GREEN was the first in a trilogy. It’s a book about the many shades of green and about truly seeing and appreciating our environment.
I didn’t have any intention of creating a sequel to GREEN, but sometimes a book tells an author it needs to be written, and that’s exactly what happened with BLUE, a book about the myriad shades of blue and an exploration of the color in terms of loyalty, loss, sadness, and love.
After BLUE, I was certain there would be no more books in the series, but then the last few years happened where division in our society was increasing at an alarming rate. RED wanted to be written - a book about the many shades of red, of course, but also about red in terms of anger, conflict, rage, and ultimately empathy, and love.
As with all books, RED took many twists and turns before it began to take shape. Books always begin with an idea, but finding the story on which to build that idea can be painfully elusive at times! The following is a roadmap to the making of RED from start to finish.
The very first step is always a ton of thought over a seemingly endless period of time, which some may mistake for daydreaming, but regardless of what it’s called, it’s a super important step in the process of creating just about anything. Then came the journal entries. Here are a bunch of lists as I began to research the meaning of the color red, and to identify specific shades of the color and things that are red. (The shades that you see highlighted are the ones that I thought would make good illustrations or would work well in the developing story.)
The format was already established based on that of GREEN and BLUE, so I knew I needed to write a 16-line poem and the book would be 40 pages. Oh, and I knew that it would have die-cut holes on every page - arghh, but more about that later. So the next step was to write the poem, though I was fully aware that it would go through many, many revisions.
Next step was to figure out what the narrative should be - the age-old question, WHERE IS THE STORY?! Though it was clear that within the story, there would be conflict, anger, etc., I still needed to figure out who the main characters were and what, specifically, they were experiencing. First it was a story about the rise and fall of a friendship. Then it was about an unwanted cat. There were many other iterations (most of them I can’t even remember at this point), but eventually, I decided that the main character would be a young red fox who’d been separated from his pack, and in the process of finding his way, he encountered all kinds of obstacles as his situation became increasingly dire.
Once I’d written the narrative about the lost fox, I decided that it was important for me to understand exactly where he’d been, where he was going, and how he’d get back to his pack. So, I drew a map which ended up helping so much with continuity and logistical detail, even though I never showed the map or used it in any of the illustrations. As it turned out, after losing sight of his siblings, the young fox stumbled upon an old guy’s property (someone we never actually see), and he spends the entire time trying to make his way off that property and back to his fox family. It’s crucial for an author to really know and understand their characters in order to bring authenticity to the story, even if some of those details are never explicitly revealed to the reader.
Next came settling on an art style. I approach every book with a completely open mind when it comes to the art style, and I allow the story to guide me in deciding upon things like mood, brushstrokes, and media (acrylic paint, oil paint, collage, watercolors, charcoal, etc.) With RED, the style was roughly in place from the start because the book is part of a trilogy, but I still had some leeway because of the storyline. Above are some examples of the first sketches and paintings.
And finally, the fox came to life!
There were many editorial decisions made during the creation of RED. For example, with “blood red”, I’d decided that this image was depicting a pivotal moment in the story where the young fox’s situation was getting terribly dire. Because of this, I felt it was important that, more than anything, his emotions be emphasized as much as possible.
Above are the final art spreads for “blood red” and “rage red”. Emotion and empathy are at the core of RED, and while “blood red” is definitely an emotional turning point in the story, “rage red” is the culmination of all that came before.
There were also times when even though I’d planned on having certain lines in the poem and occurrences in the story, it became clear that it just wasn’t working for one reason or another. Above are a couple of examples of that. I’d originally had a stanza in the poem that read, “rose red, flame red, rust red, lame red”. “Flame red” had become problematic because I really didn’t want to show anyone in the book except for the fox, his family, and the young empathetic girl who comes to his rescue - I wanted to keep all the attention on the emotion of his plight. I tried several different ways of handling this spread, but in the end decided to replace it with “mud red”.
Then there was “lame red”. It was my son, Drew, who first brought to my attention that the word “lame” might be offensive to certain readers. This prompted extensive discussions with Neal (my editor, Neal Porter), children, young adults, and many of my librarian and teacher friends. At first, the writer in me resisted. After all, the definition of the word lame, “a person or animal unable to walk because of an injury to the leg or foot”, made it the perfect word, I thought, and Neal agreed. But the more we talked about it, the more we realized that it’d be better to err on the side of caution with this one, and ultimately, I replaced “lame red” with “autumn red” and rearranged the poem accordingly.
One of my favorite things about the process of writing and creating picture books is the fact that we often spend so much time contemplating a single word! I remember a similar circumstance when I was writing BULLY, a book about a little bull who tries to feel bigger by calling mean names to his barnyard friends. He says, “slow poke,” to the turtle, and “you stink,” to the skunk. Originally, I’d planned on having him say, “shut up” to the rooster. We spent many hours discussing whether or not “shut up” crossed the “meanness” line and went too far. Ultimately and interestingly after consulting with a wide range of friends, people who didn’t have children felt that “shut up” was just fine, but it was the parents who confirmed my instinct that we should leave it out because we teach our kids not to say “shut up”, so I removed it from the narrative.
Once the poem and the art style were in place, I was on my way to creating all the spreads. But not so fast, because as promised, there are those pesky die-cuts to discuss!
The die-cuts are a major challenge because they connect every painting to each other. Every painting is literally a part of the one before and the one after. It’s a puzzle that at times is extremely frustrating, but ultimately very rewarding.
As with all books, I make rules for myself. One of the rules about the die-cuts is that they not be forced and that they seamlessly integrate with every painting. Once when visiting Singapore, Scott Riley, one of the teachers at the American School, showed me a video of his daughter reading GREEN, and the incredible thing about it was that she was not only reading with her eyes, but she was also reading with her hands. Before turning each spread, she was feeling the pages to locate the die-cuts.
Another die-cuts rule is that it’s essential they have a reason for being included. So with GREEN, BLUE, and RED, that reason is connectivity, not just between the three books, but within each individual book, as well. In GREEN, as in our environment, everything is connected. In BLUE, as in the circle of life, everything is connected. And in RED, as in overcoming obstacles, finding one’s way, empathy, and love - everything is connected.
But in reality, creating that connectivity often required going back into a completed painting in order to make the die-cuts work. So, there was a lot of back and forth and the paintings weren’t really complete until the whole book was done. Here are some examples of that process:
In the early stages of “light red”, I needed a die-cut that would show through to the previous “dark red” spread. I tried a wooden sign, but that seemed contrived and didn’t really fit in with the natural setting. The implication was that there was a trail or a park nearby, and I thought it took the attention away from the fox…
Ultimately, on the left side of this spread, I decided to put a tree in the foreground, and the knot in the tree is the inconspicuous die-cut. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, there was a ton of back and forth between this spread and the previous one to make sure that the die-cut worked on both spreads. Next, I had to figure out what the die-cut would be on the right side of the “light red” painting. Another die-cut rule (for all three books in this trilogy), is that on the right side of the spread, the color shown through the die-cut must match the text. So I needed something that was light red for the die-cut here. I tried birds first, and then butterflies, but they all felt way too forced…
Finally, the mushrooms did the trick, providing the connectivity I needed, while simultaneously feeling like a natural part of the painting.
Speaking of connectivity, here’s an example of an author knowing something about the book (or books) that may not be at all obvious to the reader, but somehow it adds a layer of authenticity to the work, even if it’s subconsciously realized.
In my mind, the young girl who ultimately rescues the fox in RED is the same girl who is standing with her father at the end of GREEN. And her father is the boy we see grow up in BLUE who in the final spread falls in love, and sometime in the future they become the girl’s parents. (I’m not sure that even I can follow what I just described, but there you have it!)
One of the things that was super important to me was that I stay true to the behavior of a young fox. I was particularly concerned in the painting above where the girl opens the door to coax the fox out of the cage, that the fox would actually cower in the corner of the cage rather than dart out the moment the door opened. I consulted with fox experts at the Museum of Natural History and was reassured that a young fox would be quite timid and frightened in such a situation and would not run away so quickly.
One last thing about the making of this and really any book - especially picture books - is that every single image and every single word needs to be carefully chosen, and as a creator it’s important to be able to admit when a word or a piece of art isn’t working for whatever reason.
Given that love and empathy are truly at the heart of RED, it was really important that the final painting convey those emotions. Word choice is even more imperative in poetry because there are so few, and every word carries the weight of so much meaning. And when the perfect word is discovered, it’s a wonderful feeling, as with “just red” in the final spread. A single word can convey multiple meanings, in this case “just” as in “only”, but also “just” as in “justice”. And the fact that the door can be left wide open for the reader to find their own meaning is for sure an author’s privilege.
Click here for a video where I discuss more about the making of RED!