My next book was ¡Yumm! ¡Mmmm! ¡Qué rico!. And it was a collaboration with Pat Mora. And what was great, and I was really looking forward to was to try to visually represent these great haikus that Pat has written. And because I come from a conceptual illustration background, it was a welcome challenge. You know, I thought this is gonna be great. So rather than trying to describe the food itself, I was trying more to visually represent these haikus.
So it made it a lot more fun, ‘cause it was … they were very poetic, so there was a lot of room for me to move around and try to do interesting imagery.
One of my favorite scenes is the one with the chili, because obviously it came from Mexico, and loving chili. I love chili. I like that image. I like what the haiku said about the fire in the mouth. I thought, great. You know, I’m gonna have to have this dad almost look like a flamethrower. He just took a bite, and literally the flames coming out. But also subliminally, there’s this volcano in the back, in the background erupting, the daughter is peeking over his shoulder, and she’s fascinated with what’s going on. And in a way, I’m sort of like relating to a lot of moments in my life where I see my cousins of my family members doing the same thing. And I think I literally saw fire coming out of their mouths.
