OK! Bitty says Nancy can't draw, and he's right. That's why she has an illustrator! Rose has been the artist for our last three books. But when Nancy writes she sees everything in her head like a movie. When she and Rose sit down together to start a book, it's always a crazy, fun time. I bet you'd like to peek behind the scenes of this partnership. Well...I'm here to tell you about it.
Rose and Nancy don't live near each other, so they like to meet halfway in Saratoga, New York, at the public library. Nancy comes with her poems; Rose with her sketchpad, draws a set of 32 boxes for little pictures that will become 32 book pages, and off they go! As they chatter and bounce ideas around, Rose scribbles away on her pad. Some ideas are tossed out right away, but some stick. You can see how one idea to start the road trip was with a bike. That didn't stick! Onto car shopping. Scribble, scribble... Click on the first image below to see a mini-slideshow and story:
This was a lot of work for Nancy and Rose, but they enjoyed every step of the journey. Each page had to go through these steps--from an idea to a scribble, a rough sketch, a line drawing, and then the final, fully colored illustration! Since they only got the scribbles and a few sketches done at their library meeting, they had to work for over a year on the Internet to complete all 32 pages. Along the way, changes were made. In one poem about the visit to the dance studio, Nancy changed some lines, so Rose had to alter her pictures to fit. Back and forth, week after week, but in the end, all four of us were happy with the book!
Itty
