{"id":590422,"date":"2026-08-11T23:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T23:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/590422\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T23:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T23:36:12","slug":"julie-andrews-on-writing-shy-childrens-book-with-daughter-disney-doc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/590422\/","title":{"rendered":"Julie Andrews on Writing Shy Children\u2019s Book With Daughter, Disney Doc"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen speaking with Julie Andrews<\/a> and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton, expect them to finish each other\u2019s sentences. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBy the time the book is done, we never know who contributed what line. It\u2019s such a joint effort \u2026 We often say we finish each other\u2019s sentences,\u201d Hamilton tells The Hollywood Reporter. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhich you can probably tell,\u201d Andrews, sitting next to her daughter, adds laughing. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBut that\u2019s how we write,\u201d Hamilton says. \u201cWe literally talk out loud. We write out loud, finishing each other\u2019s sentences. So by the time it it all ends up on the page, and then we revise and revise and revise, we never know who\u2019s responsible for what.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTogether, Andrews and Hamilton have written over 35 children\u2019s books<\/a> across multiple formats: picture books, board books, leveled readers, chapter books, middle grade novels, poetry anthologies and two memoirs.\u00a0This time, they\u2019re teaming once again on a new children\u2019s book, Shy<\/a> (out Tuesday from Abrams Books).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe synopsis reads, \u201cShy is the smallest and quietest pup at the shelter. The world feels big, loud and a bit scary to her sweet and gentle soul. But when a man with kind eyes brings her home, she feels safe with her new best friend \u2014 and keeps him company while he practices at his piano. Beautiful, unfamiliar sounds dance in the air when the piano man plays, and something inside her begins to stir. The piano man has an important performance ahead \u2014 but it may be a performance no one, especially the piano man, ever expected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe story was a personal given it was inspired by Andrews\u2019 poodle famously singing while she was doing vocal warm-ups for My Fair Lady<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was in the show in London, bought myself a little girl poodle. She was adorable, and every time I tried to do my daily warm-up practice with my voice, she began to sing along with me, and it was extraordinary. And I couldn\u2019t stop her,\u201d Andrews tells THR. <\/p>\n

\n\tTeaming with Eva Byrne for the book\u2019s illustrations, Andrews and Hamilton hope their story inspires young readers to find their voice. And with a resume of iconic roles that have encouraged creativity, imagination and bravery, Andrews says exploring her own voice through literature has been rewarding. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEmma said to me once, and it\u2019s something that I\u2019ll never forget as long as I live, \u2018Mum, you\u2019ve just found a different way of using your voice,\u2019 and it made such a difference to me. It meant so much that this too is a way of conveying and really doing those wonderful roles and and emoting them, acting in them and so on. It\u2019s all about the giving, and so this is just another way of doing,\u201d she tells THR.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a joint interview with THR, Andrews and Hamilton discuss their new children\u2019s book, and Andrews teases filming her Disney documentary<\/a> and reflects on The Princess Diaries<\/a> \u2014 and whether she\u2019ll return for the third film.<\/p>\n

\n\tJulie, this book was inspired by your real-life poodle, who famously howled along during My Fair Lady rehearsals? <\/p>\n

\n\tEMMA WALTON HAMILTON Not during rehearsals, during her vocal warm-ups at home. <\/p>\n

\n\tJULIE ANDREWS I was in the show in London, bought myself a little girl poodle. She was adorable! Every time I tried to do my daily warm-up practice with my voice, she began to sing along with me, and it was extraordinary. And I couldn\u2019t stop her, so it stopped my practicing. [I] put her in the next room and that little nose of hers would poke under the door if it could, and sort of muffled little singing sounds came. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhat was it about that memory that made you both think there was a children\u2019s story here?<\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON It\u2019s so funny because a book, particularly a picture book, takes about two to three years to come to print. So by the time it does, you\u2019re like, what were we doing that gave us the idea? We\u2019re big dog lovers. We often talk about our dogs, and I think we must have been reminiscing about Shy and that story, and it just struck us that\u2014<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS It isn\u2019t just about Shy; it\u2019s about finding your voice.<\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON Which is a lovely theme and a recurring theme for us [and] for kids. It tends to be something we write about.<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS In other words, it arrived into that, didn\u2019t it? The book turned into that. <\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON It was sort of like, oh, well, here\u2019s here\u2019s another opportunity to celebrate the arts, which we love to do with our books, and also to encourage young kids to figure out what makes their heart sing.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJulie Andrews and her dog Shy. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAbrams Books<\/p>\n

\n\tHow you wanted to go about shaping that memory into something that could work for a children\u2019s book?<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS Well, it revealed itself by the end of writing, didn\u2019t it? <\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON Yeah, we had the true story to start with, so we knew that we knew we loved the name Shy. We thought we\u2019ll lean into that. We\u2019ll let her be shy, and maybe even maybe the piano man who adopts her is also shy, and that\u2019s she\u2019s sort of a therapy dog for him. And so we were exploring that. And then, of course, the thing about writing picture books is as the great Jane Yolen used to say, \u201cYou can\u2019t let the truth get in the way of a good story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS (Laughs.)<\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON So you have to think about what makes it picture book worthy. It isn\u2019t enough to just have Shy singing. You have to get her to Carnegie Hall! <\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS Just enlarge it a little bit. <\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON So that that was really the arc for us. If she\u2019s singing and singing and singing, I guess she has to make a debut at some point. <\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS And find her true meaning in life. <\/p>\n

\n\tCan you talk about the illustrations? <\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS Yes, happily! <\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON Eva Byrne is the illustrator and we had hoped that we might find someone who had a sort of a classic style but also very free in a sense of humor to sort of match the the spirit of the book. And we fell in love with her from her book about Coco Chanel. She illustrated a book called All About Coco, and it was a very kind of Ludwig Bemelmans\u2019 Madeleine kind of quality to the illustrations that we loved. People don\u2019t often realize that usually in picture books, if you don\u2019t do the illustrations yourself, which we don\u2019t, we\u2019re just writers. Neither of us is an artist.<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS Although your dad was! <\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON My dad was, yeah. But you don\u2019t usually get to say who your illustrator is. You don\u2019t get to choose. That\u2019s the publisher\u2019s job.<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS We\u2019ve been so lucky in that all of the publishers that we\u2019ve been so lucky to have\u2014<\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON Have invited us to say what what we hoped we might be able to [want]. <\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS And we haven\u2019t ever repeated ourselves, but we\u2019ve always found somehow the right artist for for our story. And then truly, after we\u2019ve written the story, the joy is: What are the end pages of paper is going to be? How is it going to look? How does it lay out? What\u2019s the cover like? And so on. Although it\u2019s all Eva\u2019s, we did we do put in a lot of thought for that for any of our artists.<\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON The illustrator is collaborative, which some are and some aren\u2019t, but Eva was very welcoming of our feedback of what we hoped Shy might look like, for instance. Then we will have an exchange, but it always goes through the editor. We\u2019re never talking directly to the illustrator.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJulie Andrews\u2019 dog Shy.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAbrams Books<\/p>\n

\n\tI know you obviously have both written books together, but would you plan on collaborating again on more books? <\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS I hope so. She\u2019s getting so busy these days and we probably will at some point. And Emma helped me tremendously with both of my biographies. The two books that have been written, I could not have done it without her. The research that you did is extraordinary! <\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019ve never had a row, we\u2019ve had discussions, but it\u2019s the best idea wins. So when we\u2019re writing together it\u2019s a question of really chewing on something and then\u2014<\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON By the time the book is done, we never know who contributed what line. It\u2019s such a joint effort. <\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS That\u2019s a very good point! I never thought of that! <\/p>\n

\n\tThe story is both of your voices. <\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON It is! We often say we finish each other\u2019s sentences,<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS Which you can probably tell (Laughs.) <\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON But that\u2019s how we write. We literally like talk out loud. We write out loud, finishing each other\u2019s sentences. So by the time it all ends up on the page, and then we revise and revise and revise, we never know who\u2019s responsible for what. <\/p>\n

\n\tAre there any other ideas that you both have discussed for a book that didn\u2019t work out? <\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS Lots! I mean, I\u2019ll tell you what the themes were. <\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON But we can\u2019t give it away. We might use it one day. <\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS (Laughs.) That\u2019s true! But we do bring up ideas, and then one of us isn\u2019t quite ready, or it doesn\u2019t resonate, or I\u2019ll go off on a tangent sometimes, and Emma will say, \u201cYou can\u2019t write that these days,\u201d and I\u2019m saying oh OK. Because children\u2019s books have changed, and the rules for writing the books are so different now.<\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON I mean writing for children there are a lot of rules. <\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS And different genres. We\u2019ve done all of them I think.<\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON We haven\u2019t done Young Adult. We\u2019ve done everything from board book to middle grade.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou mentioned how the landscape has changed where the rules are so different. What have you noticed now versus when you were first writing children\u2019s books? <\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON Children\u2019s publishing, it\u2019s surprising to say this, but it\u2019s still a relatively younger arm of the publishing industry. It wasn\u2019t really until the 1950s that it came into its own in terms of being a department separate from adult publishing and having their own libraries and so forth. So it\u2019s still every 10 years, I think, the rules change and it evolves again. And whatever the current thinking is about child development informs what\u2019s written. When we first started out, they used to say picture books should be 1,000 words or less. Now it\u2019s 500 words or less, preferably 350 if you\u2019re writing fiction. It can be longer if you\u2019re writing nonfiction, so that\u2019s one example. It\u2019s also very important that you think about whether you are the right person to tell this story. If it\u2019s about a marginalized community, for instance, then it\u2019s terribly important that the writer have representation in that community. Because what will happen is that the writer will be invited to show up for a school visit, and all these children who have seen themselves reflected in the book are looking forward to seeing someone like them, and if you\u2019re not that, you\u2019re setting them up for disappointment.<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS The rules really have become more and more stringent, haven\u2019t they?<\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON But I find that in a funny way to be very creative. It\u2019s like poetry. The rules give you the sort of parameters within which you can [create].<\/p>\n

\n\tJulie, you have spent your career embodying characters who inspire audiences to be brave, curious, imaginative. How does writing children\u2019s books allow you to explore those themes in different ways?<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS Well, Emma said to me once, and it\u2019s something that I\u2019ll never forget as long as I live, \u201cMum, you\u2019ve just found a different way of using your voice,\u201d and it made such a difference to me. It meant so much that this too is a way of conveying and really doing those wonderful roles and and emoting them, acting in them and so on. It\u2019s all about the giving, and so this is just another way of doing.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat do you ultimately hope that children take away from their journey of finding confidence in their own voice? <\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS Could they realize in a small way from our book, because we don\u2019t hammer it home, that anyone can find the meaning for them in life. That anyone can find something purposeful that matters to them. <\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON The thing that makes you you, the thing that makes you unique, or that makes your heart sing, it\u2019s your gift. And if you lean into that, you can you can give great joy in the world. I think that\u2019s what we hope for. The thing about Shy is we don\u2019t typically expect a dog to sing, right? <\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS There are a number of them! <\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON But not at Carnegie Hall. (Laughs.) So the idea being that if a child feels that they want to do something unexpected, that maybe might be a little different than their gendered norms or their library, that\u2019s OK. Lean into that.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to this book, Julie, it was announced you\u2019ll be the subject of a Disney<\/a> documentary coming out. Can you talk a little bit about that project?<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS I have not seen it but it\u2019s being directed by a very good director whom I admire, R.J. Cutler. He\u2019s very into the arts himself. Although I\u2019ve not seen it, I\u2019m terribly nervous about it. But it did seem that if I was going to allow anything like that, this is the time in my life when a kind of summing up, a reflection, a retrospective would be allowable and so I took that gamble. And my heart is beating. <\/p>\n

\n\tI imagine participating in that makes you be even more reflective of your career and your journey. Is there anything that stands out of something is that you\u2019re most proud of, whether it be a certain role or a career achievement?<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS Oh gosh, Em, is there?<\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON Mom spent a good three or four days talking to R.J. and being interviewed for the film. I think it was mostly just, \u201cGosh, what a long life I\u2019ve lived.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS Yeah! Discovering all that. <\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON I remember you were having a lot of dreams. <\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS it brought up a lot of things I didn\u2019t expect. But I think he asked all the right questions, and I just hope that he honors some of our requests and things like that.<\/p>\n

\n\tEmma, do you have a favorite project from your mom\u2019s career?<\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON I have different favorites for different reasons. I think my favorite film role of hers is a lesser known film called Hawaii because it\u2019s a beautiful history and the kind of performance she gives is very different from her other performances and very brave and and it\u2019s a very beautiful film. Of her songs, I accompanied her on many of her concert tours that she would travel around the country or around the world performing, and so, some of my favorite songs are from those performances.<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS And you had a dad that was incredibly talented and was a designer of sets and costumes and films and books and so much art, and I think between the two of us, there must have been a lot\u2014<\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON Of sensory input. Let\u2019s put it that way (Laughs.) <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Princess Diaries film just celebrated its\u2019 25th anniversary. Julie, when you look back at The Princess Diaries, what surprises you most about its longevity? What is it that you think makes it resonate so much even years later?<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS I\u2019ve not really given it thought that way. I mean, I\u2019m thrilled, and it was well made by dear Garry Marshall, who was the sweetest director you could imagine and funny, talented and considerate. So it was a very enjoyable film to make.<\/p>\n

\n\tI know you\u2019ve said in the past that it might not be possible to be a part of a new Princess Diaries film, but with the third film confirmed and Anne Hathaway saying the script is being worked on, is there any chance you would be a part of the film and return? <\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS I don\u2019t think so. I think the absolute truth is that I think I\u2019m really past all that now. I\u2019m not completely retired, but it\u2019s a different kind of work that I do these days \u2014 [writing] books, and I do a lot of recording of podcasts and voiceovers. But truly, I don\u2019t think I should be a part of it.<\/p>\n

\n\tHAMILTON She\u2019s very grateful not to have to do hair and makeup and all of that anymore.<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS It\u2019s still lovely to be working on things. That\u2019s really the most stimulating, but not necessarily on camera.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat would you hope the third film explores?<\/p>\n

\n\tANDREWS I actually don\u2019t know. I think it proceeds from the second Princess Diaries. It moves on, but by now Annie too is a little older than she was when she did it. So I\u2019m interested to see what Meg [Cabot] and Annie and everybody comes up with! <\/p>\n

\n\tShy is available now. <\/p>\n