Simona Ciraolo
About Author
Simona Ciraolo is a children's book author. She grew up in Italy and studied animation at the National Film School. She moved to England shortly afterwards and worked in advertising and feature films. She is currently based in London and has completed an MA in Children's Book Illustration in Cambridge.
Interview
THE LINES ON NANA'S FACE
JULY 2016
PUBLISHED BY FLYING EYE BOOKS
The Lines on Nana's Face is a warm story that helps to explain where wrinkles come from, and why age - and our memories - are to be treasured.
The story is focused around the relationship between a little girl and her Nana. When asked about the lines on her face, Nana explains to the young child why each line is to be treasured, reflecting on the moments that helped to create each wrinkle.
We asked creator Simona Ciraolo to tell us more about this picture book and her earlier work, Whatever Happened to my Sister? and Hug Me, all published by Flying Eye Books.
Q: What took you from working in animation to writing and illustrating your own books?
A: I have always loved picture books and I have a huge collection of them. I worked at a small publishing company in Italy while I was doing animation but wanted to know more about illustration so I did an MA in illustration and then worked as a freelance illustrator. I've been in the UK for 11 years now and I'm focused on illustration.
Q: Where do you find your stories?
A: My stories always start with the feeling. With Hug Me, I wanted to talk about someone who is slightly misunderstood, difficult, but that was just his exterior. The idea to make a cactus the main character came later; it was the emotion I wanted to explore. I think that that is what remains when you strip away everything else from the story.
In Whatever Happened to My Sister, I wanted to explore that sense of being left behind which is something that everyone will experience at some point in their life and which is relevant to you if you're younger or older. What interested me in this story was the fact that the person witnessing it - the little sister who sees her big sister turn into a teenager - is puzzled because she's not yet had that experience, she can't fully understand what is happening. It's as if her best friend has grown up and left her behind.
Q: Do you feel that your picture books have as much appeal as much to adults as to children?
A: Sometimes in picture books there is a tendency to pick subjects that are very child friendly, and these are more commercial. But when I was a child I was interested in adult life and didn't have any trouble understanding things that related to them. So I don't want to think that a child wouldn't understand these stories, these concepts.
I don't think about my picture books being read across different age groups, but I am glad that it happens and that other grown ups would read picture books and enjoy them the same way I do.
Q: Can you explain why you wanted your latest picture book, The Lines on Nana's Face, to celebrate age and experience?
A: The reason this book is important to me is in the first instance political; I think that the way society is at the moment, there are a lot of prejudices about ageing and especially for women there are all these perceptions of what it's like to be an older woman. I want to help give children a different concept of what age actually means.
The framework for the story came to me on my grandmother's birthday, which is when the idea for the picture book story came together. But I still had to struggle to bring it together and I put it to one side for a couple of years while I worked on other stories.
Q: During the story the Nana tells the child about precious moments in her life that she links to different wrinkles. How hard was it to decide on those moments?
A: It was really hard to choose them. For me it is often everyday moments that are precious, not big moments, and I wanted those for the Nana. I decided that rather than doing more with her life - perhaps flying a plane - it would be enough for her to be a woman and to have had a fulfilling life as a mother with a job and a family.
For the sad moment, I decided against having a death in the book, which would have been the obvious thing, and instead had her moving away from home. And a happy moment was when the cat had kittens because I thought a child would be fascinated by this and want to ask questions about what had happened.
Q: You keep the text very spare, did that make it harder to write the story?
A: I wanted the Nana to describe many of these experiences in just a line or two, so that made it harder especially the page where she is explaining that she made the wedding dress for her sister. We had to understand that she was a seamstress and that what she did was an enormously satisfying experience for her.
Q: Was it difficult to draw an older person?
A: I have never drawn an older person before so I did need to practice but I made the decision some time ago that I would never change a story because there was something I didn't want to draw. I found that when you're putting lines on a face it can get harsh very quickly so I had to make the lines softer. I use mostly pencils and draw on paper.
When it came to the cover, which has an image of the Nana with her granddaughter, I was originally just going to use a portrait of the Nana but my publisher felt that the relationship with the little girl was central to the story so they wanted her on the cover as well. Without that relationship, the story would have been just a collection of memories with nothing to draw them together.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: At the moment I'm illustrating a non-fiction text for someone else. I haven't written another picture book yet because I have been committed to other projects.
Q: Where do you do your work?
A: I have a studio space in south London with big windows and a long table by the windows. There's an old fashioned arm chair and some cacti, and some of my drawings - but not many - along with some postcards on the wall. I don't have a view, I can only see sky from the windows!
