ERIMA

Heather is making an ABC book for her nephew. Her illustrations are fantastic. I took a Children’s Book Illustration class and, in my experience, these are more difficult than they look.

The ‘XYZ’ problem — finding something to illustrate for these letters — is typically difficult. People also tend to bite off complicated scenarios in which to put their letters… while this can make the ‘XYZ’ letters easier to illustrate it tends to weaken the book overall because it gets away from the target audience. There’s definitely a balance between the two.

I’ve been reading a biography on Richard Scarry — The Busy, Busy World of Richard Scarry, his solution is remarkable. Scarry removes the pressure of illustrating difficult letters by disassociating the subject and their first letter. He doesn’t show pigs, peaches, and propellors, he instead shows how words relate to their contexts, eg- a farm may have a pig, tractor, and corn.

Richard Scarry is my favorite illustrator and yet this idea totally eluded me until I read about it… it hadn’t occurred to me that I was reading an ABC book. His was also a wild financial success. By taking the word away from the letter it starts with and placing it in context it allows the book to be translated into any language — even ones where an object starts with a different letter… eg- sneakers are zapatos in Spanish.

I think Heather is doing a terrific implementation of a straight–forward ABC book. She seems really comfortable working within the balance between simplicity and subject. Her flickr set has the rest of the pages if you are interested.