ADAM RUBIN

INVITES YOUNG WRITERS TO SHARE THEIR STORIES

by Melissa Fales

The Ice Cream Machine is the middle grade debut of New York Times bestselling picture book author, Adam Rubin, and it’s built around an ingenious concept. The book is a collection of six different stories from multiple genres, yet all bearing the same title. Once readers have read the sextet, Rubin invites them to write their own version of The Ice Cream Machine and send it to him. “The practice of capturing your imagination on paper and sharing it with another human being can be thrilling,” Rubin says. “It can be terrifying and depressing at times but when you get it right, it’s empowering and exciting. I wanted to share that sentiment with kids; to tell them ‘Writing is magic.’ To prove it, I needed to write some fun stories that might inspire them to try writing some of their own.”     

Rubin was a voracious reader as a youth. “While I devoured sci-fi and fantasy series like The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the books I pored over again and again were collections of The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes,” he says. “I also adored the Klutz books. The tone that John Cassidy and crew used to explain stuff like magic, juggling, pranks, and science was hugely influential on my writing style.”   

Rubin studied advertising design in college. After graduation, he met the man who would become his frequent collaborator, illustrator Daniel Salmieri, through a mutual friend who knew they were each interested in creating a picture book. “As soon as I saw samples of Dan’s work, I knew I had to work with him,” he says. Rubin had an idea for a picture book based on his childhood memories of his father’s ongoing fight with the squirrels that stole seeds from the bird feeders he kept in the backyard. Rubin quickly dashed off a manuscript for Those Darn Squirrels and sent it to Salmieri. Rubin was amazed when the pair sold the book. “The thing turned out great and I was enormously proud of it, but I figured it was just a fun thing I’d never get to do again,” he says. He was wrong.

“I thought, let me show these kids how the same idea can lead in a bunch of different directions, then give them the same starting point and see where they go.”

Today, Rubin has 10 picture books to his name. “Dragons Love Tacos is by far the most popular but I’m especially fond of El Chupacabras which is translingual and inspired by my Cuban grandmother and my time in Spain,” he says. “It won the Texas Bluebonnet Award which is voted on by students, and that made me enormously proud.” Rubin is also fond of Robo-Sauce with its transformer-like folding exercise and his most recent release, Gladys the Magic Chicken. Rubin’s fans will be happy to hear that he’s currently working on the follow-up collection to The Ice Cream Machine. “Another six stories with the exact same name,” he promises. “If all goes well, it will come sometime in early 2023.”

When Rubin and Salmieri came up with the idea for Dragons Love Tacos, their original publisher passed, deeming it “too silly.” Instead, Penguin bought it and published it in 2012. “They had no idea it would go on to sell a bajillion copies,” says Rubin. In 2019, Rubin was working as a creative director at a New York City ad agency when he and Salmieri released High Five. “I had published seven books that had all been well received, so when the eighth one came out and debuted on the New York Times bestseller list, I figured it was time to quit my day job,” he says.

Once being a children’s book author was Rubin’s day job, he started feeling pressure to use his platform to do something that would make a positive difference in his young readers’ lives. “For 10 years, I’d been telling them ‘Reading is fun,’ he says. “Which it is. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the message was a little passive and even somewhat self-serving. I’m an avid reader and have an unwieldy library stuffed into my tiny NYC apartment. I love reading but the truth is, I love writing more.”

That emotion was Rubin’s starting point for The Ice Cream Machine. “I thought, let me show these kids how the same idea can lead in a bunch of different directions, then give them the same starting point and see where they go,” he says. Rubin suggests that the idea behind The Ice Cream Machine can help budding authors get over writer’s block. “There’s a common perception that you need to have some great idea in order to get started,” he says. “For a lot of folks, the blank page is so intimidating that they never actually start writing. So, I wanted to help take some of the pressure off of trying to write a story. Creative constraints can be oddly liberating.”

Rubin says he settled on offering six stories based on a theory issued by Kurt Vonnegut that there were six different kinds of stories in literature. “He boiled them down to plot lines on an XY axis,” says Rubin. “There are a few YouTube videos of his lectures where he talks about it. I’m not sure if the finished stories could be accurately mapped up to the archetypal plot lines I was following but again, it’s an example of creative restraints kind of spurring me on to just dive into the writing.”

The Ice Cream Machine is a departure from the picture books Rubin usually writes. “I wanted to try and stretch my writing chops to create a book that could stand on its own without the pictures,” he says. He found the experience markedly different from creating a picture book. “Writing a 32-page book is like writing a song,” he says. “You can go on instinct, try things out, make dramatic changes pretty late in the process, always knowing that a talented artist is going to come in and add a whole new dimension to the manuscript.” On the other hand, says Rubin, “Writing a 400-page book is like climbing a mountain. You have to make a plan before you start. The biggest lesson I learned was how important it is (for me) to spend a lot of time and energy developing a solid, detailed outline.”

Rubin is serious about encouraging kids to write and submit their own versions of The Ice Cream Machine. Should he receive enough submissions by the end of the school year, Rubin intends to include a few of the best ones in the paperback edition of The Ice Cream Machine. “I’m willing to motivate them however I can,” he says. “To that end, I’ve invited them to send me whatever they write. I included my mailing address in the book, but I also hid a pre-addressed envelope under the dust jacket of the book in case that helps give them a nudge. How cool would it be for some fifth and sixth graders to become published authors?”

The Ice Cream Machine is due to be released February 15.