The Art Part: Drawing Readers In

We rarely focus on the artwork in our picture books, but I admit it; for me, this part of the job is the most fun. And whether my story has 500 words or 12,500 words, it’s also the most painstakingly researched and by far the most time consuming element of every nonfiction book I write. The right pictures work like magnets to draw readers in, and they often tell more about a story than words could ever do. Today I thought I'd explore some of the reasons why.

In the first place, artwork can show you all kinds of things you could never see any other way. Take illustrations about history for example. Even if you were to travel to every historical site on the planet, you could never see the action that made those places famous back in the day. Case in point: In my book HOW WE CROSSED THE WEST; THE ADVENTURES OF LEWIS AND CLARK, I got to paint the landscapes the way they really looked in 1804; populated by leaping pronghorn antelopes, black with buffalo as far as the eye could see, and dotted with lively Indian villages of every description. And the people! I could depict each explorer smack dab in the middle of his or her real adventures and I could show the same Indians Lewis and Clark wrote about in their journals too. Here are some details from a couple of bigger paintings:

York plays with Arikara kids; Mandans out hunting

Pictures can also enliven any book of nonfiction by adding humor, whimsy, drama, action, and enormous amounts of extra content. They can introduce a mood. They can include colorful illuminated maps that show all the people and plants and animals and ships in a tale of exploration. And they can clarify complex concepts that are difficult to remember any other way.

With labels this shows how Colonial Government worked
Click on picture to see larger version

It’s hard (but fun) to figure out exactly what people wore at different times in the past, what a famous person looked like at a certain age, how a specific sailing vessel was rigged, what kind of saddle and bridle a horse wore in, say, Colonial America or Eastern Europe, or what medieval Paris used to look like. But we're talking about nonfiction here, so the artwork has to be just as accurate as the text.

Medieval Paris maze; click on picture to make it big

If we do our research right, boys will know at a glance that if they had been around during certain historic eras, they would have had to wear ruffles and silk tights, and girls would know that in certain societies they would have had to shave the top part of their heads or tattoo blue goatees on their faces. Kids would find out instantly what it was like to slog through mud and hail in a covered wagon or what kinds of strange contraptions miners used to find gold. In other words, each illustration can become your own private magic carpet that transports you directly into the pages in a picture book and lets you fly straight through some very real and truly amazing scenery.