Rosalyn Schanzer, children’s book author and illustrator, provided a wealth of information and advice to aspiring writers at a Washington Independent Writers Pubspeak in January. Below, read her responses to a few of the follow-up questions. To learn more, read my article on writing children's books.
WW: How did you become an illustrator?
RS: I decided to become an artist when I was 2 (too young to know any better), and I graduated from college with a double major -- a BFA in Fine Art and a BS in Education from the University of Cincinnati. After college, I was hired to illustrate “humorous” greeting cards by that large famous greeting card company in Kansas City.
WW: What drew you to children's books?
RS: Serendipity. I worked at Hallmark for 7 years, and ended up illustrating lots and lots of books, mostly for children, but for adults as well. Besides standard book formats, the children’s books included pop-up books, books that had touchy-feely attachments, books with die-cut holes that allowed you to see through to the next page, maze books, and board books that were split horizontally in 2 places per page so that you could mix and match animal parts from the different pages to create your own weird animals. Finally, I decided it would be fun to become a freelance book illustrator for the big publishers in New York, and I was lucky enough to be able to do that. By the way, I think that some of the very best artwork you will see these days can be found in children’s books.
WW: You discussed the level of competition in the market. Should authors consider independent presses as an alternative, or should authors stick with well-known publishers?
RS: It’s always nice to say you’re a published author, but while some independent presses are very good, others are awful, so you have to watch your step. Some authors self-publish, but if you take this route, you have to be prepared to do tons of legwork and pay all the expenses involved in order to get your books properly printed, shipped, advertised, and sold by lots and lots of book stores all over creation.
WW: For those unfamiliar with poetry, can you talk a bit more about why writing children's books is like writing haiku?
RS: I write picture books, which by definition have very few pages (usually 32) and lots of pictures that take up lots of room. Obviously, this means that the number of words I write is limited by space; I don’t have the luxury of writing an unlimited number of pages to develop a story the way that authors who write for adults get to do. Therefore, every single word an author like me writes has to be as wonderful as we can make it. Good picture book authors always aim to get across a fascinating idea and a boatload of information by using as few words as possible. That’s sort of the aim of haiku too, don’t you think?
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