The Storymakers: Writing 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 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 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
accompanies the 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 high-school classroom doodles were her ticket into
art school. This is a highly readable and informative book both for
people considering a career in illustration and for anyone who just
wants to know more about the people behind their favorite children’s
book illustrations.