Pigs in Space

David Wiesner's latest picture book, The Three Pigs (Clarion, 2001), breaks new ground for the author-illustrator and for picture books in general. In Wiesner's most recent creation, the three pigs of storybook fame leave their own story and wander in and out of other familiar sagas. Not only is his narrative innovative in its postmodern construction, but it uses white space (the areas of a page without pictures or print) in a totally new way. In one breathtaking sequence, the three pigs-riding on a paper airplane fashioned from a book page-sail out of their own story, leaving only a blank page in their wake. (For SLJ's review of The Three Pigs, see April, p. 126.)

Everyone who has worked closely with Wiesner over the years talks about his modesty, sensitivity, and kindness as a human being-and his incredible dedication to the art of the picture book. Although he started making picture books in the late 1970s, Wiesner has written and illustrated only seven books to date, including the Caldecott Medal-winning Tuesday (Clarion, 1991) and Sector 7 (Clarion, 1999), a Caldecott Honor Book. Thoroughly researched and meticulously executed, all of his whimsical picture books have taken years to complete. To get a better sense of his creative process, I spoke to Wiesner in late August, just as he was in the process of moving from Milwaukee, WI, to Philadelphia, PA, with his wife, Kim Kahng, his son, Kevin, age nine, and daughter Jamie, age four.

Did some of the influences on The Three Pigs come from your not-so-misspent youth?

As a child, I once watched Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd running in and out of a cartoon and was intrigued by that world outside of the reality of that cartoon. As an art student, I found a particular Dali painting fascinating (Dali at Age Six When He Thought He Was a Girl, Lifting Up the Skin of the Water to See a Dog Sleeping in the Shadow of the Sea ), for it also showed this idea of one reality being pulled back, indicating a world beyond the canvas. In Free Fall (Lothrop, 1988), I'd experimented with the idea of part of a page crumbling so that something could fall through. I began to play with the idea of a story that a character could walk out of and then walk back into. I had this graphic idea of pictures of a book that would all fall down. With all these concepts wandering around, I still had nothing to hang them on, so I started drawing. When I am drawing, I begin to understand what the book may be about. In drawing, my creative process happens.

I knew if I was telling an original story, the reader would be confused and distracted, because they would want to know how the first story was actually going to evolve. I felt I had to pick a universal story that everyone knew well-'Goldilocks and the Three Bears,' 'The Three Pigs.' There is always that point in book creation where you have that 'Ah-ha' moment. Pigs have been making cameo appearances in my books since Free Fall. And, of course, these three pigs have every motivation to get out of their story because they are going to be eaten. So, suddenly, I had the framework for the book.

You are telling several stories in the book. As your pigs move from the first tale to the second, they have been drawn much more realistically than is your usual style. Why did you do that?

In this book, I wanted to break out of boundaries, but I also wanted to acknowledge the tradition of children's books. The art of the first story, created in pen line and paint, was inspired by illustrator Arthur Rackham and Leslie Brooke, the creator of the Johnny Crow books. When the pigs came out of that story, I needed another style. I've wanted for years to work in opaque watercolors, because watercolor itself is so unforgiving-you simply can't cover up mistakes. So I played with acrylics and gouache. Finally, I painted the pigs in watercolor and then worked over that with layers of gouache and colored pencil.

What about the other stories within the book? What did they represent to you?

In the dragon story, I acknowledged the line work of Howard Pyle, the father of children's book illustration in America. Early in my illustrating career, I was often asked, 'Can't you make your art brighter?' So, on the 'Hey diddle diddle' page, I really made the colors bright. I used brilliant watercolors, straight from the tube-Windsor Green, Cadmium Yellow, Permanent Rose. No Opera [pink]: I did draw the line at some colors.

I'm intrigued by the distinct personalities of the three pigs themselves. Were you thinking about them as individuals?

In the beginning, as I was drawing the pigs, I thought of them as a group. But when I began to paint them, to figure out what they really looked like, they began to have personalities. I even ended up with three different breeds-the Yorkshire, Hampshire, and Duroc. So they each had a different coloring. The first pig became happy go lucky; the middle pig, the middle child; and the third pig, the 'take charge' pig. Then I had to go back and rewrite some of the story, with those differences in mind.

What were some of the book details you enjoyed experimenting with?

I really enjoyed playing with the white space in The Three Pigs and how to use it for the best dramatic effect. The original layout had a double-page spread, all white space, all unprinted as the pigs flew right out of the field of vision. But Donna McCarthy, director of children's book production for Houghton [Clarion's parent company], told me that half of the libraries and bookstores in America would return the book if it were printed that way. And, indeed, many people have confirmed that opinion. Also, this effect took too many pages to make clear what was happening; I didn't want a 48-page book. Then, there are the other subtle details that are so much fun to pay attention to in bookmaking. I knew early on that I wanted the binding to reflect the story. So the reddish spine represents the brick, the gray body of the binding the sticks, and the ochre endpapers the straw of the story.

On several pages in the book, the type has been twisted and bent-because the pages of the story are crumpled. You spent a lot of time working on the type for The Three Pigs. Why?

The type could never have been manipulated the way it was without certain computer programs that allow the text to be put in perspective or bent and twisted. I could have hand drawn the text, but I wanted it to be mechanically typeset, to appear as much as possible as though actual pages from a printed book were being knocked over and crushed. Carol Goldenberg, the art director, Victor Salvucci, a computer graphics specialist, and I worked hard to get the type to correspond to my drawings.

In the illustration where the dragon story recedes into the distance, I thought about a child, who might take a magnifying glass to that page, to read the story as it moved toward the vanishing point. The story had to be there, in the right size type, as each panel got smaller. I see children as intelligent, visual readers and try to make my art as accurate to the reality of the story as possible.

Does some of that respect for children come from living with your own?

Actually, it comes from reading my books to every member of my family. My wife, Kim, and I met in high school in Bridgewater, NJ. We have seen each other through every stage of our lives. Kim is the first person I show everything to. I trust her reactions completely. Both my children are now very much part of my book-making process. When I read Sector 7 to Kevin, he kept asking me about a particular cloud and wanted to know if it was one we had seen before. I told him it wasn't the same, just similar. But I realized that as a reader, he was making a connection that was important to his visual perception. I changed that cloud into the same character he had seen earlier in the story.

With The Three Pigs, I was able to share the book with my daughter, Jamie, and get her reactions about what made sense to her and what didn't; Kevin shared the idea of the book with friends at school. As an illustrator who works at home, I get to see my children off to school, be with them in the afternoon when they return, and share my own books with them. It doesn't get much better than this-both as an illustrator and as a father.

What do you remember about creating art during your own childhood?

I was always drawing and painting. Art was something that captivated me, a private pleasure. It was my refuge as a child. As I got to the end of high school, my father suggested art school to me. I was lucky to have parents who encouraged my decision to go into art. My father was a research scientist, so art really wasn't his frame of reference. But I was the fifth child, and he had seen his other children interested in the arts. So by the time I came along, he was prepared to deal with my ambitions.

When I was much younger, my father had gotten me a beautiful architectural drafting desk and placed it in my room. That space where I created art became a safe haven for me. In turn, I have gotten my son, Kevin, a desk, and love to see him working in his own haven.

You arrived at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1974, certainly an exciting place to be in the '70s.

Children's book author and illustrator David Macaulay and Tom Sgouros taught me how to think about art, how to conceptualize art, how to solve problems. David would make up these exercises in class, possibly on the spot, that would send me out for a week, or years, thinking about solutions. I often hear things he said to me in art school even as I work on a book now.

Because you came to illustrating at such a young age, you have really grown up in the children's book field. Who were your mentors?

As I moved along, I was able to find people who were exactly right at the time to help further my growth and to help me refine my ideas. Illustrator Trina Schart Hyman, who was working as art director for Cricket, asked me to create a cover, which was my first job. Dilys Evans had been the assistant art director at Cricket, and she was just setting out to become an agent. Dilys wanted to add me as a young artist to her roster. We've been together ever since. Ours is an immensely gratifying relationship, because she was someone who believed in me from the beginning.

Dilys got my portfolio to the late Dorothy Briley, publisher of Lothrop and, later, of Clarion, and Dorothy looked over my published pieces in textbook and freelance illustration. But she liked my own work, my own more whimsical pieces. She encouraged me to pursue writing and illustrating my own books and said she would like to see what I developed.

Dorothy had such a light hand when it came to the editing process. She would read my book dummy, my first layout, right away when I arrived. She'd laugh and respond to it, tell me what she liked, and suggested what I might want to consider. In the dummy for Tuesday there was a very small panel of the Inspector hunting for clues. 'This is wonderful,' she said, 'can't you do more with that?' That incident was indicative of her style-positive, gentle direction.

After Dorothy's death, I started to work with Dinah Stevenson, publisher of Clarion. We'd always been friends; I've known Dinah almost as long as I knew Dorothy. The Three Pigs is the first book that we've developed together from the beginning. I'm really relieved and pleased that we work so well together.

Your own books were immediately successful. Free Fall received a Caldecott Honor. Tuesday won the Caldecott Medal. What has been the impact of these awards on you?

It was an amazing affirmation for me to get an Honor Award for my first picture book, a book that was my own conceptually and in the execution. I was doing the kind of book I wanted to do, and people were responding to it. With my own picture books, with Free Fall, I was holding nothing back. To be recognized for your best attempt at that moment is very gratifying, for any artist. So the Honor Award gave me the feeling that I was on the right track and that other people liked what intrigued me.

There are no words that can adequately describe winning the Caldecott. However, some time after I received the award, I got a copy of a poster that showed the jackets of all the Caldecott books, from the beginning of the award to the present. There was Tuesday, along with all of those other amazing books, now part of the history of children's picture books. It was really overwhelming to realize that one of my books would always be part of this group.