The Klaus Flugge Award is a celebration of illustration and we love it!

We’ll take any opportunity to shout about the creativity and wonder brought to the pages of picture books – illustrators we salute you.

And while we do love to gaze at the pictures as they draw us further into brilliant stories, we never really knew that much about the process which is why it was a delight to hear from Libby Hamilton an editor from Rocket Bird Books who was part of the illustration of Grandad’s Star one of the three shortlisted books from this year’s award…

~

On a cold December morning I was sitting at my desk with one of the most moving picture book texts I’d ever read, racking my brains for the right illustrator. Then an agent I love sent me their newest signing: Rhian Stone. She had a few different pieces, including this cover.

The cover was not for a real story, but an exercise to show what Rhian could do. Grandad’s Star revolves around star gazing, so the sky here attracted me. But it also needed someone who could draw emotive characters. I was immediately pulled into the world Rhian had created and contacted the agent.

I then found myself in an unusual situation. Rhian was self-taught and had never done a book project before. She was understandably worried that jumping straight into a full-scale picture book might be too much. So, we met online to talk it through. I had wanted to meet her anyway, but now I needed to make sure she saw what I did: the potential of her work.

Rhian is a deep-thinker, and her main concern was not letting me down. Luckily, picture books are a group effort and as I talked to her about the process of working with me and my designer, Ness Wood, she visibly relaxed. (By the way, designer is an inadequate term for the kind of teaching/nudging/encouraging/rearranging/curating magic that actually happens. I need to think of a better job description.)

We always start with thumbnails – or at least that’s what I call them so that illustrators don’t feel they need to do some gorgeous ‘rough’. Roughs can come later, or not at all.

We want the ideas to flow as spontaneously as possible.

I can’t pretend to remember all that Ness and Rhian worked on around character development and improving the layouts, but two things do stick in my mind: the way that Rhian’s work evolved in amazing leaps during the creative process, and how the biggest improvements I could make as an editor was getting out of her way. I’ll use two spreads to explain:

When Grandad starts to forget things in the story, it builds to an emotional peak. Rhian immediately responded to the huge gulf that would be created between them, how, yes, the little girl would be upset but Grandad would be heartbroken too. I knew as soon as I saw this thumbnail that none of the other things that started to tip us off to his memory problems should be on this page. All those things needed to come before this image. Because this spread was only about one thing, the worst thing: him forgetting her name.

This is the rough that Rhian did – you can see we didn’t ask her to change anything but moving the text allows the reader to really sit in this moment and feel it.

And here is the finished artwork. I love how Rhian introduced each character’s hands to really show how they are feeling. The love and the distance between them is palpable.

Then we have the second pivotal moment in the story: when Mum explains what is going on, and that it is ok to feel sad about it. Frances’s description was already incredible:

“The memories in our brains are like the twinkles of stars, shining brightly or growing dim… there might be cloudy times when there are no stars at all. Mum says it’s ok to feel sad.”

In her thumbnail you can see how Rhian responded so imaginatively to the idea of connecting our thoughts to stars and clouds. You can also see that there is a lot of text to fit (blame the editor!). As soon as I saw this thumb I knew we needed to lose the ‘real world’ and give the left-hand image a lot more space.

And when Rhian ran with that, it created a lovely moment of connection between mother and daughter, and it also gives a feeling of them being swept up in what is happening to Grandad. When I saw this rough it gave me chills.

Taking it to finished colour you’ll see that we have lost the granddaughter on the ladder, which allows a much stronger feeling of how sad it is when Grandad is unreachable.

Working with Rhian on Grandad’s Star was one of those experiences that keeps me doing this job: seeing someone grow and develop, gasping every time I open an email from them, and clearing the way for their ideas to flourish. I feel very lucky that Rhian trusted us with her first illustration project, I feel lucky to have published it. I know this is just the first of many great things we will see from her.

~

Many thanks to Libby for sharing this insight into the journey of an illustration in a picture book.  We look forward to the Klaus Flugge winner announcement and wish everyone involved from all three shortlisted titles the very best of luck.  You can see more about each book using the links below and don’t miss more insight from the editor of My Hair is as Long as a River!