Cover Reveal for This is NOT a Normal Animal Book by Julie Segal-Walters & Brian Biggs
Happy, happy Friday! I hope you have big plans this weekend. I have big plans today! I'm revealing the cover for This Is NOT a Normal Animal Book by Julie Segal-Walters and Brian Biggs. Brian dropped by to share the cover and finish my sentences. Thank you, Brian!
The cover for This is NOT a Normal Animal Book isn’t actually the
cover. The real cover is hidden underneath the cover, acting as the case cover.
It’s like the straight guy. A no-nonsense, no sense of humor, pretty boring
cover that gives nothing away, while the jacket is the clue to what’s going on
in the book. I sort of refer to the two covers as “my
cover,” which is the vandalized jacket and the one that will be seen most
often, and “Julie’s cover,” which is
the un-sullied case-cover and the one that will likely be the more familiar one
over time, as readers lose or remove or destroy the dust-jacket as my kids
always did.
Not
that Julie is by any reasonable approximation the straight guy here. I mean,
she did write this thing. It was all her idea.
Explore Brian's website. |
Mammals,
birds, amphibians, invertebrates, reptiles, and fish ostensibly
represent the structure and main characters of this book. But things quickly
fall apart when the author of the book, and by “author”
I mean the unseen meta-author character (I don’t even know how to explain this)
decides that she doesn’t like what the illustrator, the character of the
meta-illustrator, as opposed to me the actual illustrator, is doing and starts
making demands. The meta-illustrator decides he’s had enough of the
meta-author, and everything predictably goes south. And by south I mean
meta-south, not the actual south.
Julie
Segal Walters and I actually
get along fine, and no authors or illustrators were harmed in the making of
this book. I thought the script was awesome bonkers when I first read it, and I’m
fairly certain that she was pretty happy with the “illustrations” I did. That I guess is why this is hard
to explain to people.
Okay, well, the
book is about animals, but actually it’s not. It’s about the
creative process and the collaboration, or lack thereof, that goes into making
a picture book. See, the writer, she’s got this idea in her head… no, not the
actual writer, not Julie. The fictional writer, who has no name but we’ll call
her “Julie.”
She has this idea and doesn’t like what the illustrator is drawing, so… no no
no, Julie loved what I was drawing. “Julie”
didn’t, however. That’s the whole point of the book, see. “Julie” doesn’t like where “Brian” is going with the drawings. So she starts inserting
commentary and instructions in the text. This makes things difficult for “Brian,” and even though he stays pretty good-natured through
the first third of the book, he finally can’t take it anymore and starts just
drawing whatever he wants. No, see, I didn’t just draw whatever I want, I
had to follow the text. The text was great. No no no, “Brian” didn’t like the text. Brian, me, I loved it. Yes,
Julie liked my drawings. No, “Julie”
didn’t! Nevermind!
The
stunning thing to me is that this is Julie’s very first book. Normally I’d
expect a book that takes apart the process of making a book to come from
someone who has made a book. Probably someone who has made a lot of books.
Someone who has seen things. Someone who has that three-hundred yard
stare of being in the trenches for years, and dealing with illustrators and the
collaborative process. If this was my first picture book, I wouldn’t have known
what to do with it. My experience working with a dozen big-shot famous authors
definitely informed the way this book went.
Picture
books are deceptively
simple. How many times have I heard of a “real” writer talk
smack about picture books?! “So little text. I
could write that in an afternoon.” Reviewers on Goodreads and Amazon often give
one or two stars and elaborate their lack of star-giving with “I
paid $16.95 for a book with 74 words and took three minutes to read! This is
lame!”
And
to that I say, you’re doing it wrong.
Mr.
Schu, you should have asked me about the actual collaboration between the
author and illustrator here. Between actual
Julie and actual Me. This is
something that readers, though I doubt your readers, are often surprised
to know. One of the funny things about this book is how the creation of the
book and the conflict therein happens in “real time.” As if
the author is writing the book at the same time that the illustrator is making
the pictures. This is one of the things I love about it. It’s just so absurd,
since we all know that the process is completely separate and in many cases,
this book included, happens literally years apart. I first saw the script for
this book in 2014. Which means Julie wrote it like three years ago without
having any idea who was going to make the pictures or what they would look
like. We had almost zero communication as I was making the pictures, so the
idea of it being a “collaboration”
is really nonexistent.
I
enjoy talking to readers who think that the process of making a book is somehow
immediate and involves some kind of back-and-forth between the author and the
illustrator. Or, just as often, assumes the author is “the
boss” and the illustrator just draws what the author tells them to. I usually
hear this from kids, though it’s true that a lot of adults believe this as
well. I can’t speak to Julie’s intent with her script, but this was thinking
about when I read it. The writing and the drawing was somehow taking place at
the same time, and the illustrator is merely following directions. As if the
illustrator had no idea what was going to be one page as he was drawing the
previous page. The page turns surprise “me” just as much as
they do the reader, and then the “author” comments on
them and changes the text because of them as if it’s all happening right then.
It reminded me of that wonderful Daffy Duck cartoon “Duck
Amuck” where an unseen animator is tormenting Daffy by drawing and erasing
backgrounds and even Daffy himself as the cartoon is taking place. As a kid, I
knew that there is no way that this was actually happening or even possible.
But I loved the idea of it. Of toying with the timeline. Later, as I learned
about the animation process, I realized how even more surreal the whole thing
was. So when I read Julie’s script, I knew it was something I wanted to tackle.
Look for This Is NOT A Normal Animal Book on October 17, 2017.
OK, I can see why Julie does the writing, and leaves the art to Brian. I'm slightly confused and wholly fascinated!! (That was the point, right?) If this book is half as clever as this double reveal (and I expect it is!) then I predict great things for it. Thanks for a super fun interview, Mr. Schu. And big congrats to Brian & Julie.
ReplyDeleteWhat a fun book!
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