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Illuminating fiction

From Poppy and Ereth, Brian Floca, illustrator
From Pop­py and Ereth, Bri­an Flo­ca, illustrator

A young read­er recent­ly wrote to me:

“We [my sixth grade] thought your book [Nev­er Mind] was real­ly good, but at times it was hard to imag­ine. If it was made into a movie we could visu­al­ize the char­ac­ters bet­ter and how they react­ed. For exam­ple, Har­ry Pot­ter is a series of books that were turned into a movie. Since the movie fol­lows the books, it is eas­i­er to com­pre­hend what was going on in the book.”

It is com­mon­place to refer to the mod­ern age as one of intense visu­al­iza­tion, TV, inter­net, film. And while it does not make me hap­py to acknowl­edge it, young peo­ple are far more like­ly to look at images than words on a page. As sug­gest­ed by the young read­er above, it is one of the rea­sons why read­ers strug­gle with read­ing books.

There is a solu­tion: More illus­tra­tions for mid­dle grade and even upper grade fic­tion. There are won­der­ful illus­tra­tors these days, and they should not be con­fined to pic­ture books. I have absolute­ly no doubt that the suc­cess of my Pop­py books, may, to a vital degree, be found in the illus­tra­tions by Bri­an Flo­ca. His art doesn’t just illus­trate the texts, they are a sig­nif­i­cant part of the sto­ries. Con­sid­er Bri­an Selznick’s work. Con­sid­er the pop­u­lar­i­ty of graph­ic novels.

In short, there are count­less ways to illus­trate fic­tion. Pub­lish­ers do them­selves (and their read­ers) a real dis­ser­vice by not illu­mi­nat­ing fic­tion. More art may mean even more read­ing of text.

3 thoughts on “Illuminating fiction”

  1. Avi, I agree 100%! I keep hear­ing that pub­lish­ers dis­like illus­tra­tions due to cost, but I think they would sell more if illustrated. 

    As I pre­pare to query and find a home for my first book, I have resort­ed yo cre­at­ing a Pin­ter­est board so that beta read­ers can visualize.

    BTW! Next week a sixth grade class will be read­ing my man­u­script and we will con­duct dis­cus­sions. It is my hope that they cram the mar­gins full of notes and sug­ges­tions. After all, they are my customer.

    Thanks for this blog, it always lifts my spirits.

    Reply
  2. Thank you for post­ing this. I agree. I have stu­dents who won’t look at books if there are no illus­tra­tions which lim­its what they are being intro­duced to right now. There do not need to be a lot of illus­tra­tions, but just a few would open some books to a dif­fer­ent set of young readers.

    Reply
  3. Thanks for encour­ag­ing authors to use illus­tra­tions for old­er read­ers, Avi. When I think of my daugh­ter’s favorite ele­men­tary school series (Pop­py!) and my own favorite books from fifty years ago (The Bor­row­ers), I can still imag­ine the won­der­ful illus­tra­tions. I use them in my own books, and I can’t imag­ine my sto­ries now with­out them.

    Reply

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