Q&A with the creators of 'The Grown-Up's Guide to Picture Books'!

Image taken from eventbrite.com.au

THE GROWN-UP'S GUIDE TO PICTURE BOOKS
written by Dr Lara Cain Gray
Illustrated by Tim Ide & Lorena Carrington
Published by MidnightSun (Anna Solding, Publisher)

Selling out within days of its release, the brand-new must-have book for teachers, librarians, authors, artists, and all who love kid lit is back in stock. What a pleasure to take a peek behind the scenes with all THREE creators of this marvellous reference resource and find out how it all came to be ...

1. Lara, you are championing your newly created phrase 'picture book activist'. How did you become a picture book activist in the very first place, and how did it lead to the desire (or perhaps the must!) to write The Grown-Up's Guide to Picture Books? 
 
I have always thought picture books were wonderful, with clever language and beautiful illustrations. I am also an academic and a librarian and have reviewed books for many years, so a rich appreciation of reading is pretty much just a part of who I am! But when I had my own children and was in a position to regularly revisit picture books in particular, I started to become aware of the curious contradictions in our wider discourse about the format. On one hand, we assign picture books a huge responsibility – to help children learn to read, foster a love of reading, and even contribute to a child’s moral development. And then suddenly, when our children’s vocabulary expands a little, we begin dismissing picture books as books for babies and pushing our children on to ‘real books’. As adults then, reading a picture book becomes a sort of guilty pleasure, at best, or, at worst, a drudgery to endure for the sake of our children’s literacy. And yet, most adults who grew up reading can remember a special favourite book from their early years and reflect on it with joyful nostalgia. It’s all very complicated!
 
But I think that one of the reasons many adults have this conflicted relationship with picture books is because they don’t truly understand them. If you’re not a teacher, for example, or working in publishing, you may not get the chance to learn about the science of picture book creation. My ‘activism’ is about elevating respect for picture books – and their creators – and destigmatizing adult enjoyment. They have so much to offer readers at all ages, including providing big ideas in short packages (perfect in this time-poor era) and being accessible to a range of literacy levels, just for starters.
 
The Grown-Up’s Guide to Picture Books was designed as a well-researched but light-hearted go-to guide to what makes a great picture book great. Delivered as an A to Z, parents, teachers or any lover of books can dip in and out to learn more about covers, endpapers, narrative arcs or white space, and how these things impact storytelling. There are ‘talking point’ questions for each section to open conversations with the young readers in your life, or just to help you on your own deep dive. #picturebookactivism is about ensuring that anyone and everyone can enjoy these incredible, sophisticated texts.
 
 
2. Lara, what was the process like of finding a publisher that 'got' your manuscript, and working with MidnightSun?  

The manuscript was in development for about 4 years before I shared it with anyone. It then went through a couple of manuscript assessments and professional rounds of editing and beta reading, so there were a lot of drafts and versions! When I finally started submitting it to publishers, most gave the same response: “we love it, but we don’t know how to market it”. Publishing is so much about how to position the product to reach the right readers, and this one is a bit ‘niche’. I was so grateful when Anna Solding at MidnightSun agreed that it had a special something, and she was willing to take a risk on getting it out there. Her faith has been rewarded as it’s had such a great reception!
 
The MidnightSun team is excellent to work with. They offer a more personalised and collaborative approach than some of the bigger operations.  It’s very common that authors and illustrators of picture books don’t ever meet each other, for example, but I was lucky enough to get little sneak peeks along the way as the illustrations were created. We were all part of the editing and design conversations. 

3. Lorena and Tim, how did you both come onboard this project? Two illustrators is rare - what was this collaborative process like for you both?
 
LORENA: I had worked with MidnightSun on a previous picture book (Satin, with Sophie Masson), and Anna approached me with the idea of working collaboratively on the book with Tim. At first I assumed she meant we’d be tag-teaming the illustrations: Tim would do a full page, I’d do a spot, and vice versa. But no! She wanted us to create each illustration together - a challenging proposition as Tim and I live in different states and had never met before. Not to mention the fact that it’s pretty unique way of working!

So, Tim and I agreed to try a few sample illustrations to see if we can work together and make the illustrations work too of course, and honestly, it turned out to be the most joyful process. And an absolutely flash of genius on Anna’s behalf. If Grown-Up’s Guide had been illustrated by one person, there would have been limited scope for variation away from a particular style, but with two of us working on every page, it meant we could let our own styles ebb and flow as needed. Tim and I went back and forth over Messenger and email a lot, and finally caught up in person when I was in Adelaide last year. It helped to sit down over a few coffees and bounce ideas off each other in real time. In the end we had a decent plan of attack, including pages of scribbled notes detailing what we’d illustrate for each page, and who would take the lead for each element of the illustrations too. Tim drew his elements by hand, and emailed them to me, and I wove them them together with my photographic montage to create the final illustrations.
 
TIM: This is the first time I have work collaboratively as an illustrator with another illustrator. The only other two that I can think of at this point were the famous American fantasy illustrators the Brothers Hildebrandt. When Anna Solding the MidnightSun publisher first approached me for this project, I assumed that Lorena and I would split the amount of illustrations in half and work separately. Anna then said no, together. After the initial surprise of this wore off, I realised that this would work out well. Lorena's style is combining elements from many different sources, and my drawings would be just one of those elements. As such, it was pretty easy and good fun. We had a lot of freedom, so we tried to come up with as many bonkers ways of interpreting the text as we could. I was determined to embed small deep cut jokes in where I could, and certainly paid homage to many strange picture books that I remember from my childhood. 

4. Lorena and Tim, what made you agree to illustrate this book? What appealed to you about it? Do you describe yourselves also as picture book activists?
 
TIM: I'm usually keen to illustrate any picture book, and a book that is about promoting how to write a picture book appealed to me greatly. I have a great interest in writing myself, and any book that can assist me in this process is valuable to me. Also, there was a lot of scope to give one's imagination free reign. While I do a lot of historical illustration (which I enjoy), it is fun to be able to do nonsense illustrations of book borrowing bees and Freud and Jung going mining that require a minimum of painstaking research.

LORENA: If anyone has spoken with me for more than five minutes about books and illustration, they know how much I love working collaboratively. It gives me such joy to create something new with somebody else. I think it’s the closest we can come to stepping through to Narnia; the act of dreaming up a new world in shared creative work, something that would never exist without that act of collaboration. So when Anna to asked me to work with both a writer (Lara) and another illustrator (Tim) on this book, how could I say no? I also loved the manuscript, which helped too! Lara is so incredibly knowledgeable about the world of children’s literature, and then to have been able to take all that knowledge and turn it into such a concise and accessible text took such extraordinary skill. I knew this book was going to be something incredibly special, so of course I wanted in on it!

And yes, I would absolutely call myself a picture book activist. Picture books are so important; yes to childhood literary development, but also in nurturing so much of what makes our human, in creating space spaces and comforting routines, and having fun! I could go on about it, but Lara says it all much better in the book. Go buy it! Oh, and one of my greatest recent thrills was going to a teacher librarian event at the amazing Gleebooks in Sydney, and they had made “Picture Book Activist” stickers! I wear one proudly on my backpack.
 
5. Is there anything you feel is lacking in picture books today? And, what has the picture book market perhaps seen a bit too much of lately?
 
LARA: I don’t think there is much lacking, in terms of thematic gaps. In fact there’s more choice than ever, though there is always more room for diversity. It’s heartening to see a gradual increase in books representing many different cultures, families, and bodies, for example, and serious issues-based books alongside funny animal stories. It could be argued that there’s some imbalance in the market, with lower priced celebrity-penned books or TV tie-ins dominating sales over some of the gorgeous carefully-crafted original stories. There are trends that seem to saturate the shelves for a period of time – unicorn books or kindness books or fart books – but trends move on and ultimately I think really good stories are always the ones that last the test of time.  
​
LORENA: Ha, are you trying to get us into trouble Brenton?! I could mention the recent controversy over ‘celebrity authors’, or the worries about AI in the creative sphere, or the influence of governments (ahem, USA) over the books that children are able to access. But really, in terms of what is actually being published right now, especially in Australia, I think we’re in a bit of a golden age for picture books. If you want a book about anything, whether it be fart jokes, cosy bedtime read-alouds, obscure science facts, a lost dog that will make everyone cry, artsy Dadaist clever nonsense, succinct distillations of massive world events, or more fart jokes, you’ll find it. We want kids to read in a world where so many other things are clamouring for their attention, so if they can find books that grab them, that can only be a good thing right?

TIM: I would have to say that I don't really know all of the picture books in the world to really be able to judge what's missing, in my opinion at least. I would say that as a teenager growing up during the 1980s, there were a lot of beautifully illustrated books that were I guess not picture books in the traditional sense, but halfway between adult and children's. Books like Froud and Lee's Faeries (1978), David Day's Tolkien Bestiary (1979), Knights by Julek Heller (1982) and similar. I don't see this sort of thing much anymore, but perhaps I'm not looking in the right places. As far as too much of, I don't know! I don't know that there is too much of anything picture book wise, maybe just not enough of some things!
 
6. Can you name 3-5 picture books everybody should read, and why?

TIM: There's probably many more than 5, but if I was putting together an Australian child's library, I would include classics like Mulga Bill's Bicycle, by Banjo Paterson, illustrated by Deborah and Kilmeny Nilend, The Giant Devil-Dingo, by Dick Roughsey, The Bunyip of Berkeley's Creek by Jenny Wagner, Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee, and lastly Fungus the Bogeyman by Raymond Briggs, for that sense of existential dread that is even more unsettling than a blue collar monster from a slimy underground city of opposites. These are all quite old, but they are classics that made a huge impression on me for a variety of reasons. 

LARA: Ah, the impossible question! I have been asked many times lately what my favourite picture book might be. Genuinely, I want to say to people – find the books that light a fire in you! If you love it, it’s a great book for you. I never want to dictate what is or isn’t a worthy read, even if I do have a few opinions about ‘quality’. Perhaps I can share a few favourites from this year?
 
Words That Taste Like Home by Sandhya Parappukkaran is a wonderful example to use alongside the F is for Food section of our book. It demonstrates the ways in which food in a picture book is not only about something to eat, but can represent many facets of a character’s experience – culture, language, identity, familiarity and otherness. It’s truly beautiful.
 
When The Lights Went Out by Lian Tanner and Jonathan Bentley is another that left a big impression this year. It’s a cosy sort of book about connecting with your community during a blackout. The illustrations make a suburban street completely magical through the use of light and shade, and the endpapers give a lovely intimation of the overall story. (See E is for Endpapers for more about that!)
 
Stickboy by Rebecca Young and Matt Ottley is an important book. In fact, please go and read anything created by either of them! I love the lyrical language and the otherworldly landscapes. It also includes a wordless and somewhat ambiguous conclusion that makes it a superlative conversation starter that’s suitable for older children and adult readers. (I’d link this to U is for Underlying Meanings).

And Happy All Over by Emma Quay is a must-read for sheer joy! J is for Joy in our book, and it’s something worth emphasising. As much as I love deep analysis and tormenting myself about pedagogy and social issues, picture books have such a great capacity to bring joy. Adults miss out on a lot of simple pleasure when they dismiss picture books as being only for children. This particular book captures joy in the storyline, but also the colour palette and every adorable posture and facial expression.
 
LORENA: What an impossible task! And who am I to tell you what you should read anyway? How about we compromise, and I pick a few favourites from the bookshelf sitting right behind me. One that I loved as a child: The Eleventh Hour by Graeme Base. Oh my goodness, the hours I spent hunting for tiny mice in that one… I’m sure it’s where I get my love for mysteries, anthropomorphised animals, visual comedy, secret codes and puzzles, friendship and betrayal, good food, rambling country estates, and incredibly detailed illustration. All in one book.

One that made me want to work in books: How a Book is Made by Alika. The title speaks for itself: we are taken through the creation of a book, from first idea to final product, through the editing process, layout and design, the four-colour printing process (in great detail), distribution, and bookselling. It’s somewhat outdated now, technologically speaking (the floppy disk was hi-tech!), but I still love it.

One classic that my kids adored when they were tiny, and us parents didn’t mind reading over and over again: We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michel Rosen and Helen Oxenbury. A perfect lesson in rhythm and repetition in text, and a complimentary/conflicting visual narrative in the illustrations.
One that feels distinctly ‘here and now’: I adore the detailed storylines and very gentle real-feeling relationships in Trace Balla’s books. The one I have behind me now is Landing With Wings. Perhaps it helps that the story is set in my town, and I recognise so many of the places (and people!) in it, but it just feels so genuinely and contemporarily Australian.

One that came out recently and makes me wish I still had young people around to read to: Business Chickens by Jess McGeachin. I ADORE Fran, her complete failure at corporate life, and her yearning to open a bakery instead. I see you Fran.
 
Bonus books! I asked my (now grown-up) kids their old favourites: we’ve got Possum Magic and Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge (Mem Fox and Julie Vivas) A Bad Case of the Stripes (David Shannon), Pumpkin Soup (Helen Cooper), On Our Way to the Beach (Sophie Laguna and Andrew McLean), Isabella’s Bed and Imagine (Alison Lester). Why yes, they do have good taste in books.
 
7.  What has the feedback response been like to the book? Was it as you anticipated or have you been surprised by people's reactions? 
 
LORENA: It’s always a gamble putting a book out in the world, but I had a good feeling about this one. It turns out there are a lot of people who love picture books, and are interested in how they work, and why. To have it sell out of its first print run in two days was a thrill, and I have a feeling the second print run will go the same way pretty quickly too! And the individual feedback has been wonderful - a lot of ‘where has this book been all my life?’ and ‘I’ve never seen anything like this’ and ‘I love it so much, here’s a million dollars!’ Okay, maybe not that last one, but it is very gratifying to to be part of a book that is so unique in it’s execution, while being pretty universally appealing to book lovers. What could be better than that? 

TIM: The response has been fantastic, and I hope that Lara has been absolutely delighted by it. I don't know that I had any expectations of how it would go, though I thought and hoped it would at least do alright. However it's done so much better than just alright, and that is enormously gratifying!  

LARA: I really believed in this concept and intuitively felt there was a gap to fill in between academic analyses of picture books and things targeted at children (like Parsley Rabbit’s Book About Books, for example, which I love). But when the first reviews appeared I definitely had a few days of hiding under the doona! Then suddenly people whose opinions I really respect, some of the big names in children’s publishing and teacher librarianship, were saying ‘Where has this been??’ And while no book will please every single reader, obviously, the overwhelming love for this book at all our launch events and public lectures has been pretty incredible. Most importantly to me, the feedback is not just that people like the book, but that they see it as genuinely useful and potentially a proper step towards changing attitudes towards picture book use, in classrooms and homes.
That’s just so very rewarding.