Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Marcus Cutler . Take it away, Marcus!

Reach back into your brain and try to remember, who was your first comedic duo? Like many others, I think mine was Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street. Their Cookies In Bed sketch and Here Fishy Fishy sketch still loom large in my memory to this day. But in all their sketches, I always loved the back and forth bickering between curmudgeonly Bert and exuberant Ernie, which always seems to escalate until Bert finally, inevitably blows his top. The beautiful part is that despite their disparate and seemingly incompatible personalities, they still love one another. Look around at all media and genres and these odd couples are everywhere. Laurel & Hardy, Ricky & Lucy, Riggs & Murtaugh, Ren & Stimpy, Mulder & Scully, Walter White & Jesse, I could go on forever! It’s a formula that works really, really well. So what about in kidlit? The first ones that come to mind are Frog & Toad, George & Martha, and Elephant & Piggie, but there are countless more. So how does one create an iconic comedic odd couple worthy of being added to that pantheon? Well, one of the main ingredients to comedy is exaggeration. So one obvious way to go about it is to exaggerate one or more of the pairs’ personality traits in opposite directions. This will guarantee at least some level of conflict. And the greater the exaggeration, the greater the conflict. In Marie-Loise Gay’s wonderful Stella series, her titular character, an adventurous know-it-all, is always paired with her younger brother Sam, a tentative and unsure little boy. In Goodnight Already by Jory John and illustrated by Benji Davies, Bear is tired and grumpy and just wants to be sleep, but he’s constantly kept awake by clueless, energetic Duck.  When I was writing The Crayon Stub, I knew I wanted to echo another favourite duo I discovered in my childhood, Penn & Teller. If you are not familiar with them, they’re a comedic magic act who have been around for decades. Penn Jillette is (literally) the voice of the team. He’s a huge man, both in physicality and personality. He’s loud, talkative, and gregarious, while his erstwhile partner Teller is small and absolutely, completely silent. This is a dynamic I mimicked with my characters, Big Cat and Little Cat. Big Cat is large and loquacious, while Little Cat is the pesky younger sibling who is restricted to only ever emitting one singular “mew” at a time. Another reference was Jay and Silent Bob from the Kevin Smith films, who again, consists of one quiet partner, and one who won’t ever shut up. I’ve met many real couples like this as well. One partner will be the life of the party, while the other is much more content to simply sip their drink alone in the corner. There’s something very satisfying to me about this kind of pairing. Perhaps it’s because I’m generally a quiet person myself, and I identify with the struggle of being around those with big, overbearing personalities, despite their magnetic draw. There’s inherent drama there. But behind the drama, there’s also love. You can often spot the partner in the corner watching on adoringly as their loved one seems to occupy the whole of the room. Just like how no matter how much friction there is between Bert and Ernie, you know there will still always be love between them. I think it’s that balance of friction and love that make odd-couples so compelling. Toad may be neurotic and world-weary, and Frog whimsical and fun loving, but they can always find a way to meet in the middle.   To learn more about Marcus and his books, visit his website.