Every day this week, we are taking you behind the scenes of I Survived with author Lauren Tarshis and editor Nancy Mercado as they give you the inside scoop on how the latest book in the New York Times bestselling series was created.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE by Nancy Mercado
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and that’s certainly true for books as well. One very important person in the I Survived “village” or family, is illustrator Scott Dawson who has worked on the interior illustrations for each and every book in the I Survived series. Scott’s warm and expressive drawings help bring Lauren’s stories to life, and (we think!) they add another layer of enjoyment for readers.
Since we usually know a little bit in advance the topic for the next book, the first thing we do is let Scott know the event and the time period so that he can research the topic before he gets started with his drawing. For the Chicago Fire book, he needed to know things like: what kind of firefighting equipment did firefighters use in 1871? What did the city of Chicago look like at that time? Of Scott’s work, Lauren has said: “One of the great delights of the series is seeing how Scott brings my characters to visual life. His research brings in historical details that I don’t even mention in the book, like clothing styles, building styles, etc.”
Usually we send Scott a list of possible illustrations for the book and then he chooses from that list what he would most like to draw. Here’s a glimpse of part of the list we sent him for the Chicago Fire book:
Full page drawing: Firefighters fighting the blaze. (Note: We’d like to give readers context to understand how fires were fought in the late 1800’s, and give them visual context for what the streets and city looked like at that time.)
Half page drawing: Jennie, Bruno, and Oscar scooping up water from the barrel, smiling and connecting. (Note: Bruno should be wearing a purple velvet lady’s hat smudged with dirt, the wide brim all crushed from previous chapter.)
Several weeks later, Scott sends his preliminary sketches to the designer, Yaffa Jaskoll, and she and I look them over. Here are two examples of the terrific sketches that Scott did for the Chicago Fire book. You can see that these are pretty tight drawings. In other words, we can get a pretty clear sense of what the final illustration will look like from these.
In this drawing, we really wanted readers to both feel the intensity of the situation AND get a clear sense of how fires were fought at that time. Scott totally nailed it! (Go to page 79 in the book to see the final illustration of firefighters fighting the blaze.)
For the sketch of Jennie, Bruno, and Oscar, we loved how Scott showed them all from above, so you could see Bruno’s reflection. That was a clever way of approaching the scene, wasn’t it? (Want to see the finished piece of art? Check out page 58 in I Survived the Great Chicago Fire, 1871!)
We publish an I Survived book every six months, which may sound like a lot of time, but it really isn’t! As soon as Lauren finishes one I Survived book, she’s on to the next one, and that means there’s not much time for Scott to pack up his paints from the last job and get started on the next one. Next up, Scott will get to work on his drawings for I Survived the Joplin Tornado, 2011. As always, we can’t wait to see what he’ll come up with.
About the author:
Lauren Tarshis is the editor of Scholastic's Storyworks magazine and group editorial director for language arts for Scholastic classroom magazines, in addition to being the author of the I Survived series and the critically acclaimed novels Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree and Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell in Love. She lives in Westport, Connecticut, and can be found online at www.laurentarshis.com.
Want to learn more? Watch this video about how Lauren got the idea for the I Survived series and this one about the differences between writing for a magazing and a book.
For additional classroom resources, visit www.scholastic.com/TeachISurvived.
Author photo © David Dreyfuss.
