Indies Introduce Q&A with James Robinson

James Robinson is the author of Whale Eyes, a Winter/Spring 2025 Indies Introduce young adult selection, and March/April 2025 Kids’ Next List pick. 

Claire Margetts of Weller Book Works in Salt Lake City, Utah, served on the bookseller committee that selected Robinson’s book for Indies Introduce.

Margetts said of the title, “With heart and humor, James Robinson shares his story of learning to live with a vision disability. In this illustrated memoir, he invites readers to visualize his point of view with honest anecdotes and interesting, interactive images that truly make his words sing.”

Claire Margetts: Hello. I'm Claire from Weller Book Works in Salt Lake City, Utah, and I'm here to introduce James Robinson and his new book Whale Eyes. James Robinson is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and video producer for New York Times Opinion. James speaks to audiences across the country about disability, filmmaking, and getting people to care. Whale Eyes is his first book, and goes on sale March 18.

I loved this book. It's a great biography, and it's a great conversation, and I love that it just brings people immediately into your world. You started this with a documentary film. How did you know you were going to adapt it into a book? And how does that process work?

James Robinson: Thanks so much for the kind words. This project becoming a book was honestly never something I envisioned. Whale Eyes started as a 12-minute film for the New York Times about my experiences with strabismus. My eyes are really misaligned, and I see out of one eye at a time. But immediately after that film published, I got comments from all over the world. People, many of whom shared my condition, were sharing really emotional and personal experiences. It felt like this wasn't about my eyes anymore. It was about us.

There was one woman who said, “It's like having someone scratch an itch you didn't know you had in the deepest part of your soul.” I was really amazed by the response, and it felt like this moment that we were sharing together.

One of these comments came from an editor at Penguin, and he said, “Would you ever expand on this and turn it into a book?”

At first, I was really hesitant, because I struggled a lot with reading as a kid. But the more I thought about it, the more it felt like a book was the perfect medium to explore this format that had long challenged me.

CM: That's so cool. So how did you go about visualizing your experience reading with your illustrator?

JR: I think it began even before we brought on Brian, who's the really wonderful, extraordinary illustrator.

From the onset, I knew that I didn't just want you to read about my difficulty with reading. I wanted you to experience it. My editor kept laughing, because I'm a filmmaker. I come from the film world, and I kept calling the readers “viewers.” I was like, “Well, I want the viewers to feel this.” And he was like, “Okay, this is a book.”

But at the same time, that was a reflection of what I wanted the book to be. It was an experience. I was going into this with my filmmaking brain, and I was also aware of the fact that anytime you're replicating disability, that requires a ton of sensitivity, and it has to be done incredibly thoughtfully. I find that the best thing to replicate with the disability is not the literal experience, but the emotional experience. So when you make your way through Whale Eyes, there are some pages where it looks like the words have exploded, and you really have to pry each letter off the page. It takes time, and it's frustrating, but that experience and that emotional experience — the frustration, the feeling of wanting to give up — are things that I felt when I was a kid.

It's funny, because as we've been gearing up for the launch, I've had some of my family members and friends read this out loud, and there's this role reversal. My parents will be struggling through the pages — they sound like what I sounded like as a kid — and I'm the one who's like, “Can we give that word one more try?” “Don't give up. You almost got it.” It's this hilarious role reversal, but that's what I'm going for. I want you to experience that frustration, especially parents and teachers, and to remember what that really feels like.

CM: Wow. As you were choosing these moments, how did you choose what to pull from your life to tell the kids about? Where did you get your anecdotes and stories?

JR: I knew from the beginning there was one story I definitely wanted to tell. If I'm being really honest, it was the only story I could think of at the beginning.

When I was in first grade, I really struggled with reading, and I decided I was just going to give up and just pretend to read. I think every kid dabbles with pretend-reading a little bit, but I was prolific. And this career in pretend-reading came to a very abrupt halt one day in first grade. I spent 20 minutes in our quiet reading period holding my book upside down, and this was announced to myself and to the entire class by a little bit of a tattletale.

For so much of my life, that story was like a joke. It was something I told to get my friends to laugh, “I used to hold the book upside down.”

I went to write it, but no matter how many times I rewrote it, I was like, “This just feels off.” Something felt wrong with it. Eventually I was like, “Why am I trying so hard to punch this six-year-old? Why am I turning myself into a punch line?”

What I really needed to do was sit with that moment. I would rather have just blurred my eyes and listened to the clock tick than try to get the meaning off the page. And what does that really feel like? I decided I needed to have my readers experience that too, so I challenged them to go into a public place and hold the book upside down. Read through it, and flip through the pages, and experience that frustration. It's all about asking someone to put themselves in that position and remember — or just learn about — the frustration of holding a book and having no grasp of its meaning.

CM: You bring everybody into your point of view so wonderfully, and then you're able to explore this feeling of getting people to communicate and connect. You use this notion of “out-trigue” and getting enthusiastically curious to create understanding and connection. Can you talk a little bit more about that concept?

JR: So much of this book was about being the author of your own difference, especially in the second half. That was something I learned in college. I had this precious group of friends, and I don't write about them in detail, because I think they're the best authors of their own story. There were three of them, and they were each the first in their family to learn how to read. They had these extraordinary stories of how they came to the US and got full scholarships. We had this unlikely friendship, because we really had nothing in common. We were just so different, so our friendship was this game of cultural ping pong where we would poke holes in each other's cultural norms.

We would be standing in an empty room, and they would be right up next to me, talking to me, and I would just get this feeling of like, “Why are we so close right now?” But then they would return the favor, and they ask, “Can you explain the tooth fairy?” One time they asked me, “Why does the Easter Bunny lay eggs?” I was like, “Yeah, what's going on right there? Someone should look into that.”

Anyway, a lot of these questions and moments of cultural clashing brought out a very specific emotion that I felt like we didn't have a word for, so we just gave it a name. We started calling it “out-trigue.” When you experience out-trigue, you want to know more, but instead of leaning in, you're pushing away. You're like, “What is that? Give me some space.” These friends taught me that we don't have to tiptoe through this difference. We can dance through it, and we can be laughing, and it can be an incredibly joyful process.

 I was a senior in college when I started making Whale Eyes, and it was right when I was embedded with this friend group. I know to others, naming your eyes “Whale Eyes” seems like a silly thing to do, but within the context of that friend group, it was so natural. It made sense, and it brought about this wonderful thing in my life. I don't write a ton of detail about that friend group, but they're absolutely a part of the soul of this book, which is all about finding joyful and meaningful paths to connection.

CM: I love it. I love the openness and the friendliness that you bring into the book.

JR: Thanks!

CM: You're welcome! I have one last question for you. I just want to know, what do you think it would be like to fly?

JR: I love that question. I’ve thought about this quite a bit throughout my life, because my mom convinced us that she flew when she was a child.

I think flying would be totally exhilarating. I think you would feel a lot of contradictory emotions. You would feel disbelief that you were flying, but also, belief. You really have to believe in yourself to be flying in the first place. I think you would be full of fear, and you would also be like, “Oh my gosh, I'm doing it.” But really, I think you'd be totally absorbed in the present moment and so focused on every little thing around you and how you're positioning yourself in relation to it, whether it's the wind or the weather or whatever is there. I think it would be the full range of emotions we experience in a lifetime, but just in a few short moments.

CM: That sounds wonderful to imagine, and to experience and feel, and that's incredible. Thank you for taking your time, for talking with us a little bit about your book, and it was great speaking with you.

JR: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Whale Eyes by James Robinson, Brian Rea (Illus.) (Penguin Workshop, 9780593523957, Hardcover Middle Grade Memoir, $18.99) On Sale: 3/18/2025

Find out more about the author at byjamesrobinson.com.

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