Episode 12: What comes first for you when you make a picture book, the story or the pictures? -with Don Tate

*Please note that these episodes were all all recorded pre-pandemic!

Welcome to Episode 12! What comes first for you when you make a picture book, the story or the pictures? Join us with author Don Tate!

TRANSCRIPTS:

Grace Lin: Hello, I'm Grace Lin children's book author and illustrator of many books, including the middle grade novel, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and the picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star. Today I'm here with Don Tate, the author and illustrator of picture books like, Strong as Sandow and Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton. Today's question is from a young girl named Gabby. Her question is,

Gabby: What comes first for you. When you make a picture book the picture or the words? Why?

Grace Lin: What comes first for you when you make a picture book the story or the pictures? Why?

Don Tate: Hello, Gabby. And for every artist who also writes stories, it's a little bit different. Some artists create a beautiful picture and then editors will ask them to write a complete story around that picture. For me, however, a story begins with words. So I will write out my story. Sometimes it takes me a week, like in the case of Eugene Sandow, I wrote that story in a week, and sometimes it takes me many, many months, like in the case of the George Moses Horton story. I write a story out once and then I look at it or I share it with a writing buddy who gives me all kinds of feedback, some of it good, some of it that frustrates me, and then I sit down and I revise that story. I revise that story up to 30 or 40 times, even before my editor ever sees the story.

Don Tate: And then once the editor sees the story and offer some creative feedback, then I start to think about the pictures, and then guess what happens? The words affect the pictures and the pictures affect the words, and I go back and forth between writing and revising and redrawing and I just drive myself crazy to clear up until the book goes out to print.

Grace Lin: Ah. So even though you say it might take you a week to write the story, how long do you think it takes with the revising?

Don Tate: So the revising takes much longer. In the case of... Well I probably shouldn't use Eugene Sandow because that book I wrote it fast and I revised it fast. However, let me give you the perfect example of a book that I wrote in 2012, or published in 2012, which was called, It Jes' Happened: When Bill Traylor Started to Draw.

Don Tate: I wrote that book over a summer and I sold the book to Lee & Low Books and then to revise the book took two full years of revising the manuscript, send it to my editor who would give me feedback, and then I would go back and spend another many month revising and this went on for about two years, yes.

Grace Lin: That's actually very similar to me, too. I always write the story first and I think I do that because that's the way we were trained in art school. I went to art school for illustration and they always gave us the story and then we drew the pictures from the story. So I guess I've always been used to the story first as well. And just like you, I might be able to write a story in the heat, very quickly in the heat of inspiration, but that story usually needs many, many revisions.

Grace Lin: And so while maybe that first draft maybe only took me a week, it will take me up to maybe years before it's ready to actually be published and be a story that is ready for people to read.

Don Tate: I relate to what you say about being trained as a commercial artist. I was trained in the graphic and commercial arts, and I always had to have a product, whether it be to design a logo for a cereal box or to lay out a magazine cover, I had to have a purpose for my artwork. And so that's the way I've always continued to work.

Grace Lin: Though I have to say that every once in a while, there will be a picture that comes to my mind first that inspires the story. I know for my book, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, the cover of that book, there's a picture of a girl flying on a dragon's back, and that image came to me and I remember drawing that over and over again, and even using it for the cover of Cricket Magazine and always trying to think of a story that would go with it.

Grace Lin: And slowly, after many, many years a story starts to develop and became Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. So once in a while an image will inspire a story, but I never do a whole book of pictures and then try to write a story around it.

Don Tate: Today on our panel, our drawing panel that we did together, your daughter actually came over around, we talked about a special character and then I ended up drawing that character and I'm not going to put out there exactly what it is, but that might, the drawing that I did today could possibly be the first time that I drew a piece of artwork and turns it into a story. We'll have to see where that ends up going.

Grace Lin: Yeah, so it can go either way. So I guess the answer is usually we write the, excuse me.

Grace Lin: The answer is usually we write the story first and then the pictures, but once in awhile the picture might inspire the story.

Don Tate: Most definitely.

Grace Lin: So thanks so much Gabby for your question and thank you Don for being here.

Don Tate: It's such an honor. Thank you.

Grace Lin: Bye.

Wasn't that great? If you'd like to learn more about today's author, please go to our website kidsaskauthors.com for more information. Special thanks to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art for helping to facilitate this interview. Also, thanks to the High Five Books & Art Always bookstore and Ms. Carlton's second grade class at Jackson Street School for their help with our kid questions and reviews. Grownups, remember, if you know a kid that has a question, a book review, a short story, a poem, or even a joke they would like to share on this podcast, please submit it to kidsaskauthors.com. And if you'd like to reach me, you can sign up for my author newsletter by clicking on the little link icon at the top of kidsaskauthors.com or you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram where I use the handle @pacylin. Also, if you enjoy this podcast, please spread the word, tell your friends and colleagues to listen, and of course, please leave a review on iTunes. That really helps me know that you like what we're doing so we can keep doing it. And now we'll close this episode with a joke..

Today’s Joke comes from Sophie and Ames!:

“The Interrupting Robot”:

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Interrupting robot.

Interrupting robot-

Bleep, bloop, blop, bleep.

More about today’s author:

Don Tate is an award-winning illustrator of numerous critically acclaimed books for children, including Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions (Charlesbridge, 2016) The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch (Eerdmans, 2015); The Cart That Carried Martin, (Charlesbridge); Hope’s Gift, (Penguin), many others.

He is also the author of Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton (Peachtree,2015); It Jes’ Happened: When Bill Traylor Started To Draw (Lee & Low Books, 2102), both books are Ezra Jack Keats award winners, and most recently, Strong As Sandow: How Eugen Sandow Became The Strongest Man on Earth (Charlesbridge, 2017).

Don is a founding host of the The Brown Bookshelf –a blog dedicated to books for African American young readers; and a one-time member of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, created to address the lack of diverse, non-majority narratives in children’s literature.

He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family.

Grace Lin, a NY Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and her picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, was awarded the Caldecott Honor. Grace is an occasional commentator for New England Public Radio , a video essayist for PBS NewsHour (here & here), and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf. She is the co-host of the podcast Book Friends Forever, a kidlit podcast about friendship and publishing (geared for adults). Find her facebook,  instagram , twitter ( @pacylin) or sign up for her author newsletter HERE.

Thanks to the High Five Books & Art Always Bookstore and Ms. Carleton’s 2nd grade class at Jackson Street School for their help with our kid questions and reviews. Also, special thanks to the Eric Carle Museum of Picturebook Art for helping to facilitate today's interview.