A lovely surprise in my email the other day: Margrete Lamond, the wonderful publisher at Dirt Lane Press, sent me the first two colour spreads for The Snowman’s Wish, my book with the extraordinary Iranian Australian illustrator Ronak Taher, which is to be published by Dirt Lane in 2020. I am so thrilled with Ronak’s illustrations: they are absolutely glorious, bursting with colour, character and tenderness. As Margrete put it so well, the book will: ‘glow like an opal, its colours and decorative motifs a contemporary expression of traditional Persian art.’
The story is very special to me, having come out of a dream, and an image of a snowman standing under pine trees, with the first words themselves of the text strangely and wondrously on my lips as I awoke: The snowman was new to the world/and the world was new to him…Spine tingling, I rushed to my desk then and scribbled the whole thing down, feeling the gentle, joyful and melancholy magic of it rush through my storytelling veins, and knowing I had something pretty special there. Which seemed indeed to be the case because both my agent Margaret Connolly and then Margrete, when we sent it to her, loved it at once. And when Margrete sent it to Ronak to consider illustrating, she loved it too. It is just so exciting to see the progress on it, and the gorgeous visual world that Ronak is creating, and I’m delighted to be able to share these first two spreads with you.
Today is the official publication date of my picture book with Ruth Waters,There’s A Tiger Out There(Little Hare) and to celebrate Ruth and I have written pieces on the creation of the book. Enjoy!
Creation of the text, by Sophie Masson
There’s a Tiger Out There began in a dream. In the dream, I was in my house, looking out at the garden, when I glimpsed her: silent stripes gliding through our garden, yellow eyes shining. And with a grip of the heart that was half thrill and half fear, I knew there was a tiger out there and that if I went out—who knew what would happen? Now, it’s not an uncommon occurrence for me to have big cats—lions and tigers, especially—suddenly appear in my dreams, but in this case, it felt different. It felt like this tiger was different, her eyes fixed on me, and when I woke up, I knew why. It was because she wanted to be in a story!
So I began work on transposing her from the realm of dream to the realm of imagination. The first words came quickly, and the first draft was quite simple—just pretty much recounting that dream glimpse and that mix of feelings on seeing her savage, elemental splendour in the midst of our humble familiar garden. ‘There’s a tiger watching me with eyes as bright as sunrise/’ I wrote, ‘There’s a tiger sleek as shadow/stripes of midnight on her fur.’ After I showed the text to my agent Margaret Connolly, who loved it and sent it to Margrete Lamond, who was then the publisher at Little Hare and also loved it, that first draft went through many changes, in collaboration first with Margrete and then, when she left, with Alyson O’Brien, who also loved it and helped me bring the text to its final form. Early on, the draft had transformed from a simple ‘I’ eye-view to the point of view of two siblings, one older and bolder, one younger and more timid, who see a tiger ‘out there’ and react in their different ways—with a twist at the end, of course! It was a story, I realised, about sibling relations, about imagination, about love and adventure and mystery—and the thrill of a good scare!
When I first saw Ruth Waters’ gorgeous collage images, I was so excited! She had completely understood the spirit of my text and created a richly-imagined, warm and distinctive visual world, where the tiger as much as the siblings was completely at home. It was as if that was how I had always seen the world of my story: not only a perfect fit, but extending and expanding it in the most satisfying way.
And of course I just adore the finished book, with Hannah Janzen’s gorgeous design!
Creation of the illustrations, by Ruth Waters
I remember the day I received the email from Alyson from Little Hare Books. I had to re-read it several times. You want me to illustrate a picture book? Me? I had previously written and illustrated my own story but had been waiting for the opportunity to work on someone else’s tale. That said, I opened the manuscript with some trepidation – what if I can’t connect with the story? I needn’t have worried. As I read each line, I instantly pictured who the characters were, how they looked and what kind of personality they had. A little bit bossy, know-it-all, older sister. A younger brother who adores and does anything she tells him.
The first stage of the making process was to create a series of character sketches in pencil. Since I work in collage, I also created a collage version to give Alyson a better idea of how they would finally look. I sent these off and waited for her comments. We went back and forth until we were both happy.
Character Sketches
The next stage was to figure out how the text should be split across 32-or-so pages and come up with a rough idea of how each page would look. I had already made the decision that the ‘real’ tiger should only appear on the last double page spread. This way, not only the children in the story but the reader would not be entirely sure whether there really is a tiger. Another idea was to give the little boy a cuddly toy tiger – this would act as a visual tool to help the reader conjure up the idea that there is a tiger out there. Another idea, inspired by the line ‘cross my heart’ – which appears throughout the story – was to place a hidden heart-shape on every page. Sometimes the heart shape is made from a blade of grass or appears as a ripple in the water. I also spent quite a bit of time making sure there was enough variety in terms of perspectives – wide shots verses close-up, double page spreads verses one page of illustration. At this point I also decided on the colour palette – I decided we should go bright – to match the vibrant orange of the tiger.
Storyboard and colour palette
The storyboard was then sent to Little Hare and over a few weeks we made little tweaks. Once I got the thumbs up – I made the final sketches to scale and then got to work prepping the paper.
Final sketch and prepping the paper!
To create the collages, I first roll acrylic paint on to a variety of textured paper. Then, working with the final sketches, I trace, cut and stick! All of my illustrations are made entirely by hand. It is labour intensive but I much prefer it to using a computer. The other plus about collage is it’s flexibility as I can keep moving the pieces around until I am happy and, only then, glue them down.
Every time I finished a double page spread, I would scan and send it to Little Hare for their thoughts. To me this proved to be an efficient way of working as it allowed me to make tweaks as I went along, rather making lots of changes at the end – when time is tight.
Watch videos of the making process:
Overall the entire project took about 3-4 months. Much quicker than usual due to my own time constraints (normally I would allocate 6 months). I then packaged it all up and hand delivered it to Little Hare’s production office!
The whole project was a joy to work on from start to finish. And I learnt so much along the way.
A lovely surprise in my email the other day: Margrete Lamond, the wonderful publisher at Dirt Lane Press, sent me the first two colour spreads for The Snowman’s Wish, my book with the extraordinary Iranian Australian illustrator Ronak Taher, which is to be published by Dirt Lane in 2020. I am so thrilled with Ronak’s illustrations: they are absolutely glorious, bursting with colour, character and tenderness. As Margrete put it so well, the book will: ‘glow like an opal, its colours and decorative motifs a contemporary expression of traditional Persian art.’
Feathers of the Firebird 