Julie: You’ve mentioned that several of your books were illustrated by your husband, Ross. Please describe your unique working relationship, and let our readers know about any upcoming collaborative projects.
Judy: Most people do
not realize that it is the
publisher who selects
the illustrator and, for
the most part, authors
and illustrators have no
contact with each other,
nor do they collaborate
at all. In most cases, the
author has no say in
what the illustrations
will look like; that is
totally between the
illustrator and the art editor. That arrangement is pretty much standard procedure in the publishing world. Other than Ross, I have not had any discussion with any of my books’ illustrators. If there is something that really must be illustrated a certain way (for instance, the book the girl is holding in The Lucky Star is based off a real book, so it needed to be red with gold lettering) I tell my editor, and she informs the art editor.
So, back to Ross’s and my working relationship. Because we were (and still are!) husband and wife, the normal procedure of turning in a completed manuscript to a publisher, which is then given in whole to an illustrator to read and interpret visually, didn’t happen. I gave Ross my writing directly, section by section, as I wrote them, and he started painting, sometimes before the publisher had even seen what I had written. It was only a couple of weeks into the project when we both determined we needed some ground rules. The first and foremost was “Don’t tell me what to write and I won’t tell you what to paint” and vice versa. On our own, we came up with the usual hands-off author/illustrator relationship. That doesn’t mean we didn’t discuss the book at all. We did. A lot! But, the discussion would be asking the other’s opinion, not telling the other what to do.
When I said we talked “a lot,” we did! That led to another rule. The book was beginning to take over our lives. We talked about it all the time: at meals, driving down the road, while fishing or hiking, constantly. It was our primary
topic of conversation, and our children were tired of hearing about the book, too. So, we decided we needed to be more businesslike about it. We agreed to meet at 5:00 each evening in Ross’s gallery portion of his studio. For 30 minutes, we would discuss anything we needed to discuss about the
book. Then, “work” was over. This arrangement worked out very well. We still follow the same type of arrangement, but ten years ago when I quit working in the schools, we changed our work conversation time to first thing in the morning on a 4.5 mile daily walk. We are not currently collaborating on a project, but while we walk, I talk about my current writing; he talks about what he’s painting; and we use each other as a springboard for our ideas as well as other business-related topics.
Julie: I teach Children’s Literature at the college level and use R is for Rhyme for our poetry unit. I completely adore this book! Tell us about how the process of creating it and how you hoped it would be utilized by classroom teachers and students.
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