As part of my ongoing series, here is part three of  ”The Birth of a New Book.” This should also serve as a welcome change from the swine that has invaded my blog. This post will have nothing to do with pigs.

Last week I edited my original manuscript, tweaking and fine tuning to a reasonable polish. This week the groundwork continues. My next step is to simply stop and think. Think about the book and what I want it to be. Think about the story and what it needs visually to compliment the words. Think about my audience and how they will perceive it as a whole. Think about the pacing of the illustrations, the ebb and flow. Think about colors and what they will mean, how they will function. Think think think.

This step is like coming to an intersection in a road. One road veers slightly left, one veers slightly right. Which one should you take? At first, the choice may not seem important. Both roads go in the same general direction. However, eventually they veer more and more until they are opposites. They lead to other roads that lead to other places. Other places lead to other lands. Other lands mean your lost. If you are planning a trip to the beach only to arrive on top of a snow covered mountain, you can bet you took the wrong road. So while it may be a small choice at the beginning, left or right will eventually lead to right or wrong.

Putting together a children’s book is the same way. At first, throwing a few sketches down and starting without a set plan may seem like a good idea. However, you may get 17 pages in and come to a stark realization: It’s not working. This leads to trekking back down the road you came to explore other avenues. While this can be helpful in learning, it is time consuming and frustrating. That’s why I like to think. It is my way of mapping out the future. It is sketching in my mind before putting pen to paper. It is planning a chess move, considering how my actions will dictate what happens three or four turns in the game. I plan directions in my head and if they don’t work, they are discarded.

The difficult part about this process is every book is different. Every book has its own considerations and its own set of rules. Identifying these and addressing them is the first part of the thinking process.

In the story “This Tree is For Me,” the first thing that strikes me is the message. It has a definite moral/realization and the illustrations should meet these needs. It is a piece about harmony and happiness and the natural order of the world. I think it is important to point out at this point how clever kids are. They are smart. They learn easily and are so in tuned with what is going on, they pick up on things without even knowing. For this reason, I like to treat them as the clever little people they are. I don’t like to “preach” to them a moral in my writing or my illustrations. I like to keep things simple and let them come to their own conclusions. So how do you show harmony and happiness throughout an illustration without being literal? A nice color palette will do the trick. I plan to pull colors from nature. Most likely I will pull from actual fruits and vegetables. In addition, I plan to pull natural textures. I won’t be literal and use a monkey fur color/texture or a fish color/texture. Pulling a palette from nature will allow me to teach harmony through my illustrations while treating a child intelligently.

The next thing that jumps out at me is the flow of the rhythm. It swells and grows. It is playful and whimsical (this is an important key word for this story). The illustrations must reflect that. More importantly, the layout of illustration must reflect this. Careful placement will lead to a better use of white space and more intriguing imagery. Remember, sometimes in children’s picture books it’s not what you say.—it’s what you don’t say and instead show with images.

The style of the characters themselves must be simple. This is a simple story. They must contain geometry but be asymmetrical. The setting must be the same. This is a story of less is more. I don’t want to flood the reader with too much imagery. I want to show what is important so it keeps all impact. It’s like a snowball fight. You pack a snowball tight, stand up, hurl it and then duck down before you overstay your welcome and get splattered with return fire.

Next consideration is the font. The font of this book will be important. There are opportunities to include it as part of the illustration, make it part of the picture. This is will further help “harmony.” The font needs to be playful. My main concern for the text at this point is to consider where on the page it will live. It is much easier to fit the two together before hand instead of illustrating and then trying to make the text fit. More often than not this leads to tweaking and changing.

Finally I consider what method is best to produce these illustrations. I have already established the main points of consideration. What will help me accomplish these things? Considering the importance of layout and geometry in this story, I will be using Adobe Illustrator to produce them. It is an effective illustration tool that allows easy changes and gives me effective control of the end prouct. Not to mention cost wise, it is much cheaper than buying all the materials. Plus I will save on paper which saves on trees! That way our little Orange Monkey will still have a home to live in when we are through.

There is one final point I consider with my books: Consider everyone. You don’t want to exclude people from enjoying your book. Of course you can never please 100% of the population. There will always be those that don’t care for what you have done. But there are simple considerations that make for a thoughtful book. The main being color. What happens if a person views the book who can’t see color? At this point, it is basically a black/white book. Are the lights and darks strong enough to still make it distinguishable?

There will be other considerations to make, but those can wait for now. This is enough to build a strong foundation for my book. 

Next week I will be posting a few sketches and talk about them. Until then, here is a color palette I am considering for “This Tree is for Me.”