Children's Book Intensive

Wow. That is just about all I can say. Wow.

A stellar week at Pacific Northwest College of Art! I had the privilege of leading a four-day, non-stop, action-packed CHILDREN'S BOOK INTENSIVE! Can you handle it??! It was a dream come true for me- a week of talking, walking, thinking & sharing picture books with a wonderful group of talented authors and illustrators.

The focus of the course was writing and illustrating your own picture book. Oh, we packed a lot into those four days: character development, narrative structure, design, pacing, and how to market yourself to publishers. The goal was to have a rough dummy by the end of the week- a lot to ask for in 4 days!- but I think everyone made great strides in that short span of time.

Much of our discussions dealt with the peculiar marriage of words and pictures in children's books, and I found two wonderful ambassadors to help demonstrate some of the possibilities:

It's been a fair amount of time since I've read any George and Martha stories, and let me tell you- they are GENIUS in the way the pictures tell one story and the words tell another. Most (all?) of the George & Martha books are split up into short "vignettes", or a series of short- sometimes very short- stories. I will now relay to you in its entirety Story Number Three from this book (George and Martha: Tons of Fun).

Story Number Three: The Photograph

One day Martha stepped into a photography booth.

"I love to have my picture taken," she said.

"Click," went the camera.

When Martha saw her photograph, she was thrilled.

"I've never looked prettier," she said.

Hee, hee! That picture makes me giggle EVERY TIME! It's so perfect. The words say one thing, ie, "This is a beautiful photograph", while the kids can see from the illustration that it is in fact a very weird photograph. With just a few short sentences we're given a sense of Martha's personality- and a REALLY funny story.

Story Number Five (The Last Story: The Special Gift) is a good example of not spelling everything out in your text. The text on this page reads:

On the way to George's house, Martha played a tricky game of hopscotch.

NOWHERE does it say that the present fell out of the basket! The text doesn't NEED to say it; kids will see it & yell "Hey, the present fell out of the basket!" It's that kind of interactivity & reader involvement that mark the best picture books, I think.

Whew, I'm getting all riled again. I do love talking about picture books. So, one of the BEST things about this week was that I got to invite SPECIAL GUEST STARS!!! And Portland is home to a dazzling array of children's book talent.

On Monday the extremely prolific author Deborah Hopkinson came to speak. You may know her from the 40-odd books she's written- mainly historical fiction and non-fiction works for kids.

We were lucky enough to have the amazingly talented Johanna Wright speak on Tuesday and Wednesday, and she offered insights into her dummy-making process as well as how she develops her characters.

We rounded out the week with illustrator extraordinaire Lee White on Thursday. His paintings blew me away... and then he casually mentioned he painted one of his books with napkins. NAPKINS! He is an illustrator who is constantly innovating and pushing his boundaries, which makes for very exciting work.

Thank you to all of the class participants and speakers- I had such a great time. Thanks to PNCA, too... and if you missed this class, I'll have two more in the fall and winter. Next is an 8-week writing & illustrating class, and a children's book portfolio class will follow that one. The Continuing Ed catalog can be found here!

Get 'er done: Mural Edition

Scratch that one off the bucket list. Large-scale mural in public setting: CHECK. Dear readers, since we're good friends, I will tell you a secret. When the Portland Children's Museum asked me to paint a mural in their new Pet Hospital exhibit, at first I was afraid. I was petrified. I wondered how I'd ever paint a picture at that size. I had never a) painted such a large mural before in such a b) heavily-trafficked area, in c) the place where I work part-time and thus would have to face my co-workers and an ugly mural every day in the event that it sucked.

Dear readers, I will tell you another secret: I am really quite pleased with how it turned out.

That's the finished mural above- and here's how it all went down.

It started with a sketch, obviously. The new exhibit is a play veterinary clinic with stuffed animals the kids can take care of. The exhibit planners wanted a mural for the dog park section. 

I then drew a pretty lenient grid on the sketch for transferring to the Big Screen.

I learned a lot from doing this mural that I think will be muy helpful in my book illustrations. For one thing, the joy and pleasure that having a color sketch brings to me. Yes, YES, I know that painters have been making color sketches for CENTURIES, and I am a little late to this realization. That seems to be the story of my life: I am currently watching season 2 of Mad Men, and read my first Diary of a Wimpy Kid on the bus today. (*Side note: both totally amazing! FYI!)

Anyhoo, that part was easy peasy. Now on to the Uncharted Territory:

Luckily, I had The Grid to help me chart it. It really did help, but I used that grid fairly flexibly towards the end there. And YES, sharp-eyed readers, that IS a copy of The Curious Garden by Peter Brown for color reference!

All drawn in. Then on to COLOR! Just as in my normal illustrations I used acrylics, and I tried to get in all of the colors first before building up any one section.

I painted...
...and painted...
... and painted. It took a good two weeks, and frankly, it got so I dreamed about painting flower pots, and I didn't even want to look at a dog on the sidewalk.

And then it was done.

Some details:

Take that, Jack Nicholson/Morgan Freeman.

Get 'er done

It IS graduation season, so how appropriate that I delayed the final installment of Illustration Correspondence Course until now! HA. Like I am that organized. But I figured I should wrap things up, because I gots pictures from Book Expo America to share, I gots a mural I'm working on to share... 

SO! Our final virtual class! I'll try not to get teary-eyed. This subject is always a crowd-pleaser, because it's the stuff that everyone REALLY wants to know... HOW TO GET YOUR STUFF PUBLISHED. I used to give this talk quite frequently at SCBWI conferences, and it's a talk I like to call:

I know as well as the next person that it is important to have a good ice breaker with these types of things. This is my ice breaker (note: I will likely use this ice breaker in my summer course in July- spoiler alert!). I've also showed these pictures on my blog before, but they're JUST SO GOOD I never get tired of them.

So, these are some scenes from the very short-lived television show The Something Something of Jezebel James, wherein Parker Posey played an editor at HarperCollins Children's Books. These offices look a lot more swank than my "office" when I worked at HarperCollins:
No window, and no frilly blouse for me, I can assure you.

Anyhoo, it was my job as the NKOTB in the design department to sort through the postcards we received from illustrators. I still recommend postcards to participants in my class- they're a relatively cheap way to promote yourself, and no one is annoyed by receiving a postcard. 

I highlighted some of the postcards that I discarded immediately:
Now, I don't think any of these illustrations are "bad", per se. In a clockwise manner, starting at the top left, I rejected these because they were a) too editorial, b) too "mass market", c) too editorial again (maybe for Money magazine, not for children's books), d) too sci-fi, e) too weird, and f) not telling a narrative story.

In the Yes bin went these postcards. First off, they all show KIDS (or kid-friendly subjects). Big plus! And besides being well-executed, I feel like all of these postcards tell a story, or evoke a narrative. I love the little girl hugging her grandpa, for example- it's such a simple, sweet, and universal moment and feeling. And those birds on a wire! How I love them! I like that many of the birds are angry. Children are often angry (as I can tell you from working at a children's museum), and it's nice to get a hint that this illustrator can represent a wide range of emotions.
Getting yourself in the "yes" bin does not mean you're going to get an illustration job, however. Oh, not by a long shot. After I pulled out some good postcards, the first thing I did was go to the illustrator's website or blog. No online portfolio= postcard goes into the recycling bin. It sounds harsh, but it really makes it so, so much easier to share your work with the publishing team if you have an online presence.

If the illustrator had a website with lots of cute illustrations appropriate for children's books, I'd print a few of my favorites and put them in a filing folder. If I REALLY liked the illustrator, I'd send a link around to some of the editorial & art deptartment members. 

Matching illustrators from these files to projects at hand could be a very difficult process, and a decision that most definitely was not left up to me. It was a decision reached by editorial, art, the publisher, and in some cases, sales, marketing, & the author. As a new illustrator, sometimes the cards are stacked against you. If the manuscript at hand is by a new author, the publisher likely won't pick a new illustrator to go with it. Either one or the other usually has some sort of track record & following. That's why I say- and I'm sticking to it!!- that it MAY be easier to get published if you write and illustrate your own books! I've heard others say different things... but I know that I saw many, many talented illustrators that I LOVED, and the chances of finding exactly the right manuscript at the right time, with the right subject matter and approved by the right people... well, it's a lot of hoops to jump through to become "the one".

And on that note! Well, that sounded like a real downer of an ending. I totally didn't mean it that way, and what's more, I don't think illustration in general has a downer of an ending! Sure, it can take a really, really, really, REALLY long time to get published, but it CAN and DOES happen! All the time. I cannot recommend highly enough the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). They are an international organization and real-life resource to learn the ins and outs of writing, illustrating, and publishing.

Whew! Thanks for sticking around for the end of class! At my dad's great suggestion, I have a little something for you for completing this course:

I'm framing mine- it's going right next to the "Mousters" degree I earned from working at Disney World one summer. I chose not to pursue my Ducktorate that year.

Interview with Yours Truly

Illustrator Jane Heinrichs was kind enough to invite me over to her blog for an interview! Click here to read all the juicy, lurid details!

And in other exciting news, I am jetting to New York City tomorrow! A fun-filled week of meeting with my editor and attending Book Expo America! And uh, lots of Magnolia Bakery and Shake Shack visits. Although I am notoriously bad at taking photos (you would have already known this if you read my juicy interview!), I will do my best to document the excitement of BEA.

Until next week!

Illustration Correspondence Course: Narrative Structure!

I'm back! And I'm really rollin' this week! New dummy is finished & sent off! ICC is back on track. Library book pile:

... Dwindling! One thing I'll miss about haunting many library branches several times a week is the fun of stumbling upon old childhood favorites. I was a BIG Tomie dePaola fan as a kid. I found his drawings so appealing, and I remember really liking the bittersweet stories of this book, and that perennial tear-jerker, Nana Upstairs, Nana Downstairs. 

One of my VERY favorite books as a kid was this one:

... and a few years ago I realized that this book MAY have been a subliminal inspiration for Bea Rocks the Flock:

In the story, Mariana May gets in trouble for continually getting her white dress all dirty, so Nursey dyes her dresses different colors for different occasions.

And oh, I WANTED THAT RAINBOW DRESS. If it had rainbows/unicorns, I WORE IT.

Moving on, week... what are we on, 6? Anyway, this week's correspondence course is called Narrative Structure, and Yes, Picture Books Have Them! A common mistake in submitted picture book manuscripts is a lack of plot. When I reviewed a lot of submissions back in the day, I'd see a lot of dummies where a kid goes to the zoo (for example), sees this and this and this, and then goes home. Frankly, not the most the most thrilling of stories. I'm not saying you need to write a 32-page John Grisham novel, but SOMEthing needs to happen. There are lots and lots and lots of way to structure your story, but here are two things I try to keep in mind:

1) I took this formula from Darcy Pattinson. Step 1) You create a character. Step 2) You figure out what she wants most in this world (or, fears most in this world). Step 3) You throw some complications at your character that get in the way of their heart's desire (or, heightens the thing they are afraid of) until Step 4) Climax! And Step 5) resolution.

2) This one sounds so very basic, but sometimes the basic things are the easiest to ignore! Make sure your story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Or more specifically, make sure you introduce your character & their problem, have the problem build to a climax, and resolve the problem in a satisfying way.

The example I often use for point number one is Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, by Mo Willems. Our character is Pigeon. What does he want most in the world?

To drive the bus, obviously! The complications that get in his way: we won't let him! His frustration builds and builds and builds until we reach a narrative, and visual, climax:

Resolution and special twist ending: Pigeon does NOT get to drive the bus, but he moves on to a new dream...

Even if you're an illustrator only, not an author/illustrator, it's important to think about narrative structure because your illustrations should mimic the narrative arc. Your illustrations add to the climax just as much as the words do. Where the Wild Things are is a terrific example of this.  If you scroll down through these spreads, you'll notice that the illustrations get bigger and bigger and bigger...

... until the Wild Rumpus climax, when we get three whole spreads of full-bleed art, no words at all. The beauty of the structure constantly staggers me.

As Max returns home, the illustrations shrink back down, easing out of the narrative arc.

One of the most difficult things in writing a picture book, in my opinion, is creating a satisfying, yet unexpected, ending. My vote for one of the most satisfying endings of all time?

What I liked best about this ending as a kid was that we were never told outright that (spoiler alert) Miss Nelson IS Viola Swamp. I still remember the deliciously creepy, satisfying feeling of putting together the pieces myself- it totally blew my mind. "Wait, there's the black dress and, why... hold on... a wig box... so that must mean...  O. M. G."

And I REALLY liked page 32, the final page- the adult detective is not smart enough to figure out what I, a kid, realized the page before.

A close second in my personal Most Satisfying Story Endings of All Time goes to this Reading Rainbow gem:

In this book, Bea (another subliminal inspiration for Bea Rocks the Flock?!?) is sick of kindergarten, and her dad is sick of his office job, so they switch places. Hilarity ensues as each experiences life in the other's shoes. Here's where you think, "Well, it was all good fun, but now they're going to realize that they should really go back to where they belong." 

Wrong! I think the delightful thing about this ending is that is precisely what does NOT happen! Mr. Jones stays in kindergarten as the star pupil,

... and Bea goes on to have high-powered executive lunches.

What could have been a fairly run-of-the-mill morality tale turns into a springboard for the imagination. After all, books for the young are meant to encourage creativity, not squash it, right?