Hip Hop Dog is a book that is kind of a collaborative effort between me and my dear friend Vladimir Radunsky who is my closet friend in the world of children’s books and he illustrated, he is the only one who has illustrated my words. Initially it was Vladimir’s idea to do books together and it’s pretty hard to illustrate with another illustrator.
One tends to reach for the same crayon and fight over them. So after a bit we decided well I would write and Vladimir would illustrate. Although we kind of — we still do a little bit of fighting over the crayons and in the case of Hip Hop Dog, Vladimir did all of the paintings. He has influenced me in his paintings and I hope I have a little bit but this is how we’ve worked for seven years.
My collaborations with other authors, the collaboration is much more separated. Basically I work with their, his or her text and I consider that — and I respond to whatever is sitting on my table and ultimately the page that I’m working on. For instance, Norton Juster, I never suggested to Norton what my change — not change, as a matter of fact Norton did change the text quite a lot.
The original text for that book was quite a bit longer. I illustrated as I thought fitting for the first text and Norton himself saw that it was too much text and it would be stronger if it was a little bit pared down, although it was hard for him understandably for him to get rid of some scenes that he liked.
But to find the right balance is tough. But I never made any suggestions per se. Norton was quite, I’ll say shocked by the first images he say from the that book and was not expecting anything quite so sloppy. But he quickly came to like it very much seeing and he saw what I was kind of getting at trying to capture the voice of his own character in the book, in the voice of the artwork.
However, finally I had done all the work and we finally met, had lunch together with our editor Michael Di Capua and talking about the book and it was wonderful to meet Norton of course and towards the end of our meal, however, Norton said to me you know, there’s a page here I’m not quite thrilled with and we looked at the page.
And it’s when our heroine is imagining the queen coming to tea. And I had given the queen a lovely little pill box hat, which is what I expected the queen to be wearing, even, I mean she’s out and about she’s having tea. Norton said that his granddaughter, on whom the book is based basically wanted a crown and I argued back and forth no the queen is going to arrive not wearing a crown, that’s silly.
Finally I gave in and so I made a crown. So I made six crown and Norton chose one and we put it on her digitally as a — it’s the only digital moment in that book. So we stuck the crown on, well Norton was completely right of course. Every child I’ve ever asked about that page whether she should be wearing a tactful pillbox hat or a crown has opted for a crown.