The blog Sruble's World, written by illustrator Stephanie Ruble, has a nice interview with Kristi Valiant about her art, her career, and her newest book, Cora Cooks Pancit.
When asked how she chooses which scenes and details to draw from the manuscript, Kristi says,
When asked how she chooses which scenes and details to draw from the manuscript, Kristi says,
"Picture books by definition tell part of the story through pictures, so I try to pick out parts that can be expanded upon to tell a deeper or funnier story by "reading" the illustrations. For example, in Cora Cooks Pancit, I added a dog to the illustrations who wasn't mentioned at all in the text. He follows around the main character and keeps bringing more and more toys hoping the little girl will play with him. She ignores the dog all the way through the book, until the very end when she's lying on the floor playing tug of war with the dog. I don't draw only what the text says for picture books, but novels are a bit different. In a novel, the whole story is told in the text and the illustrations usually just show the action or feeling of what's already told."
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