Thursday, May 20, 2010

Meeting! Kelly! Murphy!

Meeting the amazing and talented illustrator, Kelly Murphy has GOT to be one of the absolute highlights of an already incredible trip. In a nutshell? I adore her.

She has amazing energy and is sweet and funny and I seriously want to do an entire book tour with her. (So everyone go out and buy tons of Beastologist books so we can have a Kelly and Robin Beastolgist Book Tour. We promise to come to a city near YOU!)

One of the things that was so fascinating was how very many thing we had in common. Weird things. Almost eerie things.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it here before, but when they were talking about illustrators for the books, my editor directed me to Kelly’s (old) website. Her home page was a map. With a compass. And under Favorite Books, she’d listed ATLASES!! How perfect a fit was that?

But the amazing coincidental similarities don’t end there. At one point in time I had seven brothers, Kelly has five! And one sister! I also have one sister.

I get goosebumps whenever I go into a museum or library, and Kelly gets goosebumps whenever she looks at a statue.

We both do very similar type collages when we’re brainstorming our projects.

We both ADORE the research stage.

The list goes on and on. Pretty astounding, really.

It was so fascinating to see Kelly’s presentation and hear how she approached illustrating the books and the decisions and choices she made in order to evoke certain things about Nathaniel in very spare, clean lines.

She was also incredibly generous and showed kids lots of her rough sketches so they could see just how raw early work was, even with a professional illustrator. The kids especially loved watching her draw “on the spot” and seeing Nate come to life before her eyes.

Really, I am the luckiest of authors to be partnering with her on these books. Thank you, Kelly!

4 comments:

Becky Levine said...

How cool to find each other like this. And how much COOLER that now you two can come and do ALL MY RESEARCH for me! :)

dixie said...

It is VERY amazing that you two are such a good fit and so many things had to happen to bring you two together. It took the muses of you both plus your publisher working full time to make a perfect match. And yes, I will do my part and buy many more Nathaniel Fludd books to help get this tour on your schedule.
Welcome back!

katie said...

You guys are an amazing fit! You write my favorite books!

Robin L said...

Ha! The thing is, Becky, both of use would probably JUMP at the chance, if we weren't drowning in other projects. :-) Plus seriously, you can't tell me you don't enjoy research! Mining for all that gold?

Thank you, Dixie. :-) Although you have been a staunch supporter from the get-go.

Katie, I'm so honored they are among your favorites!