In-depth Written Interview

Insights Beyond the Movie

Betsy Lewin, interviewed in her studio in Brooklyn, New York on August 22, 2001.

TEACHINGBOOKS: When did you begin drawing?

BETSY LEWIN: My mother said I was born with a pencil in my hand. I always drew. I can remember drawing when I was four and five years old. I have vivid memories of the paper in front of me, and drawing, always drawing out of my head. I never copied anything. My mother had bought a volume of children's books for us called, Children's Book House. They were leather-bound books, and they had these beautiful, full-colored pictures on the cover, and they went from nursery rhymes up to tales of foreign lands and fairy tales and all of that kind of thing. I think there were 12 books in the whole set. And I used to draw in the blank pages of those books, which really annoyed my mother. I've still got the books, and in them are two drawings from back then. One is of a figure sitting on a horse with a saddle that has a pommel on both ends and the other one is a figure peeking out from behind a tree. I remember drawing that image a lot: animals and people peeking out from behind trees.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Obviously, you enjoy drawing animals in your own stylized way; do you also enjoy drawing people in a realistic way?

BETSY LEWIN: I am not successful painting people realistically. They haven't got that sparkle in their eye; they haven't got that personality that jumps off the page at you, where my animals do. I have no explanation for that, and I am not sure it is something that would improve if I pursued it. The reason I don't is because I am just having so much fun illustrating animals.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Was Click, Clack, Moo as much fun to illustrate as it is for us to read?

BETSY LEWIN: When I started to illustrate Click, Clack, Moo, the first thing I wanted to do was get the characterizations of the animals. And I started with a cow, of course, since they're the main character. And I just started drawing cows. I usually have cow reference in front of me. I have photographs of cows, pictures from magazines, sometimes even other people's drawings of cows to see what they found about cows that interested them. There are things about cows that are particularly wonderful. Their big, wet noses are wonderful. Their wonderful swayback and those coat-hanger hips — I love those, too. And then, of course, their wonderful knobby knees. And as funny as cows are, there's something about them that is very dignified. Cows do have a look about them that says, "I know I'm funny looking, but please don't make fun of me." And I wanted to get that across, particularly in this book, because these are very smart cows. And then I started looking at cows from all different angles. What if I draw this cow from behind, I've got to have those coat-hanger hips, and that wonderful fly switch of the tail. And then their slightly knocked knees and enormous bellies. And you wouldn't even see anything in the front. But if you did, I could turn this cow a little bit sideways, too. Let's give her a front foot, and then maybe we'll just bring part of her head out here.

Or the duck. Ducks are wonderful, too. I love that sort of deadpan look that they give you. This kind of big, waddly body. Ducks are extremely funny and I have always known that ducks are intelligent. They have a secret intelligence that Doreen [Cronin] knows about, obviously. The picture in my mind of a duck waddling up the barnyard road with this note in his mouth cracks me up. And the idea that he is on this very important mission with this note. Do you know how many sketches I did of that illustration until I found one that I thought would surely crack everybody else up, too? I finally selected one that shows the duck in the distance because he has gone all the way from the house waddling; how long it must have taken him...

And Farmer Brown, you know, a lot of people ask me, "Why was Farmer Brown depicted as an elderly man?" It's funny. I didn't really think of him as being elderly. But I did think of him as not being a young man for the simple reason that he's very set in his ways. He doesn't want to give in to the cows' request for electric blankets. He doesn't like being told what to do. And so I made him look older and very set in his ways. He's almost a little scary-looking, but he's not a bad man. It's just that he is set in his ways. It takes a lot of talking to get him to change his mind, but he finally does come around, even though he doesn't like it.

TEACHINGBOOKS: The publishing of Click, Clack, Moo has an interesting history.

BETSY LEWIN: When I first saw the manuscript for Click, Clack, Moo, I just could hardly stop laughing long enough to illustrate it. I had just gotten the book illustrated and delivered the illustrations when I learned that the imprint that was publishing the book, Cobble-Hill books, had been dropped. I was heart-broken, but I felt sorrier for Doreen Cronin, the author. This was her first book. I was afraid nobody is going to want this completed gem. But it wound up at Simon & Schuster and the rest is history. I like to say this book has legs.

TEACHINGBOOKS: African influence is prevalent throughout most of your work. How did this come about?

BETSY LEWIN: When Ted and I first met, one of the things we had in common was that we both loved animals and we love the natural world. And he showed me a picture of his pet lion cub and that did it. But from the time we met, we talked about wanting to go to Africa and wanting to see the big herds and you know, the big animals before they completely disappear, because in the 1970s they were already talking about endangered species in a very serious way. That was the first big trip that we ever took and we did it with all the savings we had in the bank. It had a powerful influence on us in that we decided that travel had to be a part of our life. At the time, we had no idea that we were going to forge books out of these travels. That came later when we started doing children's books and realized that we could do that. We could tell these stories to children and that is how the travel worked its way into the world of children's books for us.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What books have come out of the trips you and Ted have taken together?

BETSY LEWIN: When Ted and I go away on these trips we always have the same experiences, and we go to the same places — but we usually have come away each with our own book. Ted usually does the more realistic and natural history nature story, and I come away with something like Chubbo's Pool, which is a fictional story for very young kids about my personal experience with a hippopotamus.

What happened with Gorilla Walk was that we went to Uganda to see the animals, each of us hoping to come away with our own story. It turned out that the trip was so physically difficult and exhausting that we spent most of our time just trying to hang on and stay upright, going up and down these volcanic slopes and then when we finally got to see the gorillas we had one hour to spend just watching these magnificent creatures. Sometimes they didn't do anything but sit there and eat. And you could absorb them; I have such mental pictures, moving pictures of these animals, but there really wasn't a story. The story it turns out was the trek.

On the way home in the airplane I was really kind of dismayed because I didn't have an idea and I looked at Ted and he is sitting there writing furiously in his journal and I said to him, "What are you writing?" and he said "I am writing about the trek because that is what happened." And then we decided this is a great opportunity for collaboration. We decided that Ted would do the big full color paintings of the gorillas, showing the gorillas in their habitat and their family situation and what they did all day long. Then I would do the trek with us climbing up and down mountains, falling, you know, walking over slippery logs, running away from soldier ants and all this. These little animated drawings would help carry the reader through the book. It was very successful, so we decided then to do Elephant Quest the same way, and that is our second collaboration.

TEACHINGBOOKS: How did you capture information for your books, Elephant Quest and Gorilla Walk, on which you collaborated with your husband, Ted?

BETSY LEWIN: We take cameras, we take sketch journals that we write and sketch in, we take little pocket tape recorders that we mainly use to tape ambient sounds like animal noises or just the sounds of water, bubbling brooks, whatever we hear. And when we come home, all of that helps us evoke the experience that we had and helps us get the mood I think, of the book, and the mood for creating the story and the drawings.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Walk a Green Path is a book that seems slightly different from the rest of your books. What was your process for writing this book?

BETSY LEWIN: Walk a Green Path came about in a very different way than the rest of my books, in that the pictures came first and then the writing. It was different for me because all of the paintings in Walk a Green Path have been done not with a book in mind, but just for my own pleasure. They were done sometimes in my own backyard, done from life, they were done from memory, they were done on sight in far away places, or they were done from photographs when I got home.

So one day when I was cleaning in my studio, I just put them all up and was looking at them, you know just to see sort of the range of work that I had done over a period of about 10 years, from the sketches, little sketches torn out of my sketchbook to big fully executed paintings. They really sort of started to speak to me, and I started writing little poetic phrases about them and the more I wrote the more I thought, "You know, this could be a book." So I put the artwork and poems together, and they became a book.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Most of us cannot visualize a pig dancing, that is, until we see your drawings for Dumpy La Rue.

BETSY LEWIN: I love pigs. Pigs are hysterical. With Dumpy La Rue, I wanted him to be a poignant-looking pig, because he wants to do something he is told he is not allowed to do — to dance — because he is a pig and because he is a boy.

Dumpy La Rue is kind of a delicate little pink pig. And mother of course is this huge sow, and papa pig, in the illustration where he finally gets up to dance, I have made him a caricature of Toulouse Lautrec's character, the la flamboyant, this wonderful, tall, skinny, elegant fellow with a top hat who dances through Moulin Rouge. All the barnyard animals are doing what make them funny to me. The idea of a mule doing the salsa is just really hysterical, so he really had to have this you know, this wonderful action pose. The stubborn mule lets loose and goes crazy. And, the idea of a conga line of sheep...because sheep all look alike...and then put them in this conga line...

TEACHINGBOOKS: You've illustrated a number of books for emerging readers. What's important for you to accomplish in this work.

BETSY LEWIN: The Scholastic Hello Reader books are about a first-grade class and feature six characters. The series is written by Grace Maccarone, my editor at Scholastic. I love doing these books. They are a different size and a different format for me.

The important thing in writing these books is to make those relationships warm, friendly and workable so that the children help each other. I try to do things in the illustrations that aren't mentioned in the text that shows the friendly relationship among all the children.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What did you enjoy about illustrating A Houseful of Christmas?

BETSY LEWIN: What appealed to me about Barbara Joosse's book? First of all it was originally called not a A Houseful of Christmas but Grandma's Floor. This whole family gets together and they get to sleep on Grandma's floor in a snowstorm...just think of the combination. Everybody together at Grandma's house for Christmas, with two dogs and a cat, and a snowstorm and then they all get to sleep there. I mean I can't imagine a more appealing story for a child.

What cracked me up, of course, were the animals in it. Edgar the dog and Fat Cat who hated Christmas, and I know just how cats hate Christmas because people try to put bows on them and the attention is not on them but it is on all this other stuff. Then along comes Uncle Bert with his firedog, this big floppy Dalmatian. All this appealed to me.

When you illustrate a story like that where there are specific characters, you have to give those characters a face. And that is always a challenge for me, and I love that challenge. I love the challenge of giving a face and a personality to the characters mentioned in the story. In Barbara Joosse's story particularly, I wanted to just read her words and let her description of those characters decide for me what they look like and how they were going to be. Uncle Lambert had such a comfortable lap. And immediately a picture came into my mind that was definitely Uncle Lambert. It was great fun!

TEACHINGBOOKS: How do you keep visual continuity of your illustrated characters throughout a book?

BETSY LEWIN: Where a character is going to have to appear more than once, even if it is an animal character, I develop the character first. I do many, many drawings until I get him looking the way I want and I am sure that I can draw that character in any pose from any angle, with any expression on his face. Then I know I am ready to do the finishes. I also make sure they are wearing the same clothes in every picture, because that will be the first thing that a kid will notice. "How come they have black shoes on, when they were blue in the last picture?" they'll ask.

Because my drawing is so quick and spontaneous, a lot of times if I have to do illustrations over several times, they lose some of their spontaneity. So during the past few years, I discovered that if I do the drawings on tracing paper, and then tear that tracing paper up, if I don't like the head on a particular animal I can replace it with another; if I don't like a particular gesture, I can tear that out and put another one in. So my final drawings when I work this way wind up looking like a sewed-together Frankenstein monster.

I take that taped together drawing to a copy shop, and I have them copy it on my paper that I am going to work on and I can get as many copies as I want and then I have many, many originals to work from. Then I can experiment with color and keep doing it until I get one that I really like.

TEACHINGBOOKS: I understand that you do regular programs at schools. What are you trying to get across to your audiences?

BETSY LEWIN: What I am trying to get across is how wonderful it is to be a children's book illustrator. I want children to understand that this rather non-conventional job is doable. And whatever you want to do, you can do it. And that whatever you decide to do, you should love doing it.

Then I like to tell them a little bit about myself, where I came from, how I got to do children's books. I go through some of the books. I talk about what inspired me with this one, or share some little private jokes in some of the books, like one I dedicated to my brother. His birthday is on a calendar in the book, and he loves starlight mints, so I scattered those around, things like that. When I start drawing, it makes the children real itchy to draw, too. So I have them come up and one-by-one they add something to the drawing.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Is it difficult having a partner (Ted Lewin) who is an accomplished writer/illustrator, and now you are the one currently being put in the spotlight?

BETSY LEWIN: I think it is obvious in our relationship that we are not jealous of each other. I was never anything but delighted whenever Ted got any recognition at all, recognition that he richly deserves. Editor's Note: Ted Lewin won a 1994 Caldecott Honor for Peppe the Lamplighter.

I never worried about whether or not I was ever going to win an award or whether or not I was going to get that kind of recognition. All the other illustration that I did, whether it was illustrating greeting cards or spot drawings for children magazines, I always wanted to do more but I never really thought it would happen. And so when it just sort of naturally unfolded, I was very happy. Now I am very happy that I have won a Caldecott Honor [for Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type in 2001].

TEACHINGBOOKS: You illustrate using a lot of different media. Which is your favorite?

BETSY LEWIN: I like the drawing style in Click, Clack, Moo. The way I really like to draw is out of my head and I like to do this very loose brush or felt-tip pen kind of drawing and then add color overlays. Whether I illustrate in brush or felt-tip pen, as in Click, Clack, Moo (in brush), or Barbara Joosse's A Houseful of Christmas (in felt-tip pen), I'm happy.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What is a typical workday like?

BETSY LEWIN: I usually get up very early, 6:30, 7:00. We have breakfast at home and take a walk. We usually run into dog walkers at that time of the morning and exchange pleasantries, get the fresh air and then go back to our house, and then I go right up to the studio and start working. It depends on what stage I am in, if I am just reading a manuscript, I read that and I start fooling around with sketches. If I am into the book, then it is just a question of picking up where I left off the day before. I usually work without stopping until about Noon. If I hear the mail fall inside the slot, I go down and check the mail or I will take a break and call Ted from his studio and we will have lunch. And then we usually go back to work for another hour or so or maybe we go to the gym or do other errands. But I work in the morning. The morning is my workday.

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