Sarah Mackenzie (00:13): Hello, hello. Welcome to the Read-Aloud Revival. I'm Sarah Mackenzie. This is the show that helps you make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books. And on today's episode, I've got a treat for you. This last spring, Waxwing Books, our publishing house here at Read-Aloud Revival, we published a book called Painting Wonder, and it's a book, it's a picture book biography, all about the incredibly fascinating woman, Pauline Baynes, who illustrated the worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien, yes, that Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis, yes, that Lewis. She is the one who illustrated all of those completely fabulous illustrations in the Narnia series that you probably can envision just by me saying those words. (01:01): Now, the incredibly talented and wonderful Katie Wray Schon wrote and illustrated this picture book, and to celebrate the launching of this book, we did a very fun book event at the Fabled Bookshop in Waco, Texas. Today, we want to share that recording with you because yes, we recorded the interview at this excellent live event, and it was so much fun, we didn't want to keep it to ourselves. So, on today's show, that's what you get to watch or listen to. Which reminds me, if you are listening to this podcast and you want to see the video, go to readaloudrevival.com/video and that's where you can subscribe to the Read-Aloud Revival YouTube channel and you won't ever miss an episode. Now, without further ado, I bring you this wonderful bookshop event at Fabled Bookshop in Waco, Texas with me, Sarah Mackenzie, and Katie Wray Schon. (01:58): Hi, everybody. It's so good to see... I see some familiar faces out here. This is my third time at Fabled, and it's my favorite bookstore to visit. I love it so much. I'm so glad to be here. And tonight I get to chat with Katie Wray Schon, which is such a delight for me, because we made this book together. Read-Aloud Revival started its own publishing house, making children's books. And the day I saw the sketches for this book, I called our managing editor, who is here, and I said, "You need to get to your desk right now because we need to make this book." And that is the first time... We didn't know each other before then, I don't believe. Katie Wray Schon (02:36): No, we did not. We did not. Sarah Mackenzie (02:37): Yeah. So, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about your family and your day-to-day life? Katie Wray Schon (02:45): Sounds good. Sarah Mackenzie (02:46): And then we'll talk about the art. Katie Wray Schon (02:47): Okay, I will. Well, my family is right here in the front row. Raise your hands, kids. You want to stand up and wave, actually? Sarah Mackenzie (02:54): Yeah. Katie Wray Schon (02:56): This is Claire and Molly and William, and these are my parents and this is my wonderful husband. And we are here from about an hour north of Houston in a place called The Woodlands. And day to day, I am usually at home hanging out with the kids. They are in school, so we're not homeschooling. I spent 10 years doing a completely different job, working as a designer, and then took some time off and have since then been growing my picture book and illustration portfolio. Yeah, that's us. Sarah Mackenzie (03:33): I don't think anyone I've ever met has said, "We put our kids in school, we're not homeschooling." Like you need to describe that to the room. Katie Wray Schon (03:39): I know who's here, yeah. We love it, we love it, yeah. Sarah Mackenzie (03:44): Amazing. Okay, so Painting Wonder, hopefully many of you know, is the story of Pauline Baynes, who is the illustrator of the Narnia series, which are celebrating their 75th anniversary. We went to a library event today with a whole bunch of librarians, and I said 50th anniversary like 10 times- Katie Wray Schon (04:03): Oh no! Sarah Mackenzie (04:03): ... until someone very politely said, "I think your math is wrong." I was like, "It's not the Math Revival, that's not what it is." Right, 75th anniversary. So, why this book? What came into your mind? Just tell us why you made this book. Katie Wray Schon (04:20): Sure thing, will do. So, this is one of my favorite stories, because it started with me just failing miserably at what I was trying to do. So, as I was building my illustration portfolio for books and I was thinking I would do some illustrations for chapter books for older kids, and I have just always loved the Narnia books more than any other books. My family teases me, because I reread them at least once a year. They'll ask me if it's time yet. (04:47): And so I decided, of course, that I would do some sketches, some pictures from the Narnia books to build out my portfolio. And I was trying to draw these pictures and I couldn't do it because I could not get the original illustrations out of my head. Lucy and Tumnus and the umbrella, and the wardrobe, and the kids, and just everything, the White Witch. I couldn't draw anything else, and I was very frustrated. I finally said, "Who did those? Where did this come from?" And I realized that I had no idea. And I realized that those are the same pictures in all that I have... We have many copies of the Narnia books in our house and every single one of them, it has those same pictures inside. (05:34): And so I looked it up and her name was Pauline Baynes, and I started reading her story, and I fell right in love with it. Immediately reading that she was a child going through a hard time, and then found books and it was like her rescue and her escape and how much it meant to her. And I just knew that the world needed to know who she was. Sarah Mackenzie (05:57): How many of you feel like the Narnia illustrations formed you? They're like a part of you? Yeah, I think they're so iconic. We can see it. Just you saying like Mr. Tumnus and Lucy, or the lamppost, or the White Witch on her sleigh, we can see them. But I think about illustrators more than the average human probably, and I never once thought who made those illustrations until I saw your particular book. That's me saying, okay. So, Narnia in your childhood, I'm assuming you were influenced by Narnia in your childhood. What else? Because we always want to know what other books that she liked as kids during- Katie Wray Schon (06:32): Of course. Sarah Mackenzie (06:33): As a kid, yeah. Katie Wray Schon (06:33): Of course, yeah. I loved the Narnia books. I loved Nancy Drew. Those were probably my ultimate series when I was little and sort of first picking up chapter books for the first time. Before that, earlier on, we had a lot of classics in the house. Thank you, Mom and Dad. We had Dr. Seuss and P. D. Eastman and Robert McCloskey. And then I also had, I remember, I think it was my fifth birthday, I was given, and it was my very own book, and that felt very special, A Treasury of Fairy Tales. And they were the original fairy tales, not the Disney versions that all have happy endings. Some of them had happy endings and some did not. And I remember being very struck by that. And actually it was a beautifully illustrated book, with lots of decorative elements, and you could kind of just pour over the images again and again and find something different every time. Sarah Mackenzie (07:31): Okay, so here's a question I think a lot of us wonder, those of us who are not illustrators, so all of us, probably, for the most part. You wrote and illustrated this; tell us about the process. Do the words come first? Do the pictures come first? They come together? What does that look like? Katie Wray Schon (07:45): So, the picture book biography is kind of its own thing, I think, compared to some other books, which Sarah knows well. And so in this case, really research came first, to try to understand who Pauline Baynes was. And I did actually have some very early sketches that I had completely forgotten about. And then I just came across one the other day, and it really sort of looked like one of the later pages in the book. And I hadn't gone back and said, "Oh yeah, that was a good idea, I'll use that." But this kind of explosion of things and fantastical elements. So, clearly that was already in my head somehow. (08:25): But really I would say the words came first because it's a picture book biography, and I really had to understand the thread of her life that I was going to follow. Picture book biographies are about a person and you're telling the story of their life, but there's a million ways to tell the story of somebody's life. And so it took a lot of revisions of the text, and trying a lot of different ways and different approaches to settle on something that felt like the right piece of the story to tell. (08:57): And then once you have the words or sometime... And then it's not like then I was done with the words and got to put it away and start drawing pictures. It was more like then I could move on to the first step of illustrating a picture book, at least for me, and for many illustrators, is called making thumbnails. And they're thumbnails because they're little tiny sketches, a little bigger than a thumb, but not too much bigger. (09:23): And that's kind of the first way you want to plan out the whole book, because if you dive in and you start drawing one picture from the book, and you do all the little details, and you get into what the colors are going to be, and everything looks totally perfect and you have that one picture, but you haven't thought about what's on the next page, you're soon going to realize that you've forgotten like, "Oh, I didn't want to show the monkey on this page, I wanted to show the monkey on the next page." And it doesn't work as a page turn in. So, thumbnails are a way to sketch it all out really quickly and keep yourself from getting precious. (09:57): And then from there, I usually end up revising the words again once I've said, "Oh, okay, if I have a picture of this, I don't need that word here." And you kind of go back and forth developing the thumbnails, turn into bigger sketches. And then eventually you send it out into the world mostly in a form that is mostly sketches. You need every single page of the book sketched out to where somebody can understand it with the words on it so that somebody knows what the book will feel like. And then if you're very lucky, Sarah Mackenzie loves it, and you get to go the rest of the way. Sarah Mackenzie (10:37): Okay, so one of the things I wanted to point out that you do so particularly well, that I never noticed until we began making books at Waxwing, is the... What's the word? The viewpoint? Like the distance, the focal distance? Katie Wray Schon (10:50): Perspective. Sarah Mackenzie (10:51): Great. That's the right word. Perspective. So, I'm going to flip through a couple pages, I don't know if you want to talk through the difference in perspective? Katie Wray Schon (10:56): Sure. Sarah Mackenzie (10:57): Because I think it's so interesting. Okay. Katie Wray Schon (10:58): Sure. So, I think what we're talking about here is partly you can think about how far away we are from the people or the objects or the scene that's on the page. And also whether you are looking straight at them, like we're all looking at each other, or you're on top of them, or you're below them. When you're drawing a picture, you can choose any perspective that you want to. So, here we are, now we're looking down on Pauline. If you haven't read the book, this is in World War II, she's drawing maps for the Navy. And that gives you a very different feel and lets the reader see something very different than they would if they were sitting next to her or behind her. And see, these are all choices. And here we are, face first with her art supplies, right in her world and how she's working. This page is her sending out her portfolio, and it's more about this spray of hopeful envelopes. (12:03): And so those kinds of decisions are also the kind of decisions that, when you're doing these early sketches, when you do thumbnails of the whole thing all at one time, it helps you to look at them and say, "Ah, okay, every single page, I'm about this far away from the character, and we're seeing her in the same view." And it's a much more engaging experience, hopefully, when you're seeing different parts of the world. Because as an illustrator, you have all these choices, you can draw anything. And so actually the hard part is how do you pick the thing that feels best for that page? Sarah Mackenzie (12:37): Well, I'm trying to remember if we did this with your book. I can't remember now, so you have to remind me. But sometimes I know at Waxwing when we're working on a book, after the illustrations have come in, we realize some of the words are sort of unnecessary because the illustrations are doing the storytelling. I don't remember if we changed any of yours after or not? Katie Wray Schon (12:54): Not too much. Mostly because I had done so many revisions before you saw this. There were certainly some earlier versions where I realized I had too many words. And as a matter of fact, I had written it in kind of a different style that had more words, and I was struggling with it, and it just was feeling a little plodding. It was a very similar arc, but I would say there were about maybe 50% more words, maybe not that much. And it's very hard to cut words that you've put on the page. If anybody out there is a writer or even an illustrator, anytime you have creatively done something, produced something, it is incredibly challenging to take it away, to start over. (13:47): And I was kind of stuck on this one particular draft that I had. And then I actually, I went to a critique with an editor. A critique is where you bring your work, and a lot of times there's a little bit of a fee or something like that, to get feedback. And you bring your work and the person is usually an editor, somebody who has more experience, and they are supposed to have read it and bring comments for you. And in this particular case, the gentleman in question actually had not read... He had no idea what we were sitting down about. Sarah Mackenzie (14:22): Wait, wait, he had not read your text, he had not read Narnia, or what? Katie Wray Schon (14:25): No, he had not read my text. Sarah Mackenzie (14:26): Okay. Katie Wray Schon (14:27): And so instead of giving me comments, he said, "Well, what kind of books do you write?" Okay. Sarah Mackenzie (14:37): Look down. Katie Wray Schon (14:40): I said, "Well, I guess I would say that I usually write sort of lyrically and a little more sparsely." And he said, "Okay, and what do you think is wrong with this story?" That he hadn't read. "What do you think is..." And so I said, "Well, it feels a little long." And I'm like, "Wait a second. You didn't read it, but you gave me the answer." I say I write this way, and here's this story that was somewhat written that way, but I had really just tried to pour too many words into it. (15:13): And so at this conference that I was at, I put my manuscript face down on the table, and I just rewrote the whole thing. Now, it was all in my head, all the information, all the plot points, even some of the phrases that were some of the better phrases, but it sort of unlocked the... It was the aha! You know? And so that really brought the words down to a point where there wasn't a whole lot of fluff, I think, by the time I got to you. Sarah Mackenzie (15:43): There wasn't fluff by the time it got to me. So, who in here would love to write or illustrate a book? You can put it up a little if you don't want anyone else to see. I'm like, oh yeah, everybody. Yes, because we do, right? Same. Okay, so your story kind of sounds like you're missing a really important piece, the part that I know where you felt like maybe it wasn't working, maybe it wasn't... Tell us about the moment when you almost gave up. Katie Wray Schon (16:13): Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, I worked on this story, and submitted it, and got rejected probably for two years before it found a home. And- Sarah Mackenzie (16:29): I'm really glad, because I wasn't ready for it to find my home two years earlier. Katie Wray Schon (16:36): So, I guess that's why. Sarah Mackenzie (16:36): So, see? Everything... Yes. Katie Wray Schon (16:39): Exactly. Somebody's got a plan up there. And so after I had that final version, and I really felt like it had unlocked something, and I sent it out to a few people, and I kept getting sort of a, "Oh, we really like this, this is very good quality, but..." You guys will like this. "Nobody knows who she is, and so this won't sell." And so I was feeling pretty discouraged. I really wanted to hit the mark of the 75th anniversary of the Narnia books, because I love that idea, and I thought it would be a great way to really bring her name up and have people thinking about Narnia, which I have since realized, by the way, that I'm not the only one who thinks about Narnia a lot, which makes me really happy. I knew it was beloved, but I'm not sure I realized quite how beloved. It's wonderful. (17:36): But anyways, and so I was really ready to give up on it, because I just thought nobody's quite ready for it, I can't keep flogging the dead horse, I've got to go work on something else. I tried, I learned a lot. And then I actually, I had a friend who did study illustration, and I had shared it with her, and she told me, "You need to send this to everybody you know. Do not give up on this." And I did. And one of the people that I sent it to was the wonderful art director that was working with Sarah, and she said- Sarah Mackenzie (18:20): I think for feedback. I think if I remember correctly, she sent me an email saying, "Sarah, I'm supposed to be giving feedback on this manuscript so it would be more appealing to publishers. I just wanted to show you." I was like, the feedback is, "It's now mine. We're going to be making this book." Katie Wray Schon (18:38): I think she sent me an email, which was very kind of her, but also funny, that was like, "I've been working with Sarah Mackenzie and I think she might really... Is it okay if I send it to her?" I'm like, "Yeah. Yeah, that's okay." Well, let me think about that. And there we were, and I was just thrilled. I think I was actually in the middle row of a minivan driving around with family in the summer when I got the email that Sarah was excited about this book, and there was a lot of excited yelling. Sarah Mackenzie (19:11): On both sides, actually. So, for those of you who don't know, publisher actually... So, Katie, of course, wrote and illustrated the book. And a publisher, which is what we are at Waxwing, hires an art director and an editor and book producers, and we help Katie lay it all out. Katie Wray Schon (19:30): Do so many things. Sarah Mackenzie (19:31): Yeah, so many edits. We go back and forth and back and forth until we have something that's like the right... It's all laid out and in the right size and scope and everything to go to the printer. And then there's all the printing and binding and sending it out to distribution centers to get into the bookstores. So, there's just so many... I think I didn't know until I started working in the publishing side just how many hands go into every single book that gets onto our bookshelves, but there really are so many. Okay, so tell me the hardest... No, okay, I'm going to get there in a second. I want to know if you have a favorite spread in this book, which I don't know if I know about this book or not. Katie Wray Schon (20:08): I may have brought this up before. Let me see if I can find it. Sarah Mackenzie (20:12): Oh, I'll show you mine. Katie Wray Schon (20:13): I'll tell you why it's my favorite. Sarah Mackenzie (20:18): Not that anyone asked, right? Katie Wray Schon (20:24): So, this spread is, and I'll read the words. It says, "World War II begins. Bombs drop on England, and everyone in England drops what they are doing to help." And similar to my story of writing this book in the first place and how it started from failure, part of the reason I love this spread so much is because it was another one of these aha moments where I started drawing it, and I loved the idea, but when you share your work with people and you get feedback, I had multiple people tell me that it was too complicated of an idea, or sort of too abstract. That kids wouldn't quite know what was going on. And I just remember thinking, "No, I think you're wrong." Sarah Mackenzie (21:12): They were, just saying. Katie Wray Schon (21:14): Kids know what's going on. Sarah Mackenzie (21:15): Yeah. Katie Wray Schon (21:16): And so that's one of my favorites. Sarah Mackenzie (21:18): Yeah, right? You agree, kids know what's going on. Okay, this one's my favorite. This is the very next page. "Ruler and pen in hand, she makes maps for the Navy. The war ends and the sailors sail home." What I love so much about this, aside from just the perspective and how I just love maps, but on this right side, you see more monochrome. And then as you move across the page, we get into full color. Like if we go back into the war, we've got more monochrome tones, and the world is bleak and drab and things are looking not great for not just Pauline but the world. And then she's doing this work and it pulls us into full color before we even turn the page. And now we're going to see Pauline start moving into her ability to fully bring her own genius into the world and make it beautiful. And I love it so much. I love it so much when a book does that, and you don't even know what's happening to you, but it happens to everybody who's turning those pages, whether they notice it or not. Katie Wray Schon (22:14): And I love that in the beginning when she's first gone to the boarding school and it's very sad, we're kind of doing that same trick again, this more bleak world, which, as somebody pointed out to me, I think England is wonderful. I'm not saying England is bad. It was a difficult move for her and it was a difficult transition. And so playing with that from the color sort of to the drab and back out again. And then finally, I love at the end how everything just kind of explodes with color. Sarah Mackenzie (22:52): That is kind of funny. It's like her life was so good and then it becomes bad because she goes to England. And we're all like, "Boo-hoo. Have a cuppa, it'll be fine." I love it, yes, yeah, so much. Okay, what was the hardest spread? What was the hardest illustration? Katie Wray Schon (23:09): Ooh. Sarah Mackenzie (23:10): I might know the answer to this, but I'm so curious. Katie Wray Schon (23:13): Yeah. So, the spread where we finally, and it was a very exciting one, but we talk about Narnia and the drawings that she did. And the goal, really, the book is meant to be inspiring for young artists and to, if somebody doesn't know the Narnia books, I want them to go find it. And we want to be respectful of her art, and we can't just copy it in here. And so finding this way to really show the iconic elements and also just the flavor of her artwork, but in my style, not in hers, was kind of a challenge. And that took some iterations. And Waxwing was great. It was brainstorming on the phone and like, "What if we did this? What if we try it this way? What's the right level to push this without taking it too far?" I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Sarah Mackenzie (24:12): Yeah, because especially when it's not just about... I think a picture book about an author already has... You're trying to give the flavor of that author's tone or style without copying it. But with an illustrator, it adds another dimension, because you want the illustrations to be like, "Oh yeah, that illustration!" But you can't actually draw that illustration without violating all kinds of copyrights. Katie Wray Schon (24:35): Yeah. Sarah Mackenzie (24:35): Which publishers are not a fan of, turns out. Katie Wray Schon (24:37): Both morally and legally, you can only go so far. And also it would feel strange in the book if suddenly we went from my illustration style to, "And here's hers!" And so it was a fun challenge, but a tricky challenge. And I think I told Sarah before, I had always said, "I will never do a picture book biography of an illustrator. That just sounds..." I think I saw the Big Machines? Sarah Mackenzie (25:07): Oh yes, about Virginia Hamilton. Katie Wray Schon (25:09): Virginia Lee Burton? No. Sarah Mackenzie (25:12): Burton? Katie Wray Schon (25:13): Burton. Sarah Mackenzie (25:13): Yeah. Katie Wray Schon (25:14): Yeah. Somebody correct me. Sarah Mackenzie (25:15): Yeah. Katie Wray Schon (25:16): Yeah. I'm blanking because I'm up here holding a microphone. But it's a wonderful picture book biography, and I loved it. And I remember reading it thinking like, "Wow, that had to be really hard to pull that off. I'm never going to do that!" And then of course, Pauline Baynes just kind of fell in my lap and I just couldn't say no, she needed to be out there. Sarah Mackenzie (25:37): Did you know Cara Llewellyn, your art director, was the art director for that book, for Big Machines? Katie Wray Schon (25:41): No, I didn't know that! Sarah Mackenzie (25:42): Yeah. Katie Wray Schon (25:43): Oh, that's so cool. Sarah Mackenzie (25:44): That's so fun. Okay, so if you were able to tell your younger author/illustrator self something, what would you tell her? Katie Wray Schon (25:53): Wait, how young am I? Sarah Mackenzie (25:55): Oh, let's do a couple ages, shall we? Katie Wray Schon (25:56): Like, little? Sarah Mackenzie (25:58): How about super young? Katie Wray Schon (26:00): Yeah. I think mostly just that it is just regular people that make this stuff. And I think there's always this mystery of where books come from when you're younger. And I loved to draw, but I never really imagined that I could. You always have this idea in your head of "good enough". "No, I'm not good enough for that. I'll never be good enough for that." And that's a fake idea. You have to work hard if you really love something and want to do it. And so I think I would give myself a hint that, "No, you can get there if you want to." Because it took a lot of years for me to finally come around to thinking that I could get there. Sarah Mackenzie (26:51): Okay. What about college you? Katie Wray Schon (26:52): Ooh, college me? So, this is a funny story. I did go to an art school, but I did not study illustration, because I thought I wasn't good enough. And so, instead I studied product design, which was a lot of fun. But ironically, when I think back to my freshman year at art school, we had some very open-ended projects. And really my favorite project, and probably the one I did best at, was we could do almost anything, a painting or a sculpture, whatever, for this particular project. And I chose to write and illustrate a picture book. And did I pay any attention to... No! And so I would've tapped myself on the shoulder and said, "Hey, you see how that worked out?" Sarah Mackenzie (27:44): Okay, one more question, and then I think we can take some questions from the audience. If you could have dinner... I'm not going to ask you between Lewis and Tolkien, because we all know the answer to that. I'm just kidding, I'm not trying to divide the room. With any author or illustrator, who would it be? Katie Wray Schon (28:06): Ooh. That's an extremely difficult question. I think at this point, with this book out, I would really love to sit down with Pauline because- Sarah Mackenzie (28:20): Oh, I should have disqualified that. Katie Wray Schon (28:22): I know! Sarah Mackenzie (28:22): I'm so sorry. Katie Wray Schon (28:22): I know, I'm sorry! Sarah Mackenzie (28:23): I'm so disappointed in myself. Katie Wray Schon (28:24): You brought it upon yourself. If I could actually just have the three of them, like Pauline Baynes and Lewis and Tolkien, I think that'd be a pretty good dinner party. Sarah Mackenzie (28:36): Fine, you win. Katie Wray Schon (28:45): So, Molly wanted to remind me that I was wrong about which one was my hardest spread. And she's right, this was a very hard spread in more of a technical sense. Sarah Mackenzie (28:55): Sure. Katie Wray Schon (28:55): But in the very beginning, when she's first opening it, when she first discovers picture books, so this one probably my family heard me talking about a lot, because faces... Anybody out there like to draw? Yeah. Anybody ever struggle with drawing faces? Yeah. And so it's... You're talking about the stars? Oh, the stars? You think the stars were the hardest part? No, it wasn't the stars, Molly. Anyways, technically this was probably one of the spreads that I had to redo the most just to get the sort of angle and shape of her face correct. (29:36): And this is a funny one, this is one of these illustrator things. When I first drew this spread, I had the book, the two sides of the book, slanted down that way. And looking back now, I'm not quite sure why. But you think somebody's holding an open book, and I just sort of drew it. And then it took me a while staring at it, "What is wrong with this?" And then I finally... And I do this a lot at home, and I ask my kids, "Can you hold this like this? And then I'm going to take your picture." If I'm alone in the house, I'm taking all sorts of weird selfies of holding books. So yes, that was technically, that one was a little tricky. Sarah Mackenzie (30:15): Amazing. Okay, so for anyone who didn't hear the question was, assuming we both read The Chronicles of Narnia, which is a fair assumption, which is our favorite book for the series and why? And your favorite is The Horse and His Boy. Okay, you go first. Katie Wray Schon (30:33): I probably change the answer to this question based on the year or the mood or my age or whatever else. I think over my lifetime, probably The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, just because of the adventures, and Lucy's kind of coming into her own and- Sarah Mackenzie (30:53): Reepicheep! Katie Wray Schon (30:54): Reepicheep, and just all the different islands. I love them. Sarah Mackenzie (31:00): The movie was the best one. I think, it sounds like the exact answer you would think to say The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but I really think it's one of the best middle grade novels ever written. I'm struck every time I read it, how simple the language is, actually. C. S. Lewis does not use very much description in that book. And yet we all have a very vivid, immersive understanding of Narnia. And I think to do that kind of writing with fewer words is just perfection, yeah. Katie Wray Schon (31:31): And now that we're reading it out loud, and the more you read it out loud, the more you realize how brilliant the language is. And that's often my mark of really, really wonderful writing, if the experience of reading it out loud is just as good as the experience of reading it on the page. Sarah Mackenzie (31:50): Wonderful. Okay, so the question is, she writes and she draws and she's seen a lot of resources on how to write novels, but not very many on how to write and draw for picture books. So, any resources you can share on that? Katie Wray Schon (32:01): Yeah, let's see. So, there are... And I can't... So, I am a member of something called SCBWI, which is a really long acronym. It's the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. And it's a national group that has regional chapters. And so it is more for adults, I don't know when you can join it, but that's a good place to find a community of people that are working in children's literature. And they do go from picture books, board books, up to young adult. And so for me, that was something that I turned to. And they have some resources and things like that. (32:48): There are quite a few other sites and things that offer courses. There's one called Storyteller Academy, which I think... I'm going to blank on his name. And then, let's see, Storyteller Academy- Sarah Mackenzie (33:05): Lyrical Language Lab. Katie Wray Schon (33:06): Lyrical Language Lab is this wonderful course on writing lyrically for children. So, that really actually taught me a lot of the basics of writing poetry, or not even necessarily poetry and rhyme, but just using rhythm and lyrical language in books. Sarah Mackenzie (33:26): I think it's especially a good resource for learning how to write in rhymes. There is one book, I think it's called Writing Picture Books for Children? Katie Wray Schon (33:33): Oh yes. So, there's a man named Uri Shulevitz, has a wonderful book about creating picture books and- Sarah Mackenzie (33:42): Writing with Pictures. Katie Wray Schon (33:43): Writing with Pictures. Sarah Mackenzie (33:43): Right? Katie Wray Schon (33:44): And then there's also one by a woman named Molly Bang. Sarah Mackenzie (33:47): Oh yeah. That's good, too. Katie Wray Schon (33:48): And that one is called something else, whose name I'm going to forget. And those are two really wonderful ones. There is a lot out there, but it can be very hard to find. And everybody has different learning styles. I am not particularly good at saying, "Oh, I'm going to go do this video course online." And then actually following through and doing it. I think I much prefer to be sort of head down working. And so the way that I have felt more productive is to make a lot of mistakes on my own and then bring it places for feedback. (34:21): There are some basics about what you need if you're going to try to bring a picture book out into the world, and that's the stuff I was talking about before, of you need to kind of have a PDF basically that is your story and ready to go. And so there's things like that, that SCBWI has a digital book with kind of the basic rundown. And then the others that we mentioned are a little more about improving your craft. Sarah Mackenzie (34:52): There's one other thing that I think, and maybe you can speak to this from the illustrator's perspective, but from the publisher's perspective, something I see from a lot of people who submit their illustrations to us is there's a difference between being able to draw good pictures and being able to narratively tell a story through pictures. And that character needs to look like the same character on page two as they do on page 14. And that's harder than it sounds, right? And so being able to draw the same character in a whole bunch of different body movements and settings and aging them. Katie Wray Schon (35:26): Yes, and that's a very good point. And so it is different than creating one-off art pieces, both because you need to have a consistency in characters and style and colors and things like that, and also because you're telling a story from start to finish. (35:42): And then the other thing I can't believe I didn't just tell you is to just pick out your favorite books, and look at them, and pick them apart. And you can even sort of, as a writer, when you're trying to understand why you love something so much, honestly, just to take it and write it out yourself, just their words, just write it out yourself. Just see how it feels, what kind of rhythms you naturally have on the page, and kind of imagine back to before it was the words with the pictures. Can be a very helpful way to get a sense for what appeals to you and therefore how you might want to work. (36:19): And same with the illustrations. I struggled for a while with the way, and now it feels very obvious, that of course this is how I draw people, but it wasn't always obvious. There's so many different ways that you can create something on the page, and so finding the ones that you really love and doing sort of master studies and learning from the really good examples out there is very powerful. Sarah Mackenzie (36:48): That's a great question. She asked, were there any illustrations in this book that you drew the first time and got it right? Right? Yeah. Katie Wray Schon (36:56): Actually, the map illustration. Sarah Mackenzie (37:01): Really? Katie Wray Schon (37:02): Well, not that I didn't have to tweak things, but from the idea of... I can picture in one of my sketchbooks, I had three little rectangles where I did the thumbnail version of this, and I had slightly different angles on the table and her in slightly different positions. But it was one of these moments that as soon as I had this idea of her at the table drawing the map, the map sort of morphing into real life, that I was like, "Oh yeah, this one's a keeper." Sarah Mackenzie (37:34): Okay, what's a favorite movie based on a book that's not The Chronicles of Narnia, right? Katie Wray Schon (37:40): I don't watch a lot of movies. I'm afraid to watch movies based on books that I love. So, let me think about that one for a second. Do you guys... What movies do we watch? I really love the Disney Beauty and the Beast from way back when, and that was based on an original fairy tale. Sarah Mackenzie (38:03): Anne of Green Gables is the one that comes to mind for me, yeah. Sorry, I did not mean to upstage you, but it is Anne. The Megan Follows one, of course. Okay, Avery wants to know when everyone finishes the book and they close it, what do you want to stay with them? Katie Wray Schon (38:26): So, the beginning of the book is, "This little girl will grow up to draw pictures that will wing their way around the world, flying to faraway places. Her pictures will be held in millions of hands, maybe even yours." You guys can do amazing things, and I want everybody that reads this book to know that you have the opportunity to do something that reaches lots and lots of people. Or you don't have to reach lots and lots of people, you can reach one person with a lot, a lot of love or something joyful. I love creativity and I think we're all creative, and that's what I want people to take from this book. You got to work hard and keep at it, and it's there. Sarah Mackenzie (39:08): This has been so incredible, you guys. Thank you. Such a fun conversation. Y'all were amazing, amazing questions all around. (39:23): Pretty wonderful, right? Now, let's hear from the kids about what they're reading lately. Elias (39:28): Hi, my name is Elias. I live in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire. I am eight years old, and my favorite one is Not a School Bus series because it's all about inside places and inside the human body, inside the ocean. I actually like inside the ocean the most, because it's about sharks! Sharks! Seraphia (40:01): Hi, my name is Seraphia. I'm from Coralville, Iowa, and I'm eight years old. My favorite book is Beyond Mulberry Glen by Millie Florence because it's so mystical, and I love all the characters too. Mac (40:15): My name is Mac. I am six years old. I am from Coralville, Iowa. My favorite books are The Hardy Boys, because it has mysteries. Sarah Mackenzie (40:25): And what's your name? Molly (40:26): Molly. And I'm three, and I'm from Coralville, Iowa, and I like Franklin and Purplicious. Sarah Mackenzie (40:37): Franklin and Purplicious. Thank you. Lucy (40:40): Hi, my name's Lucy. I'm 12 years old and live in Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa. I would recommend the book Number the Stars by Lois Lowry because it's a sneak peek into World War II, and I learned so much about bravery when I read it. Titus Campbell (40:54): Hello, my name is Titus Campbell, I am 10 years old, and I live in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa. My favorite book is I Survived the Great Alaska Earthquake by Lauren Tarshis, and pretty much all the series. I like it because of the action in it. Arianna (41:11): My name is Arianna. I am seven years old. I live in Houston, Texas. My favorite story is Miss Nelson Has a Field Day. And I like it because of the twin sisters at the end. Kira (41:26): Hello, I'm Kira. I'm four year old. Sarah Mackenzie (41:31): From Houston. Kira (41:32): From Houston, Texas, and my favorite book is Mother Goose Rhymes because I like rhymes. Sarah Mackenzie (41:44): Thank you so much, kids. I just love your book recommendations, I always do. If your kids would like to leave a message for the podcast, they can go to readaloudrevival.com/message, and that's where they can leave a voicemail that we'll air on the podcast so they can tell everybody what the books that they're loving lately. (42:04): Show notes for this episode are at readaloudrevival.com/271. I'll be back in two weeks with another episode. In the meantime, you know what to do. Go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.