Kid Version -- Picture Books Part II

Hi guys!

Have you ever made a book? Maybe your teacher asked you to in school, or maybe you just had a good idea for one and you did it on your own. Most people stop making books as they get older, but I never saw a good reason to stop, so I didn’t. And now, as you might know, I am in graduate school (where you go after college if you want to keep studying), learning about children’s books and about illustration.

This fall, I took a class all about illustrating books for children. It was so much fun! I wanted to share some of what I learned about what goes into making a picture book. This is the process that most illustrators use:

1.) We started with a written story. Some people chose a song or a well-known story like a fairy tale. Some people wrote their own stories. I wrote one about a boy in South Africa who discovers that painting with mud is lots of fun (imagine where I got that idea!).


2.) We divided the text so that it would spread across 32 pages. Did you know that most picture books are 32 pages long? That is because the printers that print the pages for books can do them in big sheets of 8 pages each. How many of these big sheets would be needed for a 32 page book?

Before I even thought about what pictures I wanted to draw,
I figured out what words would go on which page.

3.) We made a map of what our book would look like using tiny, simple pictures. This is called a storyboard. I tried several of them. The good thing about a storyboard is that you can see the whole book all at once.

In this storyboard, I was experimenting with a vertical book.

I decided I didn't like it as much as a horizontal one.



Here is the final storyboard that I turned in.

4.) We then made a practice book, called a dummy. This doesn’t mean it was made by dumb people. “Dummy” just means a substitute or a replacement. In this case, it is a substitute for the final book. The good thing about a dummy book is that you can tell what it will feel like to read the story with the text divided the way it is, and with the images the way they are. But the pictures are still simple enough that it’s not a big deal if you need to make changes. Illustrators often make many dummies to get the book looking just the way they want before they start the final art.

5.) Our teacher looked at our dummies and gave us suggestions or feedback. Most of the time, professional authors and illustrators will get this kind of advice from editors.

6.) We made the changes our teacher had suggested, and we got to work on the art for our final dummies. These are sample books that we could send to an editor to see if he or she wanted to publish it. We needed to make a book that had finished drawings (in black and white) and included three finished illustrations. The three finished illustrations would give anyone who looks at the book an idea of what the other drawings will look like when they are finished.

Now you might be thinking, “Sarah Jackson, why don’t illustrators just finish all the pictures in a dummy? After all, when my teacher tells me to do my homework, I have to do all of it.” Good question. There are two reasons why an illustrator might not send a completely finished book to an editor. The first is that she might not want to put all the effort and time into finishing the book until she knows it actually will be published. The second is that, as I mentioned earlier, part of an editor’s job is to make suggestions. They want to know that the illustrator is still open to changing her pictures. By having only a few finished illustrations in the dummy, an illustrator shows her ideas of what the book could look like, but also that the book is still in process, and so is open to change.

Here is an example of a black and white picture.

I painted it in ink because it is similar to mud in the kinds of textures it can create.
If the book were to be published, I would paint all of the pictures,
including this one, in mud.

Here is one of the finished illustrations. I painted it in mud
that I collected from lots of different places in South Africa.
The text reads: "The cows shuffled slowly through the tall, yellow grass. 'Uhsso, uhsso,' whispered the bushes as the herd went by."

"He tried painting on the cow."



"All day long, Sipho painted and painted. He stopped only
when the sky fell asleep and it was too dark to see."

7.) Our class ended with the final dummies, but the next step if we want to get our books published is to send our dummies to people who we think might want to help us publish our books. We could try sending them to editors, but most of the time, unless you’ve already had a book published, they won’t look at your work because they have too much to do. Another option is to try to get an agent, someone you pay to find a publisher for you. I haven’t done either of these things yet, but I will after I make some more changes to my final dummy.

So I get back to my first question: have you ever made a book? The steps I just described may sound difficult and complicated. They are. But you don’t have to go through all of them to make a good book. The most important thing in any picture book is to have a good idea. And I know from experience that you all have hundreds of good ideas every day! So why not put a few of them down on paper and make a book? And when you do, be sure to show me!

Have a good week,
Sarah Jackson

ps: I did some other work this fall and if you’re interested in seeing it, check out my website at www.clearasmudillustration.com.