I teach courses on writing picture
books, and quite often students tell me that they have been told by other teachers that there is a ‘rule’ that an author mustn’t include any notes
about design or illustration along with their texts. To me, that’s wrong. Very wrong.
The joy of picture books is the playing of the words, the pictures, and
the book itself, together to perform a story. If
the originator of the story, usually the author, isn’t thinking about aspects
of the book beyond the words from the story's inception, the result is going to be more
limited than it should be.
There’s a reason why many of the
very best picture books of all time (Rosie’s Walk, Elmer The Elephant,
Goodnight Gorilla, This Is Not My Hat, Handa’s Big Surprise, and many more)
have been written and illustrated by the same person. By thinking of the pictures and words
together, those author-illustrators have honed the two to work together in powerful ways. It’s no surprise that most of those books
have very short texts. Creators who
illustrate as well as write, trust the illustrations to show most of the story,
and they then use the text to tease the reader into reacting to the pictures, or they use the text to bring the pictures to life with dialogue. They know that children ‘read’ pictures, even
when they can’t all ‘read’ texts yet.
Publishers usually have both
editors and designers, but, traditionally, it’s the editor who is the
first gate keeper for a publisher, deciding which texts to let in to further discussions
which might then include designers. A recent publishing experience has made me wonder whether publishers should always work along that set path towards a book.
I had a picture book story idea
about a rabbit who wants some space for himself, away from the noise and
activity of the other rabbits around him.
So Jack, the rabbit, runs to an empty space, where he draws a red line to define ‘his’
space in which he can read his book in peace.
Of course he then finds that being alone in a space can become lonely,
and he wants to re-join his friends, but is now stuck because he’s made the rule
about nobody crossing the line. You can
read the book if you want to find out how that problem gets resolved! But my point here is that I felt that story was one which could be mostly shown in pictures, and then need very little text. In fact, I thought it would be better with very little text. So I wrote the text, adding notes about what the pictures needed to show. Here’s an early version on
which my artistic sister had made comments and sketches.
And I drew amateur sketches too, just to
help me work out quite how the book might work.
I sent my text with its illustration and design ideas to a couple of big publishers who had published
me in the past. They didn’t want
it. I don’t know if the preponderance of illustration
notes put them off. I hope not, and I suspect they just didn’t feel that story was for them. But then I read about a new children’s book
publisher that was emerging from an existing publisher of beautiful adult comic
books. That was Flying Eye, just
starting up within Nobrow. So I sent my
story to Sam Arthur of Flying Eye. He,
and his partner in the business, are both from a design background. Suddenly it was the design idea (coming from
an author!) that was of real interest.
This felt so different from the way I'd worked with other publishers!
Rebecca Crane illustrated My Very
Own Space very beautifully, and Flying Eye have published it equally beautifully, with
felty thick paper within a hardback cover with gloss highlights and a fabric
trimmed spine. All of Flying Eye’s
picture books are beautifully conceived and produced, and they are winning
major prizes (perhaps most notably Shackleton's Journey by William Grill winning the Kate Greenaway Medal). So I wonder if
other publishers should include designers alongside editors as first filters on
story proposals that come in?
Boast alert! Last week My Very Own Space was the Observer’s
Book of the Week - hooray!
So, yes, do dare to add notes about
potential illustrations or design … but do it wisely, explaining story content
and presentation rather than stepping onto the illustrator’s toes by detailing
visual things that have no direct relevance to the story.
