![]() ![]() What you may find interesting is that by the time the manuscript went to the illustrator, there were NO illustration notes. Grandpa slid his leg up and raised his branches too. The final published version was as follows: Mei Mei lifted her leg and stretched her arms like branches reaching high to the sky. (Illo note: both do imperfect, unbalanced tree poses). Gong Gong’s tree did the same, the other way and slower. Mei Mei’s tree wobbled and bent to one side. In the third note, I wanted to emphasize that the characters both ended up in wobbly poses: (In the final published version, the wording was slightly different: “Martial arts!” said Mei Mei, bouncing up and down. HYAH!” (Illo note: Mei Mei bounces all around the garden doing karate chops and kicks.) ![]() “Martial arts!” Mei Mei bounced up and down. In the second note, I wanted to emphasize Mei Mei’s hyperactivity, but in retrospect I’m not sure it was completely necessary: The first was an introductory note that set the stage: (Illo note: The characters are a grandfather and a 5-6 year old girl, in a garden.)Ģ. I had three illustration notes in my submission that resulted in A Morning With Grandpa(I won the 2013 Lee & Low New Voices Award with the manuscript). Sylvia Liu, author of A Morning with Grandpa, shared her experience with revising her text in such a way that it eliminated the need for art notes: You can find recent picture books with 400-600 words of text written by one person and illustrated by another… Last Stop on Market Street won the Newbery with 750 words! Illustration notes CAN be necessary, but IMO the terror about writing too long justifies their overuse …” Instead of trying to cut their text down to that Holy Grail of 200-300 words, let their writing shine at 500 or so … If you look at published books, you’ll often find that books with separate authors and illustrators do have longer text, while those magical 300-word books are done by author-illustrators. Sometimes - often - what’s needed is a different approach. It’s part of the overall voice and cadence of the story and is a more delightful read with it than without it. “He’ll crawl in and make himself comfortable.” īUT, the story loses something without “and fluff the pillow a few times.” “He’ll crawl in, make himself comfortable and fluff the pillow a few times.” Going further, take the page where the mouse wants a nap: We don’t need to know that the little boy sees the mouse outdoors and that he walks into his house to get some milk in order to enjoy or even understand the idea that her words alone create. “If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk.” “And now,” cried Max, “let the wild rumpus start!” Ī spread is the two facing pages in a book, and the only reason you might need this illustration note is because your next line is going to jump to:Īnd your reader might wonder what happened between “… let the wild rumpus start” and … So let’s find an illustration note you might need using the same story: That is a bad-scold it and send it to time out-illustration note. In fact, you DO NOT need an illustration note for that line at all. “The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind …” Here’s an example using Where the Wild Things Are: The notes are intended to stand in place of an illustration that might be needed in order for the reader to understand what the author intended.Īn illustration note is not a play-by-play of how the author sees the characters, settings, and scenery of the story. First off, an illustration note is a quick description of what the author envisions at a certain point in the story. ![]() There are so many conflicting opinions about illustration notes, it’s hard to know where to begin. Illustration notes-the bane of a writer’s existence. ![]()
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