Behind the Scenes of a Picture Book Character by Chitra Soundar

A typical conversation I have with teachers at schools:

Teacher: How do you choose an illustrator?

Me: I don’t. Publishers choose.

Teacher: Do you get to tell them how to illustrate?

Me: Nope!

Most often, especially when a writer is starting out, they don’t get to choose an illustrator or give stage directions or write illustrator notes into manuscripts. At least that has been my experience on the 20 picture books I’ve published so far and with the next few coming out soon.

I recently was part of a twitter conversation where some people said their stories appear as words in their mind. But for me it’s scenes, visuals, characters who appear and talk. When I write, I visualise the story in my head. 

So when I get to see my story fully illustrated, it will be nowhere near what I’ve imagined for the following reasons:

a)    The illustrator has a different mind. Their experiences have created a vision in their minds. 

b)    A picture book has inputs from many experts. The words of the story is the north star, but those words can still be interpreted differently by the editor, the designer and the illustrator.

c)    It is a multi-creative process. When a story has been written, it then transforms into pictures in an independent creative process and that varies from illustrator to illustrator, just like no two writers will write the same story in the same way.

More recently I’ve been more interested in thinking about how characters are formed. When I wrote the first story for Farmer Falgu, I didn’t have a specific farmer in mind. From the name, it might have been obvious to an Indian reader that he might be north Indian (as there is a river called Falgu in the north) and in the south, the names are more Dravidian and we don’t have the consonant F in our languages. 

But Kanika Nair who illustrated the first book and the series of 4 titles, had grown up in Rajasthan. So she brought her life experience to the story and made him a farmer from Rajasthan. This was not in my text and something I had not imagined. Read her interview here.

She said, "Farmer Falgu Series has been one of my favourites. While reading the script for illustrating I felt an interesting connection between the story and my hometown. Thus, decided to set the story in Rajasthan, a state in northern India that is rich in historical significance and famous for its vibrant colourful culture."

The first two stories for this farmer were already written and now he had a specific personality as created by the illustrator.  What does that mean to me as a writer then? 

For the third and the fourth book, I decided to embrace this aspect of Farmer Falgu a bit more. So when I was thinking of a plot line for Book 3 (read about how to write a series here), I decided to bring the cultural aspects of Rajasthan into the story – and hence he goes kite flying. Read more about how this story came about here.

Does this happen to all writers and characters? Does the illustrator bring out a different aspect of the character that the writer hadn’t visualised? I went hunting to find out about some famous characters and their creators.

Here is an interview by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler on creating the Gruffalo and the animals in the forest. Read how Julia had a different colourful image in her mind and when Axel finally settled on how Gruffalo looked, she was happy with it. And then came of course other stories for Gruffalo and Gruffalo’s child and they all had to follow Axel’s portrayal of the forest and the animals.

Another famous collaborator is Quentin Blake and he too talks about how his pictures came to be to bring life to Roald Dahl’s words. 

In an interview published here in the Guardian, this is what Quentin Blake says – 

"What was so wonderful to me was that so many of Roald's stories were fantastical, unrealistic, so I was free to do what I wanted. I could let my style develop. Think of The Twits or the BFG - they don't really take place in a realistic world. They come from my head."

In another interview for the BBC Quentin Blake recalls visiting Dahl and Sophie and redrawing the illustrations for BFG after that. 

And that’s a rare thing indeed because after 20 picture books, I’ve had dinner with only two of my illustrators and I haven’t even met most of them.

Whether Blake’s illustrations then in turn influenced Roald Dahl or not when he wrote the next story, I don’t know. But as children and adults who read these books, the characters like Matilda, BFG and the Twits are visualised in our heads are from Blake’s illustrations. Aren't they?

Do you write picture books? What are your experiences working with an illustrator? Share below in comments. Are you an illustrator? How do you go about making up a character from someone else's words?

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Chitra Soundar is an Indian-born British writer, storyteller and internationally published author of children’s books, based in London, England. Chitra writes picture books, poetry and fiction for children and often visits schools, festivals and libraries to run writing workshops and tell stories. Find out more at www.chitrasoundar.com. 

Follow her on Twitter @csoundar.

Are you famous? by Jane Clarke

Over the last few weeks, I’ve done assorted school and library events for the under 8 year olds, and, when it’s time to chat, I've been asked “are you famous?” They’re puzzled because I’m standing in front of them, being introduced as a special visitor  - yet they haven’t seen my face on TV - and won’t have heard of my name, except in the context of that event.

Sky Private Eye (illustrated by Loretta Schauer) - Jane at the event at Barnes Lit Fest

If I ask the children if they know any picture book writers or illustrators, the name they most often come up with is Julia Donaldson. They know her as the author of the Gruffalo books, but they often struggle to name Axel Scheffler as the illustrator - or to add any more names to the list. The majority of picture book writers and illustrators are invisible to them.

But when I ask the same children what picture books they love, their eyes light up. They know the title and the characters and can’t wait to tell me all about the story. They remember who read their favourite book to them, how it made them feel - and how they requested it to be read again, and again, and again. The book is etched into their hearts and has become part of their childhoods.

Most adults I’ve asked can also recollect in detail the stories the picture books they loved as a child, and see the illustrations in their mind’s eye  - even if they can’t remember the name of the author and illustrator. Often, as adults, they have sought out the book they loved as a child so they can read it to their children.

 I had to track down Downy Duckling (Ladybird Books, fist published 1942!) to share with my sons. I had no idea who wrote and illustrated it -the names of AJ MacGregor and W Perring are not on the cover.

So when I’m asked “are you famous?” I explain that not many people know my name or what I look like, but they might know and love some of the stories I’ve created - and that sort of fame makes me very happy.

 In the case of the picture books I’ve written, Gilbert the Great is probably the best known, thanks to Charles Fuge’s wonderful illustrations, and this summer, in the USA, there was even a Gilbert plush in Kohl’s, helping to raise money for Kohl’s Cares charities. 

Do you have a favourite picture book you remember as a child, but didn’t find out the names of the author and/or illustrator until you were much older?

 Jane also often gets asked “are you rich?” She answered that question in this post https://picturebookden.blogspot.com/2017/03/are-you-rich-by-jane-clarke.html

Nothing has changed, except she’s now even richer in granddaughers (4)!

Seven Brilliant Books about BIBLIOPHILES • Jonathan Emmett

Prince Ribbit, my latest picture book with the wonderfully talented Argentinian illustrator Poly Bernatene, has just been published in UK hardback and paperback.

Prince Ribbit’s heroine, Princess Martha finds inspiration in the Royal Library. 

Although Prince Ribbit is the fourth book that Poly and I have done together, it’s really a follow up to our second, The Princess and the Pig, in that both stories are set in a fairytale world populated by characters who love books.

The characters in The Princess and the Pig use the books they’re reading to interpret (usually mistakenly) what's happening to them in the the story.

As a book-lover myself, I’ve aways enjoyed reading stories about other bibliophiles. There’s something satisfyingly meta about reading a book about a character who is reading a book. So here are seven brilliant picture books about bibliophiles.


One of my favourite novels of recent years is David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas which is effectively six books nested inside each other like a set of Russian dolls. Each book jumps forward in time and one of the ingenious connections between the stories is that characters featured in the inner books are reading the outer books. Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book does something similar in picture book format. Each spread introduces a new character who is reading their favourite book, the inside of which is shown on the next spread. So the book starts with eponymous Charlie, who is reading a book about a pirate, who is reading a book of fairy tales, and so on. While Scheffler's spread layouts shift around as the reader jumps from genre to genre, Donaldson ties the whole bookshelf together with her perfectly-scanning rhyme.

The spread from Joust Joking, Sir Percy the knight’s favourite book.

Jane Blatt and Sarah Massini’s Books Always Everywhere features a diverse group of toddlers enjoying an equally diverse selection of books. Blatt’s simple but charming rhyming text combines beautifully with Massini’s cheerful, perfectly-composed illustrations to make this book an ideal gift for budding bibliophiles, especially in the board book edition. Published in 2013, this book deserves to become a pre-school classic.

The board book edition of Books Always Everywhere makes an ideal gift for budding bibliophiles

Timothy Knapman and Adam Stower’s Mungo and the Picture Book Pirates is one of three books in which young Mungo literally enters into the book he is reading to join in with the adventure. In this first outing Captain Fleet, hero of Mungo’s favourite pirate picture book, is so worn out after six back-to-back readings of his story, that he abandons his book leaving Mungo to take his place and rescue Admiral Mainbrace and cabin girl Nora from a crew of dastardly pirates. The second book in the series, Mungo and the Spiders from Space, was featured in one of my earlier PBD posts.

With the hero holidaying in another book, Mungo is obliged to take his place in the story.

In Lauren Child’s Beware of Storybook Wolves the traffic is going the other way, with characters leaving little Herb’s favourite bedtime book to join him in the real world. Published in 2000 (before many publishers developed their current anorexic obsession with diminished word counts) Child’s quirky, characterful 1,300 word text is accompanied by equally quirky and characterful illustrations in which a trio of villains (two hungry wolves and a wicked fairy) emerge to threaten poor Herb before being seen off by a fairy godmother.

When Herb’s mother leaves a book behind one night, he finds himself at the mercy of two hungry wolves.

Dog Loves Books by Louise Yates sees Dog pursuing the dream of many a bibliophile – opening their own bookshop! Sadly, the bookshop's "grand opening" is a disappointing anti-climax. However Dog is able to find solace in his stock until trade picks up. You can watch Alison Steadman reading the book here.

Dog shows his love of books by opening his own bookshop.

Ralfy Rabbit loves books so much, he ends up stealing them to feed his insatiable reading habit in WANTED! Ralfy Rabbit Book Burgular by Emily MacKenzie. But Ralfy’s book-burglaring days come to an end when young Arthur spots Ralfy making off with a favourite book.

Ralfy Rabbit’s love of books puts him on the wrong side of the law.

Henry, the title character of Oliver Jeffers’s The Incredible Book Eating Boy also has an insatiable appetite for books – only he likes to eat rather than read them. The more he eats, the smarter he gets. Eventually the strain on his digestive system proves too much and Henry finds a more conventional way to feed his love of literature.

Henry’s bibliophilia manifests itself in a rather unusual way.

I hope this post has whetted your own appetite for some bibliophilic picture books! If you have a favourite picture book about a book-lover that I haven’t mentioned, I’d love to hear about it in the comments section below.

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Jonathan Emmett's latest picture book about bibliophiles is Prince Ribbit, illustrated by Poly Bernatene and published by Macmillan Children's Books.

Find out more about Jonathan and his books at his Scribble Street web site or his blog. You can also follow Jonathan on Facebook and Twitter @scribblestreet.

See all of Jonathan's posts for Picture Book Den.

Different voices by Jane Clarke

Do you put on different voices when you're reading picture books aloud? I do. I can't help it.

I go for perky and interested when I read the Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (the pop! is key to this narrator's voice I think - who doesn't love a good sound effect?)

I adopt a tone of total innocence when I read the hilarious Bottomley books by Peter Harris and Doffy Weir. These books are told from first person (or should I say cat) point of view with the text contradicting the pictures. Here's a page from Bottomley Cattery.

And I have a different voice for each animal in the Gruffalo, some scary, some scared, some soft, some loud, some hissy. Reading the Gruffalo aloud is a bit like acting.

a page from The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler

I have voices for all the characters I write in my own picturebooks and tones of voices in my head for the characters in the texts I'm writing. A few of my books have audio versions. It's strange, but wonderfully magical, to hear an actor voice them.

Knight Time read by Jane Whittenshaw, Gilbert the Great and Gilbert in Deep read by Dervla Kirwan, Stuck in the Mud ready by Cassandra Morris

Even for non actors like me, using different voices and making different sound effects when you're reading a picture book aloud helps the reader and the child listener enter the magical world of make believe.

It's fun to experiment using different voices when you read a picture book aloud, and it's fun to try out different voices when you're writing a picture book text. Narrator, first person, second person or third – every voice can be different and distinct.

What voices stand out for you? 

Jane's proud and excited to announce that her new picture book, Who Woke the Baby is published this month.

It's crammed full of yummy illustrations by Charles Fuge and there are plenty of animal noises to make when you read it out loud.

APTLY EVER AFTER: Why picture books need proper endings • Jonathan Emmett

Back in April, Natascha Biebow wrote a post for this blog about picture book openings and why it’s important to get them right. I think endings are equally important, so I thought I’d write a post about them.

When I was reading picture books with my own children we were always disappointed by stories that ended inappropriately. Perhaps most disappointing of all were picture books that seemed to have no proper ending at all. We’d turn the page, expecting to discover how the story finished only to find that it was already over and we were at the back of the book. I think there needs to be a satisfying sense of conclusion when one reaches the end of a picture book, whether the story winds down gently or ends with a spectacular flourish or unexpected twist.

Some of the best children’s storytelling in recent years has come from Pixar, the animation studio that created the Toy Story trilogy and several other modern classics. While Pixar’s films are always visually impressive, the company attributes its phenomenal success to its motto – “Story is King”. Here’s one of Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling that’s also a great piece of advice for picture book authors.

Rule 7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.

I’m a great believer in writing an outline before writing a story – even a short story like a picture book’s – and that means coming up with an ending before starting the first draft. I know that some authors dismiss outlines as limiting, claiming that they like to ‘discover’ the story as they are writing it. That might be true if the outline were a fixed document but, like most authors that use them, I’m constantly tinkering with the outline as I write the story. If a better ending occurs to me, I see if I can rework the outline to accommodate it. Writing a story with an outline is like going for a walk in the country with a map. You have an idea of what’s coming up, but you can always opt to take a different route and end up somewhere else if it takes your fancy. With a map, a walker is less likely to end their walk stranded in the middle of nowhere; with an outline an author is less likely to end up with an unsatisfactory ending.

I don’t know whether the authors of the following picture books use outlines or not, but here are three stories that all have satisfying endings that feel just right. I’ve done my best to avoid spoilers, but if you haven’t read any of the stories mentioned below and want to avoid any hints as to how they end, you might want to skip over that paragraph.

The Great Dog Bottom Swap

Peter Bently

Illustrated by Mei Matsuoka

This is the tale of a Dog’s Summer Ball that starts well, but ends in disaster. It’s a farcically funny story, deftly written with lots of amusing incidents throughout. And – as if that weren’t enough – the text on the final spread reveals a twist that makes the reader see the whole plot in an amusing new light.

Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose

Dr. Seuss

I can’t think of another picture book ending that made me and my children laugh quite so much as this one when we first read it. The story concerns Thidwick, a kindly moose whose generosity is exploited by a collection of creatures who set up home in his antlers. When a group of hunters arrive, the overburdened Thidwick’s chances of survival look slim. The image on the last page gives the story an incredibly funny, totally unexpected and somewhat shocking ending. 

The Gruffalo

Julia Donaldson

Illustrated by Axel Scheffler

I know that The Gruffalo has had plenty of praise heaped on it already, but that’s because it’s such an exemplary piece of picture book writing. After the mouse’s death-defying adventure, Donaldson ends the story calmly and quietly. Having repeatedly escaped being eaten himself, the mouse (and the story) comes to a stop as the mouse sits down to enjoy a meal.


What are your favourite picture book endings? Let us know in the comments box below.

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Jonathan Emmett's latest picture book is HERE BE MONSTERS, a swashbuckling tale of dastardly pirates and mysterious monsters, illustrated by Poly Bernatene and published by Macmillan Children's Books.
Find out more about Jonathan and his books at his Scribble Street web site or his blog. You can also follow Jonathan on facebook and twitter @scribblestreet.

See all of Jonathan's posts for Picture Book Den.