaments that span 70 years in our family history. The newest is one I made for everyone this year. You'll see this ornament near the top of the tree.... The two stockings by the fireplace bear two names that my wife and I never got to use in real life: McKenzie (which is my Grandma Kapanka's grandmother's name) and Tyler (though the name of Kenzie's brother is used nowhere in the story itself. That name, had we ever had a son, would have been Tyler Sinclair). The red-blue-green plaid plaid couch was in our home at the turn of the century. It was a common pattern of the day. It's now gone, but the "old wooden clock" still hangs on our wall.

(pp 41-42) I have written about being carried to bed as a child in one of my favorite poems "Kept." Being carried to bed is an important rite of childhood. What an amazing dream-like flight. As it happens in the story, the prose slips into verse again to pay tribute to that extraordinary moment, and the narration never really goes back to prose. A brief word about "the squeak at the top of the stair." We really have such a squeek. Houses talk to us but in such a common language that we don't often hear it. In this case, a sub-theme of this book is the patterns of life: seasons, holidays, school-days, chimiing and ticking of clocks, and yes, a chronic squeak in the floor. These are all part of the tone of the story, and by the end the tone is so set that even a squeak is "cozy." BUT... imagine if I were writing a very different tale, let's say a murder mystery. "The Squeak at the Top of the Stair" could be the title of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller (in which he would have made a cameo appearance).

To whatever extent our family colaborates on more illustrated books, there will be cameos and "Easter eggs" to blur the lines of fact and fiction. As is true of life itself, in the writing / illustrating process nothing comes from thin air and nothing truly returns to dust.

Tom Kapanka