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WEEK of March 3, 2008
@BFS! archives

Pictures In Your Head: Acclaimed Children’s Book Illustrator Visits Lower School

by Jeffrey Stanley

“You know how sometimes you see pictures in your head? I see pictures in the book. I read the story and I try to think of pictures, and what the story should look like.”

Caldecott Medal winner Paul O. Zelinsky, illustrator of Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, The Shivers in the Fridge, and creator of The Wheels on the Bus, explained his creative process to groups of lower school students last week.

As an example he delved in detail into one of his favorites, The Shivers in the Fridge. “Usually the writer and illustrator probably don’t know each other,” he said, “but when the publisher sent me this new book by Fran Manushkin I got excited because Fran is a good friend of mine.” The book explores the adventures and sufferings of a family of refrigerator magnets trapped inside the refrigerator and trying to survive in their new habitat.

“I had to make pictures that pretended to be scary but really weren’t scary,” Zelinksy told the students. He clicked through an accompanying computer slideshow depicting various drafts of a woman’s hand reaching into the fridge, a sight, which to the Shivers, seems monstrous. “I don’t just make something and it comes out right. I make something and it comes out wrong. I have to do it a few times to get it right,” he said.

He also spoke about creating the cityscape inside a refrigerator. “First I had to do some research. For this book my research was looking at food.” He flashed through photos he had taken of products on supermarket shelves. “What in the grocery store could also look like buildings or trees?” A bottle of orange cream soda became smokestacks. A whipped cream can turned into a building. A bunch of grapes became purple boulders. A bowl of green Jell-o became an emerald lake.

Hands shot up during the Q&A. “How many tries did you do to get the cover?” asked one student.

“It was weeks,” said Mr. Zelinsky.

“How many books have you made?”

“I can’t remember offhand but it’s somewhere around 28.”

“How do you change the look of the people from one book to the next?”

“That’s a very good question,” replied the illustrator, especially given the wide range of his books. “Sometimes it’s by changing the material I use. The Wheels on the Bus and Rapunzel were in oil paint. i was in watercolor.”

Examples of his artwork can be viewed on his website www.paulozelinsky.com.