David Wiesner, award-winning author, illustrator and Milwaukee resident, is currently making public appearances to promote his new book, "The Three Pigs," a playful take on a classic tale. The book is already being heaped with praise.
Wiesner, who won the Caldecott Medal for his nearly wordless picture book "Tuesday," talked with us about his creative process, the advantages of working as an illustrator and author, updating a classic tale and more.
OnMilwaukee.com: When did you first know that you wanted to be a children's author?
David Wiesner: It was a gradual process. I have always drawn and painted. Art is what I did growing up. After high school I went to art school and I began to realize what I liked to do. If there was a place or character that I liked I wanted to spend more time there. I did multiple pictures and created sequences. That evolved into telling stories with pictures. It was in art school that I really became exposed to picture books as a form. By the end of those four years I realized that it was the right mode of expression for me.
OMC: What are the advantages of illustrating your own books as opposed to letting someone else do it?
DW: I'm not a writer and I didn't come about this from the writing end of things. When I began I was working as an illustrator and doing pretty much anything. But for me there's a big difference between illustrating a story I've written and illustrating a story someone else has written. The work that I did for stories that I came up with on my own was a lot more personal and a lot more original. I found it easier to let go of my imagination with my own writing as opposed to trying to interpret someone else's stories. I felt freer to push the boundaries with my own stories.
OMC: Where do you look for inspiration for your stories?
DW: I keep a sketchbook and I'm always drawing in it. The creative process happens while I'm drawing. There are visual ideas that I play around with. The trick is to figure out what the story is behind those images. I always have a lot more images than stories.
OMC: So you start with the pictures and develop the text later?
DW: Yes, and there have been times when the initial thing that inspired me to start working on the story no longer fit in the story that developed from it. But they always come out of pictures.
OMC: Have you found that your books are accessible to people of all ages and not just children?
DW: It certainly isn't anything I planned, but there seems to be a wide age range that responds to the books I do. It's nice to get letters from kids in sixth grade or eight grade, at a point where they feel they've evolved from a picture book. It's nice to get kids that age interested in that kind of thing.
OMC: How much time goes into one book?
DW: I wish I could predict that. Each book has taken its own life. On average about a year and a half.
OMC: How do you decide exactly how a particular book you're working on should look?
DW: That happens at the very beginning. Whenever I'm working on a book it happens in the same way, with small thumbnail drawings in my sketchbook of each of the pages. Picture books generally have 32 pages. I draw out the number of pages and I plan out the entire book. When I start laying it out in pictures it somehow tells me how it's going to be dealt with.
OMC: Why did you decide to do a retelling of "The Three Pigs?"
DW: I didn't necessarily want to do "The Three Pigs." I had an idea for a story about what's behind the pictures in a book. If you were to mock down the actual pictures as you're reading them on each of the pages, behind them would be this other space. I was thinking about these characters that wander around this seemingly empty world and discover that they can go in and out all sorts of other stories. I realized that the story the characters would have to leave would have to be something that people knew already so you weren't thinking about what was happening back in the first story.
I have used pigs in several of my other books and they've always been in the background. I've been thinking about doing a story where they are the main characters. When I thought about what stories most everybody knew, I stopped on "The Three Pigs." They also have great motivation for wanting to leave the story and find someplace safe.
OMC: Is it important to tell a familiar story in a new way?
DW: No, not necessarily. I didn't consciously set out to do a postmodern version of a classic story. It just turned out that that story fit what I was doing.
OMC: What are your goals as a children's author and illustrator?
DW: To make interesting and entertaining books. Generally, that means for me, first and foremost, trying to do something that I find creatively interesting and exciting. Then hopefully others will, too.
OMC: Are you working on another book right now?
DW: I'm playing around with a variety of ideas but I haven't settled on what I'm going to do next.
Don't miss David Wiesner at the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop, 17145 W. Bluemound Rd., in Brookfield, Sat., May 19, at 1 p.m. Admission is free. Call (262) 797-6140 or visit www.schwartzbooks.com for more information.
