SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
A still-life painting is still. The subjects don't move. That bowl of fruit remains motionless on the table. The hunk of cheese goes uneaten. The candles do not flicker. Everything is still. But wait - where's that dragon going?
ALEX LONDON: A lack of sleep is an essential part of my process, as is vivid hallucinations and trying to make myself laugh.
SIMON: Alex London is the author of "Still Life," a picture book about a picture that goes rogue. And for our series Picture This, Alex London and illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky talk about how it all began in the middle of the night while Alex London was staring vacantly into space.
LONDON: My husband and I had a newborn and I was feeding her, staring - as you do - for what felt like forever, with nothing to occupy me. Except there was an art book sitting on a little ottoman in front of me, and on the cover of it was a still-life painting. It was a 17th century Dutch breakfast painting. So it's a painting of sort of an abundant table covered in breakfast things. And the more I looked at it, the more I could imagine a story playing out in this painting. And I thought, huh, this is kind of a cool notion. So after draft and drafts and drafts, it eventually arrived at this artist - an authoritative artist - lectures the reader about the appropriate content for a still-life painting and how a person is supposed to look at it. But the painting has some ideas of its own and is bursting with adventure, with story, and worst of all for the artist, with movement. And completely unbeknownst to this artist as he drones on, the story unfolds behind him.
PAUL O ZELINSKY: You know, I thought when I got the manuscript that it was hilarious. It was really funny to read. I wasn't sure, though, that if you had pictures and they showed something happening and the words said that wasn't happening, I wasn't sure that it would be quite as funny. And the only way I thought I could tell whether it would be as funny with pictures was to make pictures. So I started trying to sketch out a really rough dummy. I couldn't tell, and I made more of it, and I still couldn't tell. And finally, I got to the very end of the book. I finished it. And it was really funny.
So there may be people listening who are interested in book illustration and being one. I'd just say, don't ever do what I did. This is the most ridiculous way to approach a decision whether to illustrate a book by first illustrating it. Alex, you put so many things in the text that had to be in the painting. That was a challenge.
LONDON: Yeah. I - as I was writing, I think, how is an illustrator going to do this? As I put it in, you know, the jam and the strawberries and the coins, and then the dragon and the knight and the princess, and none of them are playing the role you think they're going to play. I wanted everything in it to kind of defy expectations. And I think it's so cool, the different styles you brought to bear.
ZELINSKY: Yeah. Well, if you want to know what it looks like, there's a painting on almost every page. It's a still life of bowls of fruit, a candle, a toy castle. It's all on a table with an elegant tablecloth - damask-print tablecloth. There's a bag of coins and a feather pen and a pen and ink, thimble and thread - all these things. I tried to make it very meticulous and picky and full of things.
LONDON: So the artist is telling you all the different things that can and should be in a painting. The painting is already starting to go a little wild, and the artist says, (reading) a doll house is a worthy subject for a still life painting. The furniture is delicate and arranged just so. Nothing watches from the upper floor. If you see a note in a still life painting, please do not read it.
There's a note. There's a note. There's a note. And the note says, help, dragon. And when we read this with kids, they all shout out and read it. And I say, don't read it. It says, please do not read it, you said. (Reading) Please do not read it. Do not follow any clues. In a still life, there are no clues. What you see is all there is. There is nothing to chase, and no one to follow.
But, of course, there is a lot to chase, and there is definitely someone to follow, and our brave princess grabs the red thread and makes her way following through the painting.
ZELINSKY: I thought it was really cool that the note that the princess sees - that you're not supposed to read - it says, help, dragon. Turns out at the end not to mean, help, there's a dragon or help me with the dragon, because there's a knight fighting the dragon. But it turns out retroactively to have been written by the dragon saying help. That's a very cool twist.
LONDON: In these school visits, when I would get to read it out loud, young listeners start out so serious, and their faces are so earnest. And then, as the painting starts to defy the words I'm reading aloud, you could see them in the crowd starting to scurry, to whisper to each other - wait, that's not what - that's not what's happening. He's wrong. He's wrong. And by the end, I'll never forget the one visit we did where the entire crowd - of, like, I think it was three different grade levels - started chanting as I was reading, opposite, opposite, opposite. Because what was happening in the pictures was the opposite of what he was saying. And I loved that defiance.
Ultimately, that's what I want - is the children to realize that you don't have to obey these authoritative voices that this painting certainly isn't, and it is really a book about defiance.
ZELINSKY: It's so much fun. And when we were reading it, there are no eager mice hiding behind the cloth, not in a still life painting, but there obviously are. And as you read it, the kids are saying, there they are. There, mice are there.
LONDON: And the mice are adorable, I should add.
ZELINSKY: I've been working on mice for years. I started out thinking that I would grow up and be a painter and not an illustrator. And when I got to college, I saw in the course catalog that someone had put together a course about children's books and their illustration, and they had gotten Maurice Sendak to teach it. And I thought that sounded fantastic, and it was. It was beyond fantastic. And it wasn't that much technical drawing methods but really more about the why of things. I don't think I see Sendak drawings particularly in this book. But I stayed in touch with him after that course really for the rest of his life. And I know that he loved crazy things. He loved really nutty drawings. And you can see some of the things he's done are just insane and ridiculous, and I tried for that.
LONDON: We were going for ridiculous.
ZELINSKY: Yeah. I hope the insanity and ridiculousness is cleared everybody and enjoyed by everybody. That insistence on order has to be opposed.
LONDON: Childhood and stillness are kind of indirect opposition to each other. And I think that's something that our readers really relate to with this book. As hard as this artist tries to keep things still and quiet, the art just won't be stilled because it's got too much life in it. And it's too silly.
ZELINSKY: When you're signing a book, you can't just sign your name. You really - it's better to say something else. And you started writing, don't move, exclamation point, Alex London.
LONDON: So that you could write, move, Paul Zelinsky. That's our great lesson here.
ZELINSKY: That's the message - don't move.
LONDON: Move.
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SIMON: Alex London and Paul O. Zelinsky talking about their children's book, "Still Life." Our series, Picture This, is produced by Samantha Balaban and edited by Melissa Gray. For more conversations between authors and illustrators, you can head on over to npr.org/picturethis.
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