A Conversation Between Lisa Graff and Lauren Castillo
You are in for a BIG treat today! Lisa Graff and Lauren Castillo dropped by Watch. Connect. Read. to discuss the cover for their forthcoming picture book, It Is Not Time For Sleeping. I cannot wait to celebrate this beautiful picture book on November 1. Thank you, Lisa and Lauren! :)
Lisa Graff: So! Lauren! Tell me about this gorgeous cover! How did it come about? Did you know right away generally how you wanted it to look? Or was it more of a process?
Lauren
Castillo: Ohhh, I am
so relieved to know that you are pleased with the cover! I have to say, I was pretty
nervous to work on the art for our book. This is the first time that I have
illustrated a picture book by an author who happens to also be a good friend.
With every book I illustrate my hope is that the author will be happy with the
art, of course, but I really REALLY wanted you to be happy.
So, about the cover:
I did have some specific thoughts very early on about how I
wanted it to look.
A few years ago, around the same time you shared the manuscript for IT IS NOT TIME FOR SLEEPING with me, I found an old gem from my childhood collection called KINDNESS IS A LOT OF THINGS, written by Edith Eckblad and illustrated by Bonnie and Ruth Rutherford. That jacket image and design stayed with me, and I imagined a similar looking cover for our book.
When I was close to finishing up the interior art last fall, I
did some quick scribbles and sent them along to Jen (Greene) and Christine
(Kettner) with a note that said something like, “ Lisa’s story is
so classic, and I think the cover should feel like a bit of a throw back.”
But the road to winning over everyone at Team Clarion/HMH was
just a little
bit longer. . . :)
The original idea of a vignette on the cover stuck, but we
probably put together a dozen+ different versions before landing on the right
one.
So, what I've been wondering is: Did you
have an image in your head of what the cover of this book would/should look
like? I’m always curious how it is for a picture book author to hand
over their story to the illustrator. I imagine it being some combination of
thrilling and terrifying.
Lisa Graff: Oh, wow, I love seeing
all those sketches! You know, what strikes me seeing the different versions you
were working on is how perfect the one you landed on is--this fabulous balance
between the defiance of the title and the fact that you want parents to know
that in the end, the boy actually WILL go to sleep. :)
To answer your question, I really didn't have an image in my
head of what the cover would be. To be honest I'm not a terribly visual
person--I always have a sense of what I think the tone should be of a book, and
maybe the color scheme, but in terms of the illustrations themselves I don't
have much in my head. So it's really been a delightful surprise to see what you
come up with. Every time, I've thought, "Of course! That's PRECISELY what
it should look like!"
This has been a really fascinating experience for me, being the
first picture book that I wrote. I worked on several picture books as an editor
at FSG (some with you!), and so that gave me a taste of what it was like to
start with a text and then see the art develop, but it's different when it's a
book you've written. I think it really works in my favor that I'm not able to
conceptualize art for the book before an artist is attached, because that way
I'm able to look at the art more objectively as it fits the book, instead of
comparing it to whatever idea I had in my head. One of the things that I loved
so much that you did with this book was how you made the palette on each page
get progressively darker and darker as the story goes on and bedtime gets
closer. That probably seemed like a no-brainer move for you, an artist, but for
me, I thought, "Oh, that's GENIUS!" Because it really sets the stage
in a subconscious way for bedtime.
Was there anything you tried with this
cover, or with the interiors, that you thought at first would work but that you
had to change in the end?
Lauren
Castillo: As far as interior art goes, this was one
of those rare times where I could visualize just about every spread on first
read of the story. Looking back at my original thumbnail sketches, they are
pretty darn close to what you’ll see in the final art.
I think the cover image was the trickiest piece of this picture
book puzzle. I showed you a bunch of the earlier cover comps we came up with,
but there were others. After my first few attempts at trying to get the
vignette image right, I had abandoned the idea. Tried a couple other totally
different cover options, but they weren’t feeling right either. I was
a bit stuck, but fortunately we have a great editor and art director. Jen and
Christine stepped in with some wonderful thoughts and suggestions. We revisited
my initial idea, and eventually found a way to make all the pieces fit together
nicely. HOORAY. Oh! And we even snuck a surprise on to the case cover. I love
it when that gets to happen.
Btw, I’m happy that you noticed how the palette slowly darkens with the
passing of time in the story. It was something I thought of when I was playing around
with color samples early on. Because the book takes place in a very limited
space (basically only three rooms), the challenge was keeping that space
interesting. I thought that showing the progression of time by using a
darkening & increasingly limited color palette worked well both visually
and conceptually.
I'm very glad to hear that your first
picture book making experience has seemed to be a happy one. Does this mean you
will plan to write more? Because I would LOVE to illustrate another Lisa Graff
book. Just sayin'.
Lisa
Graff: That awesome wallpaper makes me want to
redecorate ALL my rooms! :)
I would absolutely love to do another Lauren Castillo picture
book in the near future! All I need now is a good idea....
Look for It Is Not Time for Sleeping on November 1.
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