We are so excited to have Stephanie Graegin join us today to share information about Wordless Picture Books!
Stephanie Graegin is the author and illustrator of The Long Ride Home (June 2022), Fern and Otto, A Story About Two Best Friends, and Little Fox in the Forest, which garnered four starred reviews and appeared on many Best of the Year lists. She is also the illustrator of over a dozen picture books, including You Were the First by Patricia MacLachlan; Listen by Gabi Snyder; and Peace Is an Offering by Annette LeBox. Stephanie lives in Brooklyn, New York. Visit her at graegin.com.
When I started working on Little Fox in the Forest, I had experience as a children’s book illustrator but not as a writer. I thought that making a wordless picture book as my first authored book would be more comfortable to me than a worded book—but quickly learned wordless books are challenging!
Step 1 - Studying the Medium
A wordless picture book is a solely visual narrative. Because of the amount of visual information that needs to be laid out clearly, wordless books often have structure and panel elements similar to graphic novels and comic books. I’ve alway been a fan of the medium (Little Nemo, Calvin & Hobbes, and Jimmy Corrigan are some favorites), so I spent time digging into the mechanics of them.
I read as many wordless picture books as I could find, uncovering how others tackled pacing and structure. I knew that I wanted some big moments to open up in full page spreads to give a cinematic feel. Emotions needed to be conveyed clearly, and the storyline needed to be easy for the youngest readers to follow.
Some wordless books I recommend studying are: Bluebird by Bob Staake, Journey and Quest by Aaron Becker, Door and Pool by Jihyeon Lee, Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle, The Only Child by Qoujing, Waterloo by Olivier Tallec, The Farmer and the Clown by Marla Frazee, The Girl and the Bicycle by Mark Pett, and Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson and Sydney Smith.
Step 2 - The Basic Story Idea
Little Fox in the Forest started with several kernels of ideas out of my sketchbook. Some things I was thinking about were:
Losing a favorite stuffed animal.
An animal taking a toy that resembles them. I had read a news article years ago about a real Bear stealing a teddy bear out of a house, and that story always stayed with me.
Combining anthropomorphic animal characters and human characters in a story, having two worlds in one book.
Most of the thought process took place in my sketchbook. I kept thinking through sketching characters, trying to figure out their story.
Step 3 - A Linear Timeline to Map out the Story
Once I had a grasp of the story and characters, I wrote a basic linear timeline of bullet points of the events of the story. It was very simple (girl loves her stuffed animal, girl brings stuffed animal to school, on the playground a real animal steals the stuffed animal, girl follows animal into the forest, etc). Little Fox started out as a little raccoon and became a fox later on when I was thinking about how color might work. I didn’t know exactly what the resolution would be at this point. But with a basic timeline, I had a place to start sketching thumbnail panels to put together a dummy book.
Step 4 - The Thumbnail Dummy Book
I would try to visualize the scenes in my head like a movie without sound. I drew and redrew tiny thumbnail drawings over and over. I made photocopies, I cut them up, I rearranged them. I taped new drawings over old panels. My sketches were only 2 inches tall, so I could keep redrawing and rearranging quickly. The story became more refined each time I redrew it. This process went on for a year.
Step 5 - Lots of Little Sketches and Revisions
Once I had a dummy book I was happy with, I sent it to my agent, Steven Malk, at Writers House, who then showed it to Lee Wade (who was the editor at Schwartz & Wade). She saw the potential in the dummy book and decided to take it on. I received a steady flow of feedback from Lee and Art Director Rachael Cole. I would take their ideas/suggestions and integrate them into the next round of changes, then resubmit the revised dummy. The process is repeated until the book feels complete. It’s like sifting earth through ever-finer sieves—first you get rid of the big rocks, then the twigs, until you’re left with only the finest, purest sand. This experience made clear how every picture book is a collaboration between author/illustrator, editor, and art director.
Step 6 - FInal Art
Once every aspect of the story and characters were refined, I spent time working on the color palette. I knew I wanted the ‘human world’ to be monochromatic and the animal world bright and colorful. Color would slowly be introduced as the girl moved from human-world to forest-world. I ended up using a cool, blue palette for the human-world, which allowed the bright orange little fox to stand out on the page. The final art was a mix of traditional artwork and photoshop. The drawings were all made with pencil on simple copier paper. I made layers of texture using watercolors, crayons, and pencils. These were all then scanned in, colored, and assembled in Photoshop.
