I ran into an old friend this summer. I hadn't checked in with her in awhile, but she had been right there on my bookshelf the whole time. Before Julia Cameron and her "artist dates" and Anne Lamott's "bird by bird" mantra, there was Brenda Ueland's seminal writing book, So You Want to Write. For a book first published in 1938, and rediscovered in 1983 by Greywolf Press, Brenda''s peppy prose hasn't aged at all.
Brenda Ueland, late in life.
So You Want to Write was the first book on writing I ever read. Honesty, I didn't know there was such a thing as a "how-to-write" book. By 1984, I had given up writing, except for journaling. I had written my whole life, with some decent success...for a kid. Competing against other young writers was one thing but against professionals? How could I hope to compete? So I didn't.
I missed writing, but figured it was an unrequited love. I was a school librarian, a job I loved but... I'd read the YA books at work and think "I could do better than this." Then I'd tell myself to shut up and forget aboutit. Until the next time.
Brenda was introduced to me via NPR. I was driving home from work when NPR reviewed So You Want to Write. It was the briefest of All Things Considered segments but I gathered that Ms Ueland believed anyone could write. You didn't need an MFA or an Ivy League degree. You didn't have to live a wild bohemian life in Greenwich Village, (although Brenda Ueland was quite the Village wild child in the Roaring 20's.) Everybody's life provides them with the tools to be a successful writer. All you really need is the desire, and willingness to be spend the time writing.
I had to find this book! In the days before Amazon, that meant driving almost a 100 miles, one way to the nearest bookstore. Thank God for Barnes & Noble; they had the book. It was all I could do not to floor the car all the way home to read my new treasure.
And what a treasure it was! I still have never read anything as intimate and reassuring. It was as if Brenda Ueland was sitting next to me, chatting about writing over steaming mugs of black tea. Write what you love, write with passion and abandon. Forget the spelling and the grammar and the symbolism and all the writing tricks and techniques. Just write! Write honestly, without pretense. Don't use ten dollar words unless that's exactly what you want to say. And remember...we all can write!
Encouraged, I read on. Write without regard to money or audience. Write for you!
Oh. I thought about all those things every time I scrolled a sheet of paper into my typewriter. Brenda was especially fond of William Blake and Van Gogh, two artists who created for their own pleasure. They also were almost unknown in their own time. Brenda herself was quite a successful journalist, writing for all the popular magazines of her day. She wasn't worrying about paying the rent! I would have to work on the "not worrying" part. I read on.
Observe life withJOY!!! (I could imagine Brenda fairly shouting those words.) Write what catches your eye, what you think about, no matter how insignificant. No self judgement. Just write. Be free! I picture Brenda on her feet, waving her hands as if to shoo me off to my desk. Go! Now! What are you waiting for?
After reading So You Want to Write I walked around in a golden haze of observation, as if I was in love. When you are in love, everything in your world takes on a special significance. Life smells sweeter, tastes better, feels soft as velvet. Everything moment has meaning. I was in love with words. I wrote and wrote and wrote.
Writing with JOY!! I banged out the first three chapters of a YA novel that I stupidly submitted without writing the rest of the book. When the publisher said they wanted to read the whole thing, I faked a week-long bout of flu to finish the story. (Surprise! Writing a book in a week does not work unless you are Stephen King.)
I kept working with JOY!!! but as time went on, I became aware of my own weaknesses. I didn't know how to structure a plot or build a character. I just wrote. I could (and still can) spin out pages and pages without ever creating a story. (The best critique I ever got was "You write very well but you aren't saying anything.") Eventually I found my way to the Vermont College MFA program, and learned how to do those things. As I became focused on craft and pace and technique, I didn't always write with JOY!!! Sometimes I was just slogging from one plot point to the next. I forgot about Brenda.
But you know what? In the end, Brenda was absolutely right. My first sold book was one I wrote with great passion (and a Diet Coke and Jim Beam!)in two hours without thinking of an audience. I never remotely considered submitting to a publisher, because I didn't "know how" to write a picture book. I wrote it only to cheer up my three-year old daughter. She could've cared less. That book was My Best Friend.
That manuscript would never have left my desk if circumstances hadn't interfered to prevent me writing anything else for two months. I needed to something to send in as part of my semester's work for Vermont. So I sent the picture I didn't know how to write. I was not surprised when no one in my critique group had anything good to say about it...except the moderator, the great Eric Kimmel. He thought I should "send it somewhere." I was deliriously happy because in a full year into the program no one had so much as hinted that I had written anything worth publishing. After 27 rejections, it found a home with Viking, the last publisher on my alphabetical list. Twenty years later, it is still in print. I discovered last month that the school system where my daughter teaches, gave every K-2 classroom a copy of My Best Friend. That's a lot of book sales!
My most successful books have been ones that I wrote for myself (or my daughter) without considering whether they were topical or part of a curriculum. They were fun. I wrote withJOY!!!
I remembered all this when I found So You Want to Write on my bookshelf. It's been awhile since I've written with joy and abandon and without looking over my shoulder. JOY!!! has been absent from my life for a considerable period of time. I'm writing on an otherwise extremely stressful day, but for the hour in which I created this post, it was absolutely with JOY!!!
Today's PF host is Heidi at My Juicy Little Universe. Her link, my poem, a poetry prompt, and a link to my one-day, 3-hour Writing Poetry class on September 24, 2025 are at the end of this post
This August, Bruce Balan and his wife Alene D. Rice (who have been sailing around the world on their boat, Migration for twenty years) stayed with us for a month.
Bruce and Alene on Migration,
their home for over 20 years.
Migration is named after Bruce Balan's picture book, THE CHERRY MIGRATION; thus, her cherry red hull.
In case you're wondering, they are the most marvelous house guests you'd imagine: they tiptoed in if they came back late at night, treated us to dinners, came bearing gifts (manuka honey!), often left for a few days to visit friends and relatives, and left a bouquet of fresh flowers and hidden thank yous all over the house. Our dog and cat adored them so much, our cat slept on their bed for days after they'd left. (Okay, yes, I was a tad jealous that our pets' affections transferred to Bruce and Alene so completely and so fast.)
Kitty waited at their bedroom door until they came home
Bruce and I have been sending each other a poem a day since 2010. Months ago, Bruce suggested that he and I plan a writing retreat when they came to the States, so that we could sort through our 10,000+ poems to find the gems for a book.
What fun!
Here's a peek, culled from my journal, of our first full day:
After yesterday's four-hour drive up the California coast, today has been very productive.
Morning: Bruce and I made breakfast, then practiced yoga on the front grass (he and Alene do yoga on their boat every day, guided by this app which gives
clear—and kind—instructions). The lawn overlooks Peacock Hill Farm's 50 acres of orchards, and the beautiful rolling hills of neighboring farms.
Fields of Peacock Hill Farm and beyond
The owners, whose house adjoined our rental, were out of town--so we were the rulers of this gorgeousness for three full days. At first, we were nervous that the peacocks would wake us up early each morning with the typical infant wailing/screaming alley cat music they make. But it turned out that there were only two who never screeched. We named them John and Mary.
Our work begins. Thank goodness Bruce is so organized. He sets our daily schedule, and I'm grateful for that:
1: Sitting in separate work spaces, we each re-read some of the hundreds of poems written by the other, adding only those we thought might fit our book to a folder. (I made a YES folder of his poems that were "maybes," and he made a YES folder for mine)
2: During another timed hour, we sat across from each other at the kitchen table discussing each possible YES poem with brutal honesty. Well, it wasn't exactly brutal--maybe steadfast is a better word.
I was wondering how my ego would take the jettisoning of some of my favorite poems. To my surprise, it wasn't hard to agree when he didn't think a poem fit. Take a seat, ego!
3: We took a walk through the avocado orchards (the AirB&B owners invited guests to
pick as much of their fruit as we wanted).
4: We worked, separately evaluating poems for another hour...
5: ...then
walked, discovering incredibly delicious, ripe tangerines on trees all around us. Those, too, we were also encouraged to harvest.
6: We evaluated poems together for another
hour.
Then, we had delicious Mexican food in a crowded little diner filled with Spanish-speaking diners. Yum!
And that was Day 1.
Bruce and moi at the AirB&B, overlooking hills and neighboring fields
We didn't get a photo of John and Mary Peacock,
but peacocks were everywhere at the rental:
on pillows, paintings, sculptures, books, and so much more
Here's a sample of how emailing poems back and forth has worked for us over the years (except I've added my name and copyright info for this post)
THE UBBERY TREE (GREATLY REVISED AS A RESULT OF YOUR CRITIQUE) by April Halprin Wayland
I wish I could FaceBook our old avocado. She held out her arms for us to climb when I was nine.
My sister dubbed her The Ubbery Tree; we knighted my sister our Ubbery Queen— her crown was green.
We stepped in the middle of our dappled tree tent, crunched on brown leaves, sticks and dirt, we smelled wild earth.
We searched for her fruit, climbed her rough branches, rode her dragon-grey trunk, holding on tight in filtered light.
We crushed glossy leaves between our fingers, then breathed her licorice perfume in our leafy room.
I wish I could FaceBook our old avocado. She held out her arms for us to climb when I was nine.
(c) 2011 April Halprin Wayland, all rights reserved From: Bruce Balan To: 'April Halprin Wayland' Sent: Wed, May 11, 2011 10:54 pm Subject: RE: poem for May 11, 2011 REWRITE OF THE UBBERY TREE
I like this better! More tree, less sister. A fine avocado tree You can’t resist her.
Love, BB
POETRY PROMPT: Remembering A Special
Tree
1)Close your eyes. Breathe. Think back; remember a
tree.
2) Jot down as many memories about the tree as you can.
Scribble wildly about the smells, about each sense.
3) You're looking for real details. The ants. The
nest. A dead hatchling under the tree. Fruit-juice dribbling down
your chin.
4) If you find a tree that reminds you of your long-ago tree, go to it now. Lie under
it. Look up. Run your fingers along its trunk. Crush and smell its
leaves. Climb it.
5) I couldn't go back to my tree, so I went to Pixabay and
typed child climbing avocado tree, child climbing tree. Even though neither photo I chose was an avocado tree, the photos brought back the Ubbery Tree and helped me remember more
details.
6) Okay. So now you have the raw material. Now what? I finally decided on three-lined stanzas in which the last two lines rhymed. In the end, the rhythm of each third line is the same. Try this...or find another poem you love and imitate the structure of that. Enjoy your tree memories!
I'd love to hear what tree you (or your students?) chose to write about!
And speaking of students, UCLA Extension Writers' Program is offering my 3-hour one-day Writing Poetry for Children class on Wednesday, September 24th, noon-3pm PST. I'd love to meet you there in your little zoom square!
In the end, it's the specifics, the details that make a poem.
So wrote Mary Oliver in her now-so-relevant poem "Don't Hesitate."
I'm happy to report: I've spent many a day this summer giving in to
Joy, thanks to the writers who helped me make my life more "wild
and precious."
In June, self-proclaimed Joy Seeker and debut author Jamie
Freedlund launched her original picture book Finding Joy,
illustrated by her daughter Reese and Natalie Seaton.
As the book's back flap shares, Jamie's the founder of Mattea's Joy,
a non-profit organization that helps families with hospitalized kids
find joy in their journey. Created to honor the memory of her
daughter Mattea, Mattea's Joy provides care, connection and
community for anyone navigating the challenge of having a
hospitalized child.
Jamie donates a book to a Children's Hospital with each book
purchased.
Writing this children's book was Jamie's childhood dream come
true.
Helping Jamie learn the picture book format, grow her story, revise her story, then guiding her as she took on the responsibility of independently publishing and marketing the book still has me dancing The Happy Dance.
The book's back cover declares, "Finding Joy is easy...if you know where to look!"
How true because...
...here I am in July, seated with my returning Manuscript
Workshop writers at the Landgrove Inn in Landgrove, Vermont,
enjoying yet another 5-star meal in a Joy-filled week.
I've facilitated this Workshop since 2016, honored to continue
its founder Barbara Seuling's unswerving commitment to
helping children's book creators tell their stories.
As always, by week's end my waistline expands (exponentially)
but more importantly, as always, so does my heart.
It gladdens me so, to see the writers I've loved seeding and
feeding continue to grow and thus blossom - digging deeper,
revising and fine-tuning, so their singular stories connect
with their intended Young Readers.
In Finding Joy, Jamie Freedlund's Mattea learns: you find Joy
when you give Joy.
Prior to the Workshop, I gifted each writer with a copy of
It's hard to believe that summer is already waning here in the northern hemisphere and students and teachers will soon be returning to classrooms. Today, I'm closing out our latest TeachingAuthors series. At the end of this post, I also share one of my poems and a link to this week's Poetry Friday roundup.
I've enjoyed reading all my fellow TeachingAuthors' responses to the prompt: "Share a question you often get from your students or readers." I must admit, though, that the post that most resonated with me was April's, in which she talks about someone approaching her with an idea and asking her to write the book. I, too, have received that request many times, not only from my students, but also from strangers I've met at social functions and even via email from random people who found me online.
But there's another question I've heard far more frequently from those same sources: "How do you get a book published?" In fact, when I first started teaching classes in writing for children and teens over 25 years ago, the question was frequently worded as "How much does it cost to get a children's book published?" Back before self-publishing became prevalent, many people assumed you simply paid a book publisher like Scholastic or Random House to publish your book. These same people also typically assumed that if you were a writer and not an artist, you had to hire someone to illustrate your picture book before submitting to that publisher.
If the person asking the question was not a student in one of my classes, I simply directed them to the Frequently Asked Questions page of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) website. But over the years, the answer has gotten increasingly more complicated, and the SCBWI FAQ page isn't as helpful as it used to be. Thankfully, Jane Freidman has a great resource: "Start Here: How to Get Your Book Published," that covers publishing books for adults as well as for children. The post describes three publishing paths: traditional publishing, hiring a company to publish for you, and self-publishing, and she updates the information periodically.
How about you, Readers? Do you have any questions we haven't addressed in this series? If so, please let us know in the comments.
Now for the poem I promised. Earlier this summer, I had the honor of having two poems accepted for publication at The Dirigible Balloon, a UK-based online magazine that publishes poetry for children--my first time being featured there! Here's one of them, which you can also see on their site here:
On the Launchpad (An Etheree) by Carmela A. Martino
Preparing for takeoff! I fuel up on determination so I can blast past expectations and climb skyward, higher and higher— beyond the stratosphere— to where earthly fears won’t weigh me down. Here I go— THREE, TWO, ONE …
I understand. (who's not drowning in emails these days?) But please consider taking a small bite of the article before deciding to abandon it by the side of the road.
Because if you're just now dipping your toes into picture book planet, or if you're a longtimer, hungry for a review, the article may just
blow your
mind.
She just read the article. (image by JalalSheikh21 from Pixabay)
So, first, I'll share a poem and then a drawing, illustrating what it feels like when someone says:
“I HAVE A STORY IDEA FOR YOU!”
by April Halprin Wayland
I say, “How nice. Would you like to come inside?”
Then I walk her up the concrete steps of my brain, open the door and move ten heavy boxes, pass piles of Federal Express packages, shove aside bulging brown bags with string.
We make our way to the back bedroom where I stick a butterfly net out the balcony door and catch a few more ideas as they fly past.
In the kitchen, cases of canned ideas line the worn wood floor, unpacked sacks of fresh-picked ones, smelling slightly salty, are piled on the counter.
We hold onto the paint-chipped banister to walk down the wobbly stairs of the cold, cement basement. The sulfur smell surprises. I strike a match.
“Where is there room for your idea between those wooden tennis rackets, the rusty bird cage, folded music stands and trunks of family stories?” I ask.
Crouching behind a trunk is the one that creeps upstairs at night slinking along the hallway to my bedroom. This is the one I am working on now.
“Would you be kind enough to take your idea to my storage locker downtown, near the pier?” I say, handing her a tiny tin key. “Perhaps you'll find room there.
Best to stand back as you roll up the aluminum door.”
poem (c)April Halprin Wayland. All rights reserved.
drawing (c) April Halprin Wayland
Reminder: the link to Poetry Friday's host
is at the very end of this post.
For 25 years, I taught a quarter-long class called Writing the Children's Picture Book. But since the pandemic, I decided to reserve a big piece of me to help heal our world...
"We can do this!" (c) April Halprin Wayland
...and another piece of me to focus on my own writing.
envelope drawing, "Yes I can!" (c) April Halprin Wayland
And guess what? Most of UCLA Extension's 3-hour one-off classes are FREE! (And yes, they still pay us to teach).
I alternate each quarter between two classes. A few weeks ago I taught Introduction to Children's Picture Books ~ a workshop for absolute beginner; my next PB class will be in early 2026. On September 24th, I'm teaching Introduction to Writing Children's Poetry for the Big-Hearted, Brave, and Curious(my title, not necessarily UCLA's). Click on that title for more info.
So...back to the question: What is the NUMBER ONE question I get in my classes?
"This weekend I came up with an incredible picture book idea which I think--no, I know--will become an instant classic. And I'm going to let you write it! When it's written, give me the name of your agent and your editor, okay?"
Do I answer this directly? No.
Instead, I redirect them. I offer my students the following article to read.
Is it long?
Yes.
Will you be a changed reader and/or writer after reading it?
Absolutely.
Note: The Horn Book has graciously given me permission to share this article. (Unfortunately, the original article is now behind a paywall. It includes images of the books it mentions, for subscribers only. I've been given permission to offer you the article itself, minus the pictures. You might want to look the books up online or watch someone read them on YouTube as you read this article)
HALF THE STORY - TEXT AND ILLUSTRATION IN PICTURE BOOKS
(Yes, it was written many years ago, but it's still very much worth reading)
The two oldest forms of storytelling — words and images — meet and merge in picture books. A well-placed word can leave you elated or it can break your heart. Pictures can evoke peals of laughter or cries of outrage. A fundamental, some would argue inherent, understanding of both of these methods of telling stories is hardwired into our humanity. And when the two forms come together, as they do in picture books, the whole is so very much greater than the sum of the parts. At its best and most successful, the skillful joining of words and pictures is nothing short of magical.
Most picture books begin with the writer’s words, but if you take the text of a picture book out of the equation, there is still a lot to discuss. As an editor of picture books, I stand in the balance between the inspiration of the author and the inspiration of the artist. I am privileged. If these books are indeed magic, I am in the position to watch the spell being created, to see the pieces come together, and to witness the merging of two visions into one book.
Artistic style is like fingerprints, individual and revealing. No two people bring exactly the same skills or exactly the same baggage to their creative work. No text can be illustrated the same way twice, not even by the same artist.
Mother Goose rhymes are a case in point. These familiar texts are popular subjects for illustrators, in part because they are in the public domain and in effect are free for the taking.
Consider:
Hickory dickory dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one
and down he run
Hickory dickory dock
These five lines, two of which consist of nonsense words, describe one action and open a world of possible interpretations. Think about how to represent these lines pictorially, and a flood of questions pours forth. We are told that a mouse ran up a clock. What kind of clock? A wall clock? A cuckoo clock? Is it digital? This is the twenty-first century, after all.
And then, what kind of mouse? A white one? Black one? Spotted? Anthropomorphized? One that has had its tail cut off with a carving knife?
The clock struck one. Well, one what? One mouse? The hour of one? If so, is that one o’clock in the morning? Or one o’clock in the afternoon?
And this is barely the beginning. There are also questions of technique. Do these lines call out for watercolor? Scratchboard? Melted wax? Is one panel sufficient to encapsulate the action, or do you need separate panels to show the mouse running up the clock, the clock striking one, and the mouse running down again? How do you illustrate the meaningless words hickory dickory dock?
What about the questions of the artist’s intent — or mood? Should this verse be illustrated in a conventional and pleasingly predictable manner to soothe readers by meeting their expectations? Should the clock face be melting, Dalí-esque, to give young children their first taste of surrealism? Or perhaps the mouse is a stand-in for the downtrodden proletariat forced to scurry up and down by running-dog clock makers.
Many artists have interpreted these lines, with a wide variety of results. In the hands of Rosemary Wells, this rhyme describes the bright, cozy living room of a snoozing cat wrapped in a dressing gown. He is seated in an overstuffed chair next to a grandfather clock. In this single frame, the mouse has already run onto the floor and is eating cheese while another mouse, wearing a cheery yellow frock, watches from the top of the clock.
Meanwhile, in the hands of Charles Addams, the setting is a gloomy night, out of doors. The first panel shows a dark clock tower, a pillar roughly the same shape and imposing size as the Washington Monument, located miles away from the distant town. A page turn brings us to the second panel, where the mouse who runs down the clock, just ready to leap onto the ground at the feet of a wide-eyed family, is roughly three times the size of the children that a concerned mother reaches to pull close . . .
Same text. Yet illustrations with different moods, impact, and implications. What has gone into each interpretation is the temperament, tastes, particular skills, whims, and personalities of each artist. They asked themselves the same questions and came up with vastly different answers. And there are, of course, many more options for how these same words could be, and have been, put into pictures. The variety comes from artists investing themselves in the work, reaching into their personal creativity — the unique combination of their conscious skills and unconscious ways of viewing the world.
This is a substantial part of the glory of picture books, that they inspire visual artists to share an intimately personal worldview with the audience through the lens of a particular set of words. The same sorts of questions artists ask about Mother Goose rhymes are asked about traditional picture book texts, and they evoke the same variety of responses. Even a fairly obvious text like Goodnight Moon leaves a lot of room for an illustrator. There are certain reasonable expectations about what should be depicted pictorially to accompany lines such as “Goodnight kittens / And goodnight mittens.” We may anticipate that the artist will draw kittens and mittens. But how many kittens, and how many mittens? Are the kittens asleep? Are the mittens asleep? How do you show sleeping mittens? Perhaps the kittens are sleeping on the mittens, or playing with them. Or eating them.
The choices are still there, even with the most straightforward of texts.
And illustrators are good at weighing these choices and making decisions. They rise to the challenge of creating fully realized and nuanced worlds to correspond with the writer’s words. All and all, it is a good thing they are such skilled interpreters as they are sometimes faced with a text that is less than straightforward. The experience an artist has in drawing inspiration from words can come in handy when a text contains fewer obvious illustration cues. Take the words in a spread from Ruth Krauss’s immortal A Very Special House —
MORE MORE MORE
MORE MORE MORE
MORE MORE MORE MORE
—blop blop blop—
MORE MORE MORE MORE
MORE MORE MORE MORE
NOBODY ever says stop stop stop
— a book for which illustrator Maurice Sendak received a Caldecott Honor.
Returning to Goodnight Moon, if someone other than Clement Hurd had illustrated Goodnight Moon’s great green room, we may justly suppose that the room would still have been green. But any other similarities or differences are a matter of pure speculation. And the odds of anyone choosing to illustrate the words “more more more more more more” the same way Maurice Sendak did (even with a prompting Ruth Krauss at his elbow) are slim. All picture books are branded with the personalities of their illustrators. Those personalities, as reflected in the art, are a vital and inseparable part of the experience of a picture book, and the more inspired the artist is, the more excited, the more involved in bringing a text to life an artist is, the better the book will be.
Because you don’t read a picture book. You look at a picture book. And this leads to the great inequity of the genre: a wordless picture book is still a picture book. But a pictureless picture book is a poem or a short story. And a picture book text that can be spoken aloud with no reference to the illustrations and that does not, on such a reading, lose a jot of nuance or of meaning, is not a successful picture book text. In book form, it may be an illustrated short story. And it may be wonderful, but it isn’t magic.
So, how does the writer cast her part of the spell? How does she invite an artist in? How does she create a text that allows the illustrator to invest herself in the finished book? It’s partially a matter of attitude. Even as the writer struggles for the perfect words, the awareness must be there, on some level, that once the text is out of her hands, the book is no longer solely her own. Nor is it primarily her own. Nor is it primarily anyone else’s: a picture book belongs equally to the author and the illustrator — which is why, contractually speaking, the proceeds are split evenly between the two. Because while an illustrator’s vision is crucial to the finished product, and while no two illustrators will create the same book from the same text, without that text, without the writer, there is nothing.
Obviously, the picture book author hopes her text will entice and inspire the artist. And there are a couple things she keeps in mind when creating a manuscript. First, the text must be illustratable, one that an artist can bring her vision to and enrich with visual storytelling. This means, in part, leaving room for the art to help convey the story. There are some obvious implications to this, such as not getting carried away with descriptions. It’s one thing to say,
Harry was a white dog with black spots
who liked everything,
except . . . getting a bath
and it’s quite another thing to say,
Stretched across the upper part of the doorway was a big spiderweb, and hanging from the top of the web, head down, was a large grey spider. She was about the size of a gumdrop. She had eight legs, and she was waving one of them at Wilbur in friendly greeting.
The first of these two descriptions, written by Gene Zion, leaves many questions open. We know there is a dog and we know something about his coloring, but that’s about it. We know he has black spots — two spots? Three spots? Are we talking about a Dalmatian here? A mutt? A big dog, a little dog? Long hair, short hair? The artist asks all of these questions, and Harry the Dirty Dog comes to life in Margaret Bloy Graham’s illustrations because he is the particular canine she wished to draw. Created by the author, Harry’s visual appearance convinces the reader because the illustrator has invested her own creativity and heart in him.
In comparison, E. B. White’s description of the spider Charlotte leaves much less to interpretation. We know what she looks like — the size of a gray gumdrop with eight legs. We know where she is — in a large web in the doorway. And even what position she is in — head down, one leg waving in a manner we should regard as friendly. E. B. White was writing a novel, and he understood it as part of his job to provide images through his words. He gives us the specific details we need to picture his characters and their actions. Garth Williams’s black-and-white art for Charlotte’s Web is inspired, but it is not what brings these beloved characters to life.
Meanwhile, Zion was writing a picture book. In his single, unadorned sentence of description, he tells us two definitive things: Harry has black spots, and he doesn’t like baths. The crucial second fact, an internal attitude rather than an external detail of appearance or action, is one that is hard to illustrate and can be most concisely captured with words.
But of course leaving room — or better yet, creating room — for an illustrator goes beyond not tying visual details into the narrative. Good picture book texts are often compared to poetry. The words must be chipped away and chipped away so that only the essential few needed to carry the narrative forward and give it its unique flavor remain. The writer’s job is to pare a story or experience down until the essence remains, spare and shining. The writer distills. The illustrator expands. The writer tells us there is a white dog with black spots. The illustrator shows us he has short legs, a long body, stumpy tail, pointy ears — one black, one white — woolly fur, a big black nose, and an impish look in his eyes as he schemes to avoid the dreaded bath.
While it’s easy to discuss avoiding excess description, the same sort of restraint needs to be applied across the board to every aspect of a picture book manuscript—in the depiction of actions, reactions, interactions, everything. In the course of a picture book there may well be key moments of action and emotion when the text stops and the pictures carry the reader forward with a force that is more immediate, powerful, and transcendent than a thousand words. The great balancing act of creating a picture book comes in recognizing this and understanding that it may not be clear from the text alone where the pictures need to dominate. It may not be known until the artist has dummied the book out, going through the initial sketches and fine-tuning the pacing and visual impact of the story. A picture book text is not truly finished until the picture book art is finished. It is an organic process, and the very words that inspire and inform an illustrator may become superfluous once the artist has internalized the text and returned it as drawings.
This is why writing picture books is an act of generosity and of faith. The writer is offering her work up to the rewards of collaboration, accepting that this book she has worked so hard on is about to become, for a space of time, someone else’s baby. She has to sit idly by, hopefully occupying herself profitably with other projects, for a time span that can seem to go on forever. It can be two years or more from the time an illustrator is signed up to when a book is finally published. During this time, the book is as alive for the artist and for the publisher as it was for the writer when she created it. But it is out of her hands. And it is being shaped by someone else’s vision. When the text is returned, finally, with the art in place, there is the potential for the original vision to appear altered, maybe even for the better.
And this, in turn, is why the hardest part of editing a picture book — that is to say, the scariest part of editing a picture book — is commissioning the illustrator. Editors and art directors are not naive about the importance of finding artists who resonate to an author’s text. We look hard and consider not only who has an appropriate style, but who has the right heart. We are not looking for artists who will subvert the meaning or intent of the author’s careful words. It is our charge to take the text and pair it with a visual storyteller who is moved to tell the same story through her related but different skills. We are hoping to find the artist who wants to illustrate the manuscript not because she kind of likes it and needs the money but because she takes the text to heart — as the author did when she wrote it, and as the editor did when she acquired it. We know that the best artist, the one who will make the best book, is the illustrator who brings her whole creative self to bear and is ready to interpret and expand the text in ways — and this is crucial — that are sympathetic to the author’s vision. This is not an easy task, and it is not one that any editor takes lightly.
In some ways, it is less nerve-wracking to work with authors who illustrate their own work. And many of the very best picture books are the product of a single imagination. Author-illustrators would appear to have the upper hand in this genre. They don’t have to worry so much about whether the words and pictures will end up in perfect sync — the matter, after all, is firmly under their own control — and they certainly have the ability to put aside concerns about excess wording. They may know full well what will and will not be conveyed in the art from the outset, and they are also free to adjust both aspects as they go.
But there are very few people who are equally as skilled with words as they are with pictures. William Steig was one, James Marshall was another, as is Kevin Henkes. And illustrators, by and large, are aware of this. As pictorial storytellers, artists are generally very respectful of words and of the skill of authors. They recognize that writing is an art different from their own, and that their creative strengths lie in the visual rather than the verbal.
It is vital that the writer extends the same respect to the illustrator. It doesn’t work for a writer — or an editor — to attempt to compensate for not being a skilled draftsman by telling the artist what to do. It indicates a lack of faith in the artist, and even worse a lack of respect, to pepper a manuscript with instructions for how a scene is to be conceived of and executed visually. For an author, it is comparable to the experience of being approached by a neighbor’s uncle who has discovered she writes children’s books, and who has come bounding over to share his own great idea for a picture book — only he’s not a writer, so he’ll tell it to the author, and all she has do is write it. Golly, what a wonderful opportunity! How thrilled the writer must be to be invited to use her talent and carefully honed skills to be the stenographer for someone else’s great idea. Undoubtedly the writer will be inspired to reach into her soul for her best effort for that one.
Much more effective than trying to tell an artist what to do is striving to present manuscripts that allow an artist to tap into her deepest creativity and bring everything she has to bear on the project at hand. The joy of working in picture books is the joy of discovery, the delight that comes from witnessing an artist’s original, personal, and recognizably perfect interpretations. The expert illustrator has a visual vocabulary that goes beyond anything that can be articulated or guessed at in words. She positions two figures conversing in a way that informs us of their feelings for each other, or uses an unexpected close-up of a minor character to tell us the impact a piece of news has on a community, or she gives such animation to a cottage in the woods that it becomes as welcome a sanctuary for the reader as it is for the hero. Great books come from creative freedom for both the author and the illustrator.
This can be unnerving for an author, and understandably so. When I have the chance to give frank advice to authors of picture books, this is what I say. If you are not comfortable letting an artist (and face it, we’re talking about a stranger) bring a different vision — one that you can neither predict nor control — to the book, don’t write picture books. Some people thrive on collaboration, and some don’t, just as compromise comes more easily to some than to others. There is no moral superiority on either side. As a writer, you work very hard for your words and you have a distinct and hard-won vision. It’s up to you to decide whether and how much to share. But if you love picture books and are committed to this unique, powerful, and deeply rewarding genre, I entreat you to remember how essential the artist’s wholehearted cooperation is to casting the picture book’s spell, and I encourage you to strive for magic.
Anne Hoppe is executive editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books. Her article is adapted from a talk delivered at the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults Program at Vermont College on July 26, 2003.
From the January/February 2004 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
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written with love by April Halprin Wayland
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