Illustrating Mama Bear

by Lolly Robinson

When I graduated from college in 1984 with a studio art major and a secondary concentration in literature, I thought illustrating or writing picture books was my destiny. How many of us have thought it should be pretty simple to create a children’s book? It’s so short, so manageable, and it’s for kids: what could be easier?

After accumulating a file drawer full of ideas and false starts I decided there might be more to creating picture books than I had originally understood. There were some decent ideas there, but none that held my interest for more than a few months and nothing polished enough to show an editor. A few years working in children’s publishing and an MA in children’s lit put me on a comfortable path as a graphic designer and book reviewer. I wanted something more, but I kept putting off that portfolio trip to New York. My excuse was that I needed to add more kids to my animal-heavy portfolio. But a call from Audrey Bryant at Houghton Mifflin here in Boston put me into high gear. I had designed an ad for Audrey when she worked at David Godine and later appraised some stolen artwork for one of Godine’s illustrators. Audrey had moved over to Houghton, was looking for new writers and illustrators, and wondered if I’d come show her my portfolio. I really didn’t deserve such luck! I quickly added some kids to my portfolio and made an appointment with Audrey.

She had nice things to say about my drawings, but then she’s one of the kindest people I know, so I wondered if she really liked my work or was just being polite. But having survived that meeting, I planned a week-long trip to the lion’s den: NYC. Calls to my favorite children’s book departments filled me in on their current portfolio policies. Some had a certain day of the week for portfolios to be dropped off in the morning and picked up at the end of the day. Others gave me an appointment with the art director or an editor. I knew my portfolio was too varied to print a postcard of one image showing my style. So I had good color xeroxes made of six pieces and bound them in a simple black folder with my business card taped to the front. This way, they could keep my art on record if they wanted to. The response was varied and extremely helpful. One house that used the drop-off system left a long, encouraging note in my portfolio and one even made color copies of every page to keep on file. But the face-to-face meetings were the most valuable: you can tell a lot from the speed with which your pages are turned — and the turner’s facial expressions. Some editors preferred my pencil work and said I should always work small. Others liked the large, bolder oils. After each visit, I stopped at the first coffee shop I saw and took notes on everything that was said. I had quite a coffee buzz at the end of that week and, with one thing and another, got very little sleep!

A month later I got a call from my friend Chyng Sun, a writer originally from Taiwan, telling me that Audrey Bryant wanted to publish one of Chyng’s stories. And my name came up as a possible illustrator! Many of you will understand how unusual this is. Today it is rare for a first-time author and illustrator to know each other — or even to meet during the creation process.

Chyng’s book, at first titled The Softest, Warmest Bear in the World, was about a young girl named Mei-Mei who lives in Chinatown with her mother. She longs for the large, expensive stuffed bear in the toy store window and tries to save money to buy it. She understands her mother cannot afford to. Chyng is not one to write a formulaic story, and by the end of the book Mei-Mei has not saved nearly enough money. But the ending is warm and believable, if slightly bittersweet, as the bond between mother and daughter has deepened.

What is often a speedy process — creating a sample illustration for approval and then completing the final art — turned out to be a long and rather difficult one for me. The approval, the contract, and the dummy were finished right on schedule but then fate seemed to step in. Location drawings here in Boston’s Chinatown and the drawings of Mei-Mei were progressing nicely, thanks to Chyng’s friends Helen and Krystal (mother and daughter) who allowed me to draw and photograph them. But while Mei-Mei was modeled after Krystal, I wanted the mother to be less glamorous than Helen, and her character just wouldn’t settle into place. One of the challenges of illustrating a book is keeping the characters looking consistent. That mother just kept changing! Matters were not helped by my growing lack of concentration due to my own mother’s worsening illness. And then my tendinitis kicked in, painfully. Trying to keep my mounting tension — even panic — out of the drawings was the biggest challenge of all. Eventually, I ditched the traditional Chinese folk music I had been listening to for atmosphere and inspiration, opting instead for the Beach Boys’ carefree escapism.

The rudest awakening was the realization that illustrating was work! It wasn’t like the self-involved, stream-of-conscousness oil paintings I did in college or even the sketches and drawings in my portfolio. There were thirty-two pages to fill, all with roughly the same subject. And I had strict instructions from the art director to keep the colors consistent, avoid layering (the medium was watercolor with pen-and-ink), and keep the backgrounds simple or white so the text could be changed with minimum expense if the book were to be translated. (We hoped Chyng’s publisher in Taiwan would pick it up.)

We signed our contracts early in 1992 and the book was originally scheduled for Fall 1993 publication with a March 1993 due-date for the finished art. It seemed best to schedule it as a fall book since it ends at Christmastime. This should have been plenty of time, but I had to stop for nearly three months because of the tendinitis, and when I brought my art to Houghton for a half-way-through okay, we decided the art was just too tight and I should go back to the drawing board and re-think my style — even the medium — and work on defining the mother’s look. The book would be rescheduled for Fall 1994. I left that meeting with an immense sense of relief. I knew the art wasn’t good, but I had been afraid they’d think there just wasn’t time to fix it. Walter Lorraine and Audrey told me I should take a deep breath, relax, and get a fresh start.

I made samples of one of the spreads in several different mediums, but we decided that pen and watercolor was really the best combination. I think the pencil and watercolor version had more of the right feel, but there were concerns about it looking too muddy when reproduced. Then I did some more samples of that same spread, this time all pen and watercolor but with a variety of styles and palettes. By then I had moved to another state to live with my mother who had signed on with her local Hospice. Looking back, I’m surprised I managed to concentrate during the last push, but I was finally on a roll. It may have been helpful, too, that Mama Bear was no longer the most monumental thing in my life: by then, my main concentration was my mother. Audrey and everyone at Houghton were remarkably patient with me and I finally finished all the drawings to their satisfaction, if not fully to my own. But I suppose that’s the problem with hindsight: when I look at the finished book my eye is drawn to all the things I should have done differently. And my biggest regret is that my mother didn’t live to see the book finished.

Still, it’s fun to be published. Sometimes when I’m buying a book on Amazon I check out the Mama Bear page and read my reviews. And each year at tax time I’m proud to have a (small) number to enter into the royalties box. But best of all are a few letters sent to me by children. Maybe someday I’ll finish one of the dummies I’ve started. There’s a group of sheep drawn in colored pencil who have been waiting on my drawing board for so long I think they may wander off soon. But at least for now, I plan to stick to my day job here at the Horn Book.

Art © 1994 by Lolly Robinson; photo © 1992 by Sarah Corvene

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