BOOKS FOR KEEPS FEATURES MOON RIVER
If you’re not in the business of creating or selling picture books you may not have come across Books for Keeps. Books for Keeps is the place for book reviews, they’ve been reviewing books and publishing articles on every aspect of writing for children since 1980.
In each issue they highlight the work of one illustrator in their regular feature ‘Windows into Illustration’ where the illustrator chooses one piece of work and talks about their process and the thinking behind the chosen illustration. I was delighted to be asked to contribute to the September 2018 issue no. 232, in which I talked about the opening spread from Moon River.
Read the full interview on Books for Keeps, and see an extract below.
“Using the lyrics as a springboard and having listened to the song over and over again, I start by working out who the characters are in the story, what they look like and then, what’s going to happen to them. While I was working on Singing in the Rain, I had already chosen Moon River as my next project, so the ideas for it had been building for some time…”
“The spread I’m going to talk about is the opening scene. In it, we see a girl fast asleep in bed, hugging her teddy bear… The room has an old-fashioned charm: there’s a fireplace, a heavily patterned wallpaper, bare floorboards and blankets on the bed. I did this to help the reader relax into the book; it’s not a contemporary setting, we’re about to leave the stresses of the modern day far behind! On the mantelpiece there’s a globe and a statue of the Eiffel Tower and a toy boat. These are here as a suggestion of the adventures and magic that’s about to take place.”
“I deliberately chose a limited colour palette for this book. I stuck to a range of blues, and used black in places to make the images more dynamic. I wanted the colours throughout the book to have a magical, enchanting quality.”
Tune in at 11am on Sunday 5th July to see The Little Angel Theatre’s adaptation of Moon River - screened on their YouTube channel until 30th September 2020. Head over to Tim’s Instagram where we’ll be running a special competition to win a signed copy of Moon River to celebrate this special new performance.