The Storymakers: Illustrating Children's Books

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

“Accept yourself and how you draw. Don’t worry if your drawings
don’t exactly reflect the image you have in your mind. If you try your
best, and are drawing for yourself, you will get better and better. For
most of my life I wanted to draw like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci
and I was always disappointed in myself because my drawings never turned
out like theirs. It took a long time for me to accept the way that I
draw, but now I have so much fun drawing that I don’t want to stop.”


That bit of advice comes from author/illustrator Michиle Lemieux, just
one of 72 children’s illustrators profiled in this book. Each
illustrator is interviewed with a set of standardized questions such as:
“Where were you born? Where did you go to school? Where do you live
now?” As the subject warms up, the interviewer moves on to longer,
more esoteric concepts such as: “Where do your ideas come from? Who
and what influenced you? How do you work?” A sample drawing by each
illustrator is included with each interview.

Many readers might be surprised by the extremely diverse backgrounds of
the interviewees. Ted Harrison, for example, trained as an intelligence
officer for the British Army during World War II, while Marie Louise-Gay
found that her idle classroom doodles were her ticket out of high school
and into art school. This highly readable and informative book is highly
recommended for people considering a career in illustration, as well as
for anyone who just wants to learn more about the people behind their
favorite children’s book illustrations.