Brooke Barker's Great Conversation Starter
Plus, she shares 11 favorite things, including Japanese sunscreen, sweet marriage advice, and the funny way she chose her dog.
Hello! How’s it going? Hope you’re staying warm and cozy.
This week, we spoke with cartoonist Brooke Barker, who lives in Pittsburgh with her husband, baby son, and dog.
You may know her as the creative force behind the bestselling book Sad Animal Facts. “The first animal fact I got obsessed with was, ‘worms have many hearts,’” Brooke told us. “You’d assume the more lovable, affectionate animals would have more hearts, but it's actually the worms living in the dirt and rolling around on the sidewalk — they’re the ones with so much love to give.” We also inhaled her hilarious audiobook, So Help Me, Gosh, a memoir about growing up Mormon and then converting to Judaism.
These days, Brooke publishes comic essays in her weekly newsletter,
. The name made us laugh, and she explained: “When we moved to Pittsburgh, we were going to all these new places, and my husband was always at ease and I was always a little bit nervous. No matter what I'm doing, even now, I always feel nervous, so I finally decided to embrace it, instead of shaking it off.”Here, Brooke shares 11 great things, plus her best relationship advice…
Baby prints: As someone who draws animals, I can’t help critiquing animal-print baby clothes. I’ll think, I don’t like the tail on that fish, or I could draw a better fox. But I love Tove Jansson's Moomin characters. My son doesn’t know or care what he’s wearing, but I’m obsessed and pull his Moomin onesie out of the wash as soon as possible.
Picture book: We read about Little Shrew in The New York Times and immediately requested it from the library. It’s a sweet story about a shrew who works at the airport and likes going home to do quiet things, like solving his Rubik’s Cube. Honestly, it’s the loveliest children’s book I’ve ever read.
Pro tip: I learned this small-talk strategy from a Cup of Jo comment: when someone tells you what job they have, if you reply, ‘That sounds hard,’ they’ll open up. Shortly afterward, I met a high school theater teacher and said, ‘That sounds hard.’ And they were like, ‘It is so hard — people don’t think about how hard it is!’ Now I say it all the time, even when someone’s job sounds fun or cool, because it’s nice to have someone recognize that your job has hard parts.
Beauty: I wear Starface stickers to cover up zits. But having a sticker on your face also makes you much more approachable. I’ll be waiting at a bus stop, and any person of any age will say, oh I love your little sticker, and we’ll start chatting. Talking to strangers makes the world feel smaller.
