Episode #104: What book was the most fun to illustrate? with Paul O. Zelinsky
Welcome back and Happy Holidays! This week on Kids Ask Authors, we are joined by Paul O. Zelinsky to answer this great kid question, “What book was the most fun to illustrate?”
TRANSCRIPTS:
Grace Lin: Hello, I'm Grace Lin, children's book author, and illustrator of many books, including the middle grade novel, When The Sea Turned To Silver, and the picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star. Today, I'm here with Paul O. Zelinsky, the author and illustrator of picture books such as Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin, as well as the illustrator of many other picture books, such as Z Is for Moose by Kelly Bingham, as well as his newest, Red and Green and Blue and White, which is written by Lee Wind. Hi, Paul.
Paul O. Zelinsky: Hi, Grace. Thanks for having me.
Grace Lin: Thanks so much for joining us today. Are you ready for today's kid question?
Paul O. Zelinsky: Well, let's find out.
Grace Lin: All right. Today's kid question is from a person named Mary, and Mary asks ...
Mary: What book was the most fun to illustrate?
Grace Lin: What book was the most fun to illustrate?
Paul O. Zelinsky: Well, Mary, this is a hard question to answer because really, for me, all the books have been fun to illustrate, and there are so many different ways to have fun that I can't decide which one was the most fun. Some of them have been funny to illustrate, like the book Z Is for Moose, in which I had the chance to make a picture of a moose splushing pie all the way across two pages and into the face of a queen. That was fun. But at the same time, when I've made a book that was going to be very sort of serious and realistic and beautiful, like Rapunzel, and I worked and worked and worked to make oil paintings for the pages, and then I finished some of them and I would look at them and it came out really well, there's nothing more fun than that.
Paul O. Zelinsky: So, it runs a whole range of fun. And I think the most fun is usually the book that I'm working on right now. I just finished working on a book called Red and Green and Blue and White, and I had a chance to make a lot of interesting drawings and a cover of a book that looked like a broken piece of glass. It was great fun to see it come out looking just like a broken piece of glass on the cover of the book, so, [crosstalk 00:02:30] the answer to the question.
Grace Lin: Wow. That sounds really fun. Do you think that was the most fun piece of art you made for that book, the one with the broken glass, or do you think there was another piece that was even more fun?
Paul O. Zelinsky: Ah, you know, any piece is really ... I am very bad at questions about most of anything or think of anything, because I start looking at them, I say, "Oh, this is the most ... Wait, no, this one. No, no, I think this is more fun than that." So, they were fun to do as I did them. Even the end paper of that book was a lot of fun because I kept changing what it was going to be. The end paper is the piece of paper at the very front and back of a hard cover book, and it's used to actually attach all the pages to the cover, and it's all usually a design or a pattern.
Paul O. Zelinsky: And this one, the book is about how a whole community comes together to support a family that something bad happens to, so the entire community is linking arms, and all these people on the end papers are standing in a little, little, little, little line with arms linked. It's not realistic. It's a little bit funny looking. And the end paper has a ring of these little people going all the way around the outside edge. It was such fun that I took that row of people, which I made in my computer, and I started making designs and patterns with them, and I ended up having it printed on a piece of fabric. I might have a shirt made out of it.
Grace Lin: Oh, that's fun.
Paul O. Zelinsky: Yeah. Isn't it?
Grace Lin: That's super fun. It's interesting because when I illustrate, especially something a little bit more serious, like you were talking about, sometimes it doesn't feel fun when I'm actually doing it. It feels a little stressful, like, "Oh, I can't get this right. I can't get this right." But it's only after it's all finished and I'm done, and I'm like, "Oh, I did it," then it feels fun.
Paul O. Zelinsky: Right. That was what I was trying to say happened to me too, and it's worth it, right? That feeling is so, so wonderful that it's worth all the hard work and worry.
Grace Lin: Yeah. But maybe that's not ... Fun is not the right word for that, though, because I feel like during the worry and stuff ... and then it doesn't feel so much fun as it feels very joyful and very content.
Paul O. Zelinsky: Yeah. You can say that, but also I'd say that even the silliest and most carefree work that I do has some of that other thing in it too, because when you're working and you're looking at, should this be this blue or this blue, which one is better? That same kind of fun happens, or that same kind of joy happens, there. And the fun of the silliness of the picture, you leave that aside, and you also can be worrying whether it's going to be good enough and whether it's going to work. So, even in the most fun things have a part of them that aren't fun, but you learn to put that aside and just plow through.
Grace Lin: Well, what's so interesting is that we're both saying how there's parts in any kind of illustration that we do that aren't really ... I guess you wouldn't say that they're fun, but actually that's what makes them fun. Because if it was really, really easy, like it's just like you didn't have to think about it, then that would be boring and that's no fun in that. The fun part is actually the challenging part. It's just like, "Oh wait, maybe need to put this blue. Maybe this would be better." It's like all those things that kind of make you a little bit stressed or a little bit nervous about whether or not you're doing it right or wrong. Those are the things that kind of make it fun.
Paul O. Zelinsky: It is. Everything contains its opposite, so it's really good to be working in a way that you're not worrying, and sometimes that happens, but then you start worrying and then that's okay too.
Grace Lin: Yeah. Well, when I was asking you this question, I was trying to think about what the book was most fun for me to illustrate, and I agree with you. It's really hard to say. It's almost always the book that you're working on right now, but I think for me, if I had to choose one, I would say for me it would be A Big Mooncake for a Little Star, or the one that I'm working on right now, because they both feature my daughter.
Paul O. Zelinsky: Ah.
Grace Lin: I took photos of her and I used her photos, and that's super fun, to put somebody you know in your book, or somebody you love in your book. Have you ever done that?
Paul O. Zelinsky: I certainly have. I often don't, but The Wheels on the Bus has in it both of my daughters, and different parts of them have appeared in different books. For instance, in Rapunzel, there is a scene where the sorceress is cutting off Rapunzel's hair, and I had some models for this book, but I didn't use them. I didn't have them anymore and I needed to redo some things, so the hand of the sorceress cutting the hair, that was my wife's hand, and my daughter, Anna, it was the top of her head with the hair being cut off. So, little different parts.
Grace Lin: So, they can point at it and say, "That's my hand."
Paul O. Zelinsky: Exactly. Right. So, that's-
Grace Lin: "My hand has a starring role in that book."
Paul O. Zelinsky: Different body parts in different books. Yeah.
Grace Lin: Well-
Paul O. Zelinsky: It's also nice to think about doing ... Things that make illustration fun are also not just the active drawing, like you say, but what else you can do with it. So, sometimes it's been especially fun when I've been collaborating with other people on books. Often I don't work with the author directly, but sometimes I do, and that can be very fun. A couple of times, once especially, I worked very closely with a paper engineer who, on a book, Knick Knack Paddywhack, which I'm sorry to say is no longer in print, but it has a lot of pull tabs and little machinery and mechanisms that go when you move a tab back and forth. And I worked with the paper engineers so closely on that and learned so much about how to make machines out of paper, basically, that you don't see behind the page, and-
Grace Lin: Wow, now that sounds fun.
Paul O. Zelinsky: It really was.
Grace Lin: That is really fun. That's something I've never done is a ... Do you call it a popup book? It's kind of more than a popup book, right?
Paul O. Zelinsky: I'd say a mechanical book.
Grace Lin: Yeah.
Paul O. Zelinsky: But people call it popup books, and I'd say that sometimes even for The Wheels on the Bus that doesn't pop up. It stays flat on every page, but it's a popup.
Grace Lin: Yeah. I feel like that would be fun, a fun project, maybe for me in the future.
Paul O. Zelinsky: Well, I hope you can because it's really a great thing.
Grace Lin: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Paul, for answering today's question, and thank you so much, Mary, for asking it.
Paul O. Zelinsky: Yes. Thank you, Mary. Thank you, Grace.
Grace Lin: Bye.
Paul O. Zelinsky: So long.
Today’s BOOK REVIEW comes from Emma! Emma is reviewing Red and Green and Blue and White by Lee Wind and illustrated by Paul O Zelinsky.
The book I would like to talk about is Red and Green and Blue and White written by Lee Wind and illustrated by Paul O Zelinsky. This book is about is about how some people celebrate Hannakah and some people celebrate Christmas and some people don’t like how different cultures celebrate holidays especially when it is the opposite of the one they celebrate. There’s a character in the book that has an experience where someone doesn’t like what they celebrate. But they find a way to power through it with help from their family. I liked this book because it shows how anyone can celebrate different things and you can change and like someone else’s holiday and actually like two things.
Thank you Emma!
More about TODAY’s authors:
Paul O. Zelinsky grew up in Wilmette, Illinois, the son of a mathematics professor father and a medical illustrator mother. He drew compulsively from an early age, but did not know until college that this would be his career. As a Sophomore in Yale College he enrolled in a course on the history and practice of the picture book, co-taught by an English professor and Maurice Sendak. This experience inspired Paul to point himself in the direction of children's books. His first book appeared in 1978, since which time he has become recognized as one of the most inventive and critically successful artists in the field. He now lives with his wife in Brooklyn, New York. They have two grown daughters. Among many other awards and prizes, he received the 1998 Caldecott Medal for his illustrated retelling of Rapunzel, as well as Caldecott Honors for three of his books: Hansel and Gretel (1985), Rumpelstiltskin (1987), and Swamp Angel (1995). In 2018, Paul was given the Carle Honor Award for Illustration.
Grace Lin, a NY Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and her picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, was awarded the Caldecott Honor. Grace is an occasional commentator for New England Public Radio , a video essayist for PBS NewsHour (here & here), and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf. She is the co-host of the podcast Book Friends Forever, a kidlit podcast about friendship and publishing (geared for adults). Find her facebook, instagram , twitter ( @pacylin) or sign up for her author newsletter HERE.
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