Jez Alborough
About Author
Jez Alborough has written and illustrated over thirty picture books, including the hugely popular stories about Eddy and the Bear, which were turned into a Baft Award winning animated TV series, and Duck in the Truck - the second of which, Fix-it Duck was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal.
"To write for the very young, you must be able to think like the very young," he says. "When I write my books I write for the me that I was at five or six. He is the best judge of what I am doing. If he doesn't laugh or get touched by what I write, then it doesn't get into a book."
Jez didn't much like secondary school, but going to Art College in Norwich was a much happier experience: "It felt like freedom. Having the time and space to do what I wanted to do was so uplifting."
He graduated with a BA Honours Degree in Graphic Design and started to look for illustration work. His first book, 'Bare Bear', was conceived in the bath! It was published in 1984 and was runner-up for the Mother Goose Award.
Interview
NAT THE CAT'S SUNNY SMILE
MARCH 2013
DOUBLEDAY CHILDREN'S BOOKS
www.JezAlborough.com
Nat the Cat's Sunny Smile is the first of three books featuring the characters Nat the Cat, Billy the goat and Hugo the hare. Each will explore themes such as feelings, friendship and being oneself.
Nat the Cat begins her day very happily and that happiness spreads to her two friends, who had been feeling gloomy and angry. But after helping to cheer up Billy and Hugo, Nat is left feeling a little blue. That soon changes when her (now happy) friends join her for a picnic.
Jez Alborough feels that it's important to explore the concept of feelings with children and that picture books can be a great vehicle for doing so. "I write about feelings because, for children as well as adults, it's so important know what you're feeling, it's a skill to have and children need to learn 'I'm feeling this' and that that's okay, and also perhaps that it's not okay to dump your negative feelings onto someone else."
He adds, "I liked the idea of being positively affected by a smile but I also wanted to show that others' bad moods can also affect you. If I only showed the nice side where the smile comes, that's not totally true so I felt it was important to show how Nat the Cat is affected by her friends' gloom otherwise I felt I would be 'writing down' to children. This is about showing children how it really works."
The story was inspired by an incident that happened some 20 years previously, says Alborough. "I was walking to my studio in Covent Garden one day and everyone was a bit morose as usual on the streets but there was one woman who beamed at me. It caught me by surprise but then I realised that I was smiling too and I wrote a poem about it called 'The Smile'. I felt that the poem had more to give."
When a publisher recently asked him if he could create a new character, the idea of the smile worked its way into a story about Nat the Cat, and working with rhymes. Each of three books about these characters will have a song in it, which Alborough has written and which you can listen to on his website (see link, below).
He says, "I have played and composed songs for a long time but that side of my work has not come into my books before. Now I have made up a song, written it and had it notated for each of these books. The idea is that Nat is a troubadour who goes around with her guitar and at the end of each story she will sing a song that summarises the story."
Alborough is currently writing another two books in the series, called Billy the Goat's Big Breakfast (publishing in September 2013) and Hugo the Hare's Rainy Day. He says, "It's nice to work with characters that people recognise across several books and where the reader will understand the characters and how they will react in a given situation. Hugo the hare for example is a bit shy so is ridden over by the others."
Getting the right 'look' for each of the characters can take a lot of time and experimentation. "When you create the first book, it's hard to get the characters looking right and there's a lot of development work goes into it.
"I started illustrating Nat the Cat using black lines around the outlines of the characters but that moved to a more painterly style using gouache, which gives a similar style to one of my earlier books Some Dogs Do. I like gouache, it gives you a painterly style and the colours aren't too bright."
Cat was the hardest one to get right. "Cat's head started out very round and someone said she looked a bit like a bear! I had to go back to lots of pictures of cats and explore what made a cat 'cat-like'. I felt that it came down to the whiskers on a cat, so I took that and simplified it. "Once I made Cat's face a bit more pointy with the whiskers, it was fine; you have to get the essential 'cat-ness' or 'goat-ness' of animal characters and to make it your own."
Many of Alborough's books feature animals. He says, "I feel very at home with creating animal characters and I think using animals is a very powerful way to approach stories. If you think of the Nat the Cat story but with humans, it would be too strong, there's no filter for the message, but with animals it's one step removed and you can get into the nitty gritty of the story.
"I am interested in how people work and if you're trying to convey a story that is about feelings and how things are passed on and picked up and the importance of sharing, you have to get it right. I feel that if you don't get the psychology of a story right then the story won't work.
"It's about understanding these different feelings and how important they are, that it's okay to feel gloomy and to feel angry, and how you navigate those feelings. In adult terms, in Nat the Cat one is happy, one is a bit depressed, the other is angry I wanted to convey the whole range in this story."
When creating a picture book, Alborough starts with the plot and once he has that, he plots it out over the 32 pages of a traditional picture book. "You have to decide how much you need to give to each part of the story, to build it up to the exciting denouement. You also have to decide how you are going to use each page, to squeeze as much of the story into it as you can. You can try to fit it into the book in many different ways." It can be hard, though, to write a very short text - generally around 700 words - for a picture book.
Often he will decide to use rhyming text, which he feels "helps the children to get into the story", as well as being more fun and easier to read. "It just sounds better and you introduce the rhythm factor. For me, I have to think whether something is a rhyming book or not. With Nat the Cat, which was inspired by a poem and has a rhyming name, it was obvious to make it a rhyming text."
As long as you know your plot, you can write out different parts of the book at different times he says; you don't need to start at the beginning and go through to the end. "You just work around a 'map' of the story so you know what is going to happen on each page and use rhyming text to explain what is happening."
If you get stuck on a section, 'leave it and come back to it later', he advises. "It's a skill and a craft, and it's not easy - in fact it can be really hard - but it is so joyous to read rhyming text." An earlier title, Six Little Chicks, which was published in 2012, started with a rhyme and the title. "I had this image of a hen peck, peck, pecking and I liked the idea of things being repeated so I used those sounds, like the chicks cheep cheep cheeping."
His main advice for those creating a picture book is, he says, "to be clear about where you are going with the story". He explains, "The plot is your 'home ground' and either you have a good story or you don't. That's the beauty of a picture book compared to, say, making a movie. A picture book is very straightforward and manageable and you can say a lot with a little."
At the moment Alborough is working on the drawings for the third book featuring Nat, Billy and Hugo. He works in a studio at the top of his house. "I can always scribble ideas down when I am out but this is the powerhouse, this is where it all happens. I probably work more than other people but if you love your job, you would rather be at your desk than out shopping!"
For further information, blogs and activities based on Jez Alborough's books, visit:
Nat the Cat's Sunny Smile is the first of three books by Jez Alborough featuring the characters Nat the Cat, Billy the goat and Hugo the hare. Each will explore themes such as feelings, friendship and being oneself.
Nat the Cat begins her day very happily and that happiness spreads to her two friends, who had been feeling gloomy and angry. But after helping to cheer up Billy and Hugo, Nat is left feeling a little blue. That soon changes when her (now happy) friends join her for a picnic.
Jez Alborough feels that it's important to explore thefeelings with children and that picture books can be a great vehicle for doing so. "I write about feelings because, for children as well as adults, it's so important know what you're feeling, it's a skill to have and children need to learn 'I'm feeling this' and that that's okay, and also perhaps that it's not okay to dump your negative feelings onto someone else."
He adds, "I liked the idea of being positively affected by a smile but I also wanted to show that others' bad moods can also affect you. If I only showed the nice side where the smile comes, that's not totally true so I felt it was important to show how Nat the Cat is affected by her friends' gloom otherwise I felt I would be 'writing down' to children. This is about showing children how it really works."
The story was inspired by an incident that happened some 20 years previously, says Alborough. "I was walking to my studio in Covent Garden one day and everyone was a bit morose as usual on the streets but there was one woman who beamed at me. It caught me by surprise but then I realised that I was smiling too and I wrote a poem about it called 'The Smile'. I felt that the poem had more to give."
When a publisher recently asked him if he could create a new character, the idea of the smile worked its way into a story about Nat the Cat, and working with rhymes. Each of three books about these characters will have a song in it, which Alborough has written and which you can listen to on his website (see link, below).
He says, "I have played and composed songs for a long time but that side of my work has not come into my books before. Now I have made up a song, written it and had it notated for each of these books. The idea is that Nat is a troubadour who goes around with her guitar and at the end of each story she will sing a song that summarises the story."
Alborough is currently writing another two books in the series, called Billy the Goat's Big Breakfast (publishing in September 2013) and Hugo the Hare's Rainy Day. He says, "It's nice to work with characters that people recognise across several books and where the reader will understand the characters and how they will react in a given situation. Hugo the hare for example is a bit shy so is ridden over by the others."
Getting the right 'look' for each of the characters can take a lot of time and experimentation. "When you create the first book, it's hard to get the characters looking right and there's a lot of development work goes into it.
He says, "Cat's head started out very round and someone said she looked a bit like a bear! I had to go back to lots of pictures of cats and explore what made a cat 'cat-like'. I felt that it came down to the whiskers on a cat, so I took that and simplified it. Once I made Cat's face a bit more pointy with the whiskers, it was fine; you have to get the essential 'cat-ness' or 'goat-ness' of animal characters and to make it your own."
Many of Alborough's books feature animals. He says, "I feel very at home with creating animal characters and I think using animals is a very powerful way to approach stories. If you think of the Nat the Cat story but with humans, it would be too strong, there's no filter for the message, but with animals it's one step removed and you can get into the nitty gritty of the story.
"I am interested in how people work and if you're trying to convey a story that is about feelings and how things are passed on and picked up and the importance of sharing, you have to get it right. I feel that if you don't get the psychology of a story right then the story won't work.
"It's about understanding these different feelings and how important they are, that it's okay to feel gloomy and to feel angry, and how you navigate those feelings. In adult terms, in Nat the Cat one is happy, one is a bit depressed, the other is angry I wanted to convey the whole range in this story."
At the moment Alborough is working on the drawings for the third book featuring Nat, Billy and Hugo. He works in a studio at the top of his house. "I can always scribble ideas down when I am out but this is the powerhouse, this is where it all happens. I probably work more than other people but if you love your job, you would rather be at your desk than out shopping!"
For further information, blogs and activities based on Jez Alborough's books, visit:
