Today, illustrator Dawn Lo and author Karen Krossing chat about their upcoming picture book ONE TINY BUBBLE, available soon from Owlkids Books. This non-fiction picture book is about our Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA – the microscopic organism that every life-form now on Earth can be traced back to. Karen: Hi, Dawn! I’ve loved creating this book with you, and I’m excited to chat about it. So, I’ll start us off. When I was writing this manuscript, I knew I was setting an illustrator up for a challenge – one you certainly handled well. How did you manage to bring a one-celled organism to life? Dawn: Thank you, Karen. Working on this book has been so challenging and satisfying. This is my first non-fiction book. I’d never heard of LUCA before reading the manuscript. There was also this challenge of how to introduce LUCA when we don’t have visual references. Besides my own research, the Owlkids team and you were so helpful during the process with providing extra resources from experts on the topic. I am happy with how LUCA turned out – a blob with squiggles and dots inside – also very animated and bright (hopefully). I am interested to know when and how did you learn about LUCA and what sparked the creation of this picture book? Karen: Your illustrations of LUCA capture the joy and hope of its story! I’d never heard of LUCA either until I watched a documentary that mentioned it. I was instantly fascinated by the story of the single cell that lived 3.5 billion years ago and sparked all life currently on Earth, and I knew LUCA needed to star in a picture book. I grabbed my notebook and began writing notes. LUCA’s story is heartwarming and miraculous. I love how it celebrates our diversity and shows our interconnection, and how it shows the mighty power in small things. What are some of your favourite spreads in ONE TINY BUBBLE? Dawn: Always nice to hear how a picture book was birthed into life. I wanted to join the project after reading the manuscript. Even though this is a non-fiction book, the text provides a lot of room to explore the narrative. That’s why I have so many favourite spreads. Spread 7 was lovely just because of the fun design, where I also got to paint the details in LUCA up close. Spread 11 was also one of my favourites, the first spread where humans/characters are introduced. (Humans are very fun to paint!) The transition from close-up paintings of LUCA to illustrating characters and dotting in the details was also extra fun! Did you grow up reading lots of picture books? What inspires you to write mainly for children? Karen: I love those spreads too. I especially like how you showed LUCA absorbing food, and I like seeing humans interacting with our Earth family.
I grew up loving picture books, and I’ve read too many to count. I adore how they convey great depth with few words, and how they are a partnership between images and words. I write for children because I enjoy the challenge of how to make sense of our world in an accessible, child-centred way. Child readers tend to be open and curious, but also no-nonsense. They will drop a book if it’s not keeping their interest, and I appreciate that honesty. I write for children because I respect them. What about you, Dawn? What inspires you to illustrate for children? What do you love about the picture-book form? What techniques do you use to create your art? Dawn: Thank you so much! I am a TV kid for sure, ha-ha. I grew up in Hong Kong, so I watched a lot of fun 90s Japanese anime series like NINTAMA RANTARÔ and TONDE BURIN, etc. My interest in picture books grew when I took a picture-book-making class with Calef Brown at Emily Carr University. I really enjoyed creating narratives and was fascinated by all the possibilities in picture books. The medium I use the most is gouache, usually mixed with other mediums like watercolour and pencil crayons to create interesting textures. Next project, I would like to incorporate oil pastels. Constantly exploring and staying curious is important! Do you have any exciting projects coming up? Both personal and published work? Karen: Yes to exploring and staying curious! I’m excited about my upcoming middle-grade novel MONSTER VS. BOY (Charlesbridge Publishing) and a new picture book titled MY STREET REMEMBERS (Groundwood Books, illustrator TBA). I have other projects in the works too, including another narrative non-fiction picture book (yay!) and a verse novel for kids. I’m having fun using my fiction-writing techniques to create compelling non-fiction, and I like to play in different genres/forms to keep fresh creatively. What projects are exciting you? Dawn: Oooh that’s quite a line-up! :) I am very excited for you! I am illustrating two picture books at the moment. One of them is the sequel book to SALLY'S BIG DAY by Andrew Larsen (Orca Book Publishers). The other one is another non-fiction picture book with Owlkids. I’m excited to paint some underwater scenes and work with editor Stacey Roderick again – yay! Besides picture books, I got accepted to participate in some upcoming exhibitions, so I am very excited about those too! This has been very fun. Thank you again for providing the opportunity to illustrate LUCA and spending time to chat with me, Karen. Can’t wait to receive our author/illustrator copies so we can flip through the pages and hug the books! Karen: Congrats on your exhibitions, Dawn! I’m excited to read your upcoming books – and how lucky to be working with Stacey again! It was a pleasure creating and chatting with you. I hope we get to work together on another project. Dawn Lo is an illustrator whose work has appeared in picture books, stationery, greeting cards, public art installations, and more! Born in Hong Kong, she is currently based in the traditional and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, also known as Vancouver. In her spare time – between working at the library or visual journaling at parks – she illustrates picture books. Her past picture book projects include SNOW SONG written by A.K. Riley, ONE TINY BUBBLE written by Karen Krossing, and SALLY'S BIG DAY written by Andrew Larsen. She mainly uses a mixed technique combining gouache and crayons, sometimes creating everything digitally, but soon she might try something different. Dawn loves the little everyday moments, earl-grey-flavoured desserts, and her neighbour’s cat. Karen Krossing wrote comics and poetry as a kid and dreamed of becoming a published writer. Today, she’s the author of seven successful novels for kids and teens as well as her debut picture book SOUR CAKES, illustrated by Anna Kwan, and her upcoming picture book with Dawn. Her recent novels include PUNCH LIKE A GIRL, BOG, and CUT THE LIGHTS. She graduated with an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2020. She also conducts writing workshops and book talks. Karen lives in Toronto on the traditional territory of the Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Anishinabeg and the treaty lands and territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. Comments are closed.
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