The reason I do nonfiction books for children is because when you look at an adult book, you’re not going to get a lot of artwork. My background is in art, and I really enjoy talking and being around kids. So, it just lent itself for me to be going into the children’s book direction.
I’m a very visually oriented person. One of the hardest parts of doing a nonfiction book, though, is to try to explain in only 32 pages something as complicated as building a skyscraper. And that’s a challenge to me, and I like challenges. Most of my books start out with either a title page, and then it goes to copyrights, which means I have 30 pages left to explain something. Sometimes I’ll do an intro to title, double-page spread, copyright page; and that means I only have 28 pages to explain an entire thing, like how a movie is made. Not easy.
So, my first draft usually is a disaster, because I over-write, because I’ve over-researched. And I’m terrified the first time I go ahead and put the words down on paper. I don’t know how I’m going to write something so complicated in only three sentences per page. But, what’s wonderful about a picture book with kids is a lot of times the picture carries a tremendous amount of information. So, it’s a marriage of text and illustration. That’s what it is. A lot of times a person thinks you have to have a lot of words, but the picture can carry a lot of information.
But there’s a battle in my head every single time, the first time I start a book, on “How am I going to explain this?” Something that’s complicated in 28 pages with three sentences per page.
