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Matthew Burgess |
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Matthew Burgess is a poet, educator, and the author of many picture books, including The Bear and The Moon, Words with Wings & Magic Things, and Fireworks. Burgess taught poetry programs in New York City public schools for more than 20 years and is now a professor of literature and creative writing at Brooklyn College. Burgess lives in Brooklyn and Berlin.
Matthew Forsythe is the author and illustrator of Pokko and the Drum, Mina, and Aggie and the Ghost. He was lead designer on Adventure Time and has worked on several other animated projects. He lives in Los Angeles.
Their picture book collaboration, If the Moon, goes on sale August 4.
Matthew Burgess: As a writer yourself, what draws you to illustrating other people’s picture book texts? How is the process different?
Matthew Forsythe: This project in particular was exciting for me because I treated it like a series of painting prompts. Painting is meditative for me, and your vignettes were so immediately evocative of worlds I wanted to paint. When I saw your poem, I felt like I could see most of the book right away. I knew I would enjoy painting all these little worlds, and I did.
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| Matthew Forsythe | |
I think also that illustration—when it’s working best—is a form of writing. So, I tried when I could to illustrate a second or B-narrative that hovered over your A-story. Floating above it, weaving in and out of it. Hopefully gently pushing and pulling against your words in an evocative way.
Burgess: Absolutely. When I first sent you the poem, I imagined our collaboration would play out in this way. Do you remember a bedtime book from your own childhood that left an impression on you?
Forsythe: I think there are some obvious nods to Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, and to Winsor McKay and his Little Nemo comics, which I loved when I was younger. For me, this book is all about that liminal adventure we go on between waking and sleeping. And I think all three of those works describe that time. What were some of your inspirations?
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Burgess: Well, the poem was written in response to your invitation. I had written to you about Mina, a book I love, and during the conversation, you invited me to send you something. I remember taking a screenshot of one of your paintings—a fragment of a boy holding a wand above a dragon-scribe character wearing wire-rim glasses—and I carried it around with me as the wallpaper on my phone. The first draft of If the Moon emerged shortly thereafter.
Forsythe: Would you say the story comes from your own childhood experience?
Burgess: When I was a kid, I would become swarmed with fears while lying in bed in the dark. So, I think of this picture book as a kind of antidote to the dreaded “what-ifs,” and your paintings demonstrate this so beautifully. “If” can lead us down a dark path, but with a bit of effort and imagination, we can harness the power of our wondering in a dreamier, more poetic direction.