Susan L. Roth: This is Susan L. Roth and I am co-author and illustrator of the book, Butterfly for a King. My co-author is Cindy Trumbore and this, I think it's our fourth book together, maybe fifth. And additionally, Cindy was my editor for many, many years. Many of her books that she edited are still in print, so we have a long friendship as well as professional relationship. And we had a lot of fun doing this Butterfly book together. The topic for this book really came from Cindy. She discovered it and introduced me to it and it was intriguing. And then the job is to try to find a story that would be a presentable story and an interesting story. And hopefully, one with a beginning, middle, and end. And one that would be illustratable as well. I have to say that she does all the hardest part. She usually does 90% of the hard studying and learning about the facts and the reasons and the political ramifications and all of that ahead of me.

And then I do the investigative part so that I can try as hard as possible to get the illustrations to go with the story. In this case, we thought that it was two stories instead of just one, because there are a lot of facts. But the story, it happens easily as well as with a little studying, and so we wrote double. And we have the top layer, which is just a couple of words per page and the picture. And then on the bottom, for people who are more interested and it is interesting, is the hard factual part, which Cindy wrote in a beautiful, poetic way.

Virtually, all my books are done in collage, recycling. It's all part of the same idea. And I do recycle. You should see my collection of papers; I never throw anything away.

I would like to talk very briefly about a few of the spreads from Butterfly for a King. I would like to start at the very beginning, which is the title page, because it's very empty except for a few butterflies in the sky. But the bottom part and the spread that follows, which is the very, very beginning, has no islands in the water, not even one. And the dedication is in the sunshine. There are a couple of butterflies just for good measure, but that's for imagination. The bottom part, the water, has no island. And then the book begins. And I will read two lines, the top part, "Lava flowed and islands rose. And islands rose and formed a chain." And that's how Hawaii really happened. But when lava flowed, it came from an explosion. And that was a very challenging picture to make a real volcano and to make the volcano out of paper.

And it is largely black on the bottom, and then it has a little bit of leaking orange and red, and it goes into a brilliant yellow of the flame. And then on the edge is, again, orange and I am ... lots of ripping of the paper. It's mostly rice paper, but not all. Also, some cutting with very pointy edges. I could just feel that fire flowing. On the following page, it's "Islands rose and formed a chain" and they're just barely coming off the water, but they're not quite, quite recognizable yet.