The Picture Book Buzz - Interview with Jill Esbaum and Review of It's Corn Picking Time!

Jill Esbaum is an author who grew up in small-town Iowa.

Her summers were spent creating comic strips, getting kittens to follow her home, and playing Barbie beauty pageant with the neighbor girls (which her Barbie never won, since she inevitably tried to pull off a talent for which she was clearly unprepared). One of her favorite possessions was the mini flashlight used for post-bedtime, undercover reading marathons with Nancy Drew.

She teaches writing for children at the Whispering Woods Picture Book Writing Retreat. Her books have won many awards and been named to multiple "best of" lists. She lives with her husband on a farm near Davenport, Iowa.

Jill's recent picture books include Polecat Has a Superpower, Parrotfish Has a Superpower, & Stinkbird Has a Superpower (all illustrated by Bob Shea); Bird Girl: Gene Stratton-Porter Shares Her Love of Nature with the World , illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon; Jack Knight's Brave Flight: How One Gutsy Pilot Saved the US Air Mail Service, illustrated by Stacy Innerst, and more. She is the author of twenty-five nonfiction books for National Geographic Kids, as well as the graphic early reader series, Thunder and Cluck, illustrated by Miles Thompson. Jill is also the author of several board books, including the Big Science for Tiny Tots series and the Be Bold series.

For additional information see our earlier interviews (here) and (here).

Her newest picture book, It's Corn Picking Time, released on July 29, 2025.

Jill, thank you so much for stopping back by to talk about your newest book and your writing.

Thanks for having me back, Maria!

Having written a number of nonfiction picture books, what is your research process? Did it change at all for It’s Corn Picking Time!?

I can get lost in research for hours, since that's way more fun than actually sitting down to get something on a blank page with a blinking cursor. I almost always begin with Googling a topic. From there, I follow threads to wherever they take me. I've visited library archives and dived into their special collections, leafed through the files of various historical societies, and visited sites like Gene Stratton Porter's homes in Indiana and a working historical farm in Nebraska. For It's Corn Picking Time!, I used my own knowledge and especially that of my farmer husband. Various agricultural websites helped ensure accurate backmatter.

I love all the fun places your research has taken you. What was your spark of curiosity or inspiration for It’s Corn Picking Time!?

This idea was born on the seat of a tractor. I help with the harvest every fall, and I kept wondering how I could bring that experience to life for kids -- those with no knowledge of the process at all and those who already know it and would get a big kick out of seeing their families in a book.

It was a lot of fun to learn the process, for this non-farmer reader. Did you model the meter and rhyme scheme after This is the House That Jack Built?

I did start out that way, but it very quickly started feeling ponderous and overly gimmicky. So, I ditched that notion and started playing around, just letting the action guide me forward in a way that felt more natural and straightforward.

Ditching the formality of sticking to the meter, rhyme, and format, but keeping enough to hint at it, was a great call. The rhyming couplets work really well. How long did it take from the first draft to publication for It’s Corn Picking Time!

I first wrote the manuscript in ... 2018, maybe? But I wasn't happy with it. It felt ordinary. No sparkle factor, you know? So, I put it away and worked on other projects.

I think it was early in 2021 that my husband asked me, "Why don't you write a farm book?" Hmm. Wait a sec ... hadn't I started one? I searched my hard drive for the manuscript (couldn't even remember what it was called), but when I found it, I was shocked––it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. It needed tweaking to pump up the language and add onomatopoeia, etc., but that was way more fun after not seeing it for 3 years. Felt almost like working on somebody else's manuscript.

I sent it to my agent that spring ... and then waited a year. That's because she and an agent friend had been looking for a project to submit jointly, one agent's author and the other agent's illustrator, and I was definitely up for that. When we saw sample work from Melissa Crowton, we knew she was the one. The manuscript, now including a couple of Melissa's colored sketches, went out in April of 2022, and we had interest from a couple of places. We accepted an offer from Neal Porter in June.

That's fun and a bit of an unusual path. It's so fun to find treasures hiding in files. When you first saw Melissa Crowton’s illustrations in It’s Corn Picking Time!, did anything surprise, amaze, or delight you? Which is your favorite spread?

Text © Jill Esbaum, 2025. Image © Melissa Crowton, 2025.

I first saw black and white sketches, so that's always fun. I loved it all! They asked for my input all along the way, which was very welcome, because we had to get it right for those sharp-eyed farm kids out there. Melissa didn't have a farm background, so I know she had to do a ton of research. But, boy. She killed it. It all feels so warm and friendly, somehow. I couldn't have asked for better illustrations. My favorite is the all-corn spread, an overhead view looking down into the combine's hopper as corn flows in.

I love the way you both set up for this gorgeous, super close-up change of perspective from the previous page! And there's one of those wonderful onomatopoeia. Is there anything you want your readers to know about or gain from It’s Corn Picking Time!?

I hope to help educate kids with no connection to America's heartland about one process happening here and how it ties into their lives. That's why I added two spreads of backmatter, answering every corn-related question I could imagine kids asking. I want them to feel a farmer's love for the land and begin to understand how hard we work to maintain a lifestyle that means everything to us.

You definitely succeeded in accomplishing that. Are there any projects you are working on now that you can share a tidbit with us?

My next book with Bob Shea, Horned Toad Has a Superpower, is just about ready for the printer. Watch for it next summer. The featured horned toad speaks in a Texas drawl, and my editor considers it the funniest of the four. Fingers crossed!

Meanwhile, I'm awaiting word on a number of submissions and working on more projects too numerous to name.

That's such a great cover and it sounds fun! Best of luck with all your projects. Last question, what animal or natural feature (place) do you want to learn more about? Why?

Sounds like the fifth book in my Be Bold series will be about capybaras, so I'll be researching those cuties. 

What fun! Thank you, Jill for stopping by again and sharing your time and thoughts with us. It was wonderful to chat with you.

My pleasure, Maria!

To find out more about Jill Esbaum, or contact her:

Website: https://www.jillesbaum.com/

Twitter: https://x.com/JEsbaum

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorJillEsbaum/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jillesbaum/

Review of It's Corn Picking Time!

As Jill mentioned above, this is a wonderful book introducing readers of all ages to the activities and routines of a farmer during a corn harvest. Showcasing a diverse farming family from the standpoint of a female farmer, this marvelous rhyming picture book transports us through their busy but rewarding day. It's a perfect early Fall read.

It's Corn Picking Time!

Author: Jill Esbaum

Illustrator: Melissa Crowton

Publisher: Neil Porter Books/Holiday House Publishing (July 29, 2025)

Ages: 4-8

Nonfiction/Poetry

Themes:

Farming, rhyming, harvest time, farm machinery, and corn.

Synopsis:

Hop in the tractor and ride along with a corn farmer in this rhyming read-aloud full of things that clack, whoosh, and roll!

It’s corn-picking time, and the farmer has all her tools ready! The cornhead gobbles the stalks. The spreader spits out chaff. The grain wagon fills with corn!

This is the farmer, whose happy heart leaps

at the sight of those first golden, glorious heaps!

Corn-picking time is a favorite season on author Jill Esbaum’s family farm, and the joy is sure to be shared by young lovers of tractors, trucks, and all manner of machines. Rhyming text pairs with Melissa Crowton’s colorful illustrations for a high-energy read kids will ask for again and again. Check out the copious information found at the end of the book to discover more about life on a farm.

Opening Lines:

This is the farmer,

her cap,

and her gloves.

This is the farm,

the land that she loves.

What I LOVE about this book:

Such a calm, quiet opening spread with the early morning sunlight streaming through the kitchen window, as the farmer's coffee steams and she dresses for the day. From this internal comfy spread, the page turn offers a full bleed panoramic of the farmhouse, sheds, silos, a distant horizon of a gold field, and a tractor.

Text © Jill Esbaum, 2025. Image © Melissa Crowton, 2025.

Peeking into a shed, we get a great view of a workbench full of tools and plans and our first glimpse of the combine. A gigantic red machine that looks too big to get through the door. I love the juxtaposed seemingly smallness of the shed - a few tools, a stool, and stashed away keys - with gigantic, darkened doorway and a huge machine posed to get stuck or destroy the door as it backs out. It almost feels ominous. Yet, somehow, the combine makes it out.

Text © Jill Esbaum, 2025. Image © Melissa Crowton, 2025.

These are the keys,

hidden way out of reach.

Latches clank open,

and shed doors . . .

screeeeech!

Jill Esbaum does a wonderful job with the rhyming couplets, mixing in some more unusual rhymes (such as tool/fuel and knocks/stalks) and lots of onomatopoeia, creating a really fun and engaging read-aloud book. Which, paired with the fascinating fall-toned paper collage, ink, and digital illustrations, takes the reader on a wonderfully immersive exploration through the day of a diverse community of farmers, kids, and pets as they work to harvest the corn.

Even for readers unfamiliar with farming equipment and/or the procedure of corn picking, the interaction of the lyrical text ("grab and gobble the autumn-dry stalks") and the fun shifts in perspective and striking illustrations make it easy to understand the process and workings of the farm machinery.

Text © Jill Esbaum, 2025. Image © Melissa Crowton, 2025.

While portraying the various practical steps of collecting the grain, transferring it to a wagon, and then twirling it up into a bin, the book also exudes the pride and joy of the farmers and their family, despite the work "long day after day." The tender, fulfilling ending has a wonderful circularity, with a few visual surprises. Four pages of back matter about "Life on a Corn Farm" include a great cross-section of a combine, an illustrated list of items made from corn, fun questions and answers about corn and life on the farm, links, and additional reading. It's a marvelous book for kids captivated by machinery and an engaging and exciting poetic ode to farmers.

Resources:

• make some corn projects - beaded pipe cleaner corn, corn husk dolls, or other corn crafts.

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• try a couple of fun corn experiments - hopping corn, sprout corn kernels, or sprout Indian corn kernels,

  
  

• learn about the difference between popcorn and corn and then make some popcorn.

  
  

• if possible, visit a corm maze or go to a farmer's market and try different kinds of fresh corn.

• check out Jill Esbaum's interview of Melissa Crowton on the Picture Book Builder's Blog (here), to see the progression of the artwork.