Summary:
Have you been on a trip you could make a book about?
Your book might be about:
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Alison Lester: This is my most recent picture book and, like all my books it started off with something that really happened.
When my kids were - Lachie was in Grade 3 and Clair was in Grade 6 and Will was in Year 9 - we did a trip around
Australia and, even though we didn't actually do all this trip in one go, we did, we actually went across here,
up the coast and then down the centre, but for the book I turned it into a huge trip where we went all the way around.
I've never done a book that had more pictures in it.
When I planned it I was going to have lots of photographs but I actually didn't have enough room to put all those things in.
So, it starts off with them leaving home, heading off across South Australia, seeing the whales and the Bight, going up the Western Australian coast.
I like this picture of them all snorkelling at Turquoise Bay but they're a family with very skinny legs for some
reason in this picture, I don't quite know how they got those legs.
And they go across through the Kimberley.
They're in Darwin.
I like this one of them seeing some rock art at Kakadu.
They're very beautiful these places, they're like churches, like cathedrals, you can get a sense of all the people who have been there before you.
And then the bit I was going to read you was when they start coming south again, so this bit goes Heading south.
In Cairns we spent all our time at the pool.
One day, Mum crashed into Billy on the water slide and got banned for the whole afternoon.
That actually happened to me.
At Hinchinbrook Island we hiked for hours to swim at Mulligan Falls.
That evening we were all so tired and sore we needed a back rub.
We left the coast and drove inland to visit our friends at Miles.
We all helped on the farm and Luke had a go at shearing.
The sheep looked skinny and embarrassed without their wool.
At Surfers Paradise we rode on a scary bungee ride.
'Uurgh!' moaned Dad as it catapulted up. 'I can't look.'
But Mum laughed as she spun above the lights. 'I can look,' she shouted.
And that's kind of a little joke in the book because she's the one who's always scared about things.
Later that week we caught heaps of fish off the jetty at Forster.
Boats skimmed across the sea as we drove down the coast, and Billy said, 'Are we there yet?'
And then finally when they get to Sydney, which is where we are now.
When we got to Sydney we parked our van in Uncle Pete's garden.
Next day at the zoo a baby elephant stared hungrily at my hat so I ran. 'No way,' I yelled. 'I like this hat.'
Because at the circus in Mt Isa an elephant ate her hat that she hated.
Uncle Pete's dog, Bongo, towed Luke all the way along Bondi Beach.
One day, we went bushwalking in the Blue Mountains.
Oil evaporating from the eucalyptus trees makes the blue haze.
Mum and I imagined the kind of clothes the Three Sisters would wear.
On our last night in Sydney we had a picnic overlooking the harbour.
Cascading fireworks exploded across the sky and their reflections shimmered on the water.
It felt like a farewell display just for us.
And then finally they keep going to Tassie, along the Great Ocean Road.
And finally they get back to where they live, which is a little place called Binnum, near the South Australian border.
Finally we were back at our house.
Buffy was so pleased to see us she jumped right into the car.
I cuddled Tigger and called out to Bess.
It was good to hear her whinny back.
Billy woke up and said, 'Are we there yet?'
And we were. We were home.
And that's always a nice thing about going away is coming home again.
So that's 'Are we there yet?'.
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Summary:
Alison Lester says that it is always better to do your own sort of book.
What does she mean?
Do you agree?
What would be your sort of book?
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Alison Lester: I thought you might like to see this book, which is the first book that I ever did.
I did this one when, I think I did it when I was ten, I'd have to have a bit of a look at the date.
It's very ancient. It's older than all your mums and dads, I bet.
It might have a date written on it, Grade 4, so I was probably about eight or ten, I suppose, and it's called
'The Secret of St Clares' and it's really a terrible book.
Like, no-one would look at this and go, 'Oh this kid's obviously going to illustrate and write children's books when she grows up.'
Instead of doing a story about what I was doing then, which was like living on a farm, riding my horse and
and having a good time, I wrote this stupid story about an English girls' boarding school because that was the
sort of stuff I loved reading and it's a bit like now, sometimes when kids get a chance to write stories they
do Harry Potter-type stories and it's always better to do your own sort of book.
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Summary:
Alison Lester says that making a dummy is a really important thing for her to do when planning a book.
Why do you think this is an important thing for her?
Have you ever made rough drafts of your stories and pictures?
How could this help with our own book-making in the future?
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Alison Lester: 'Imagine' is a picture book that I did a long time ago now.
It's a pretty old book.
And sometimes when I do my books I actually have a bright idea and I ring my publishers up and say, 'I've got
this really good idea for a book' and then other times they will say, 'We'd like you to do a book about something.'
And that's what happened with this book.
They asked me if I'd do an animal book for little kids.
So I went away and looked at lots of books and there were so many beautiful ones, I thought I'd like to make my book like a game.
Now, whenever I make a book I make a dummy. It's like, not a dummy-stupid, a dummy-pretend.
It's usually the same size as the book is going to be but for some reason I did this as a teeny, teeny, tiny little one.
But it's a really important thing for me to do when I'm planning my book.
You can see a little bit of scribble there that says 'Imagine a place deep in the jungle, ocelots snarling,
chimpanzees yapping, parakeets flashing and crocodiles snapping.'
And then there's a tiny little picture of some kids playing in a tree.
And when you turn the page there's just a bit of scribble but it says, it basically says, 'Big page full of rainforest.'
So that was the start of it.
When I had written it out maybe twenty times the rhyme became, 'Imagine if we were deep in the jungle where
butterflies drift and jaguars prowl where parakeets squawk and wild monkeys howl ...'
So the rhyme has got a lot better, hasn't it?
I think it's a good thing to remember when you're writing that sometimes if you get a nice rhythm in your head
when you're writing, write it down even if the words aren't perfect because you can work on the words and
fix them up but the rhythm is often a hard thing to get back.
And then that's the page that I described as being full of everything.
Now that page - I'll make a little pile down here.
Here's a photocopy of that drawing when it was only partly done.
So you can see how when I start my drawings I'm quite messy.
I don't try to be too tidy and then, once I get them fairly right, with everything in the right place, I then trace them.
So that's a tracing, but I've used two steps, I haven't just traced it.
I've traced it really lightly and then I've gone over it with a pencil and drawn it up so I press harder in some places and soft in others.
You can see that that paper is lovely to draw on but you can tell it wouldn't be very nice to paint on, would it be?
It's too thin, like, yeah, it would just get wet and fall to pieces.
So I photocopy that drawing onto a piece of watercolour paper and colour that.
And this bit is really fun, I just love this colouring in bit.
It's like having my own colouring book.
Probably takes, I don't know, a few days to paint that.
And you can see all the times that I've tested my paint.
A couple of things I never do, I never use paint straight out of the tube.
I always mix up a new colour using a few other colours.
And I never put my paintbrush onto the page without testing it first.
And here's a piece of paper that's been underneath something I've been working on.
So you can see all those tiny little brushstrokes where I've just tested it to make sure that I've got the colour right.
Because sometimes you might mix something up and you think it's a bit darker than it is, or a bit lighter.
I always do that to make sure it's okay.
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Summary:
Alison Lester says you really have to get to know your characters.
What does she mean by this?
Why is this important?
How would you get to know the characters in a book you might make?
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Alison Lester: Before I did 'Are we there yet?' this was my most popular book in Australia by far.
'Imagine' has been the most popular international one - it's been translated into about ten different languages.
This has never been translated but this is a popular Australian one.
And once again this was my editor saying, she came to stay with me at the beach that I always go to and said,
'Why don't you do a book about this beach?'
So I came up with the idea of 'Magic Beach'.
And I'll show you some of the rough drawings for that.
Here I am just practising drawing the kids so I knew what they look like.
You have to know your characters very well or they might look a bit older on one page than the next page.
Here's a rough drawing of that first picture of them playing in the sea and then the photocopy of it.
I did a really stupid thing, though, I actually have these marks on my page to make sure I don't put anything
important because that's where the fold of the book is and I put that little boy's face right in the fold of the book which I was very cross about.
I hate making mistakes like that.
And there's a colour rough, too, where I was just seeing what the colours would look like when I put it together.
When I did this picture I thought it was fantastic and when I showed it to my editor she said 'That's
disgusting, Alison, there's no way you're putting that in this book' and I went 'Oh, what's wrong with it?' and
I didn't think it was too bad at the time, but when she pointed it out to me I realised that it was kind of
too big for the book, like, that's the picture that I ended up using.
So this is an imaginary page where the kids are imagining that the waves are white horses and it just
like kids riding white horses, whereas this one where the waves and the horses are much more part of each
other, seemed to work better and also to have it as a circle so it was like a little slice of your imagination, made it a better picture, I think.
Do you think that's true? Yeah, I think it is.
So sometimes even though you've done a picture that you think is fantastic, you just have to chuck it away and try again.
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Summary:
Alison Lester describes how she developed the cover for Magic Beach.
What do you think are important features of a book cover?
When designing a cover for a book you might make, what would you need to consider about your readers?
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Alison Lester: This was my first cover for 'Magic Beach' - Magic Beach spelt in shells - and I actually did
this as coloured artwork on watercolour paper but I've lost it and I just loved it, like, there were little
purple cowries and little green starfish and orange shells and bits of seaweed.
At this stage the whole book was finished and I'd taken all the artwork and the cover into the publisher.
I live out in the country still, so I'd driven into the city and we were all standing around, the editor and
the designer and me, going, 'Oh, wow, this is going to be such a nice cover.
It's going to be a lovely book.
Let's go and have lunch somewhere nice.'
And just then Barry walked past, who was one of the sales team and he said, 'Oh, are you using that for the cover?'
And we went, 'Yeah, what do you mean?'
And he said, 'I've just had a really hard time selling a book that just had, like, words on the cover without
actual pictures, I really don't think you should use that cover.'
So we had to kind of think, well, he knows what he's talking about, we should be listening to him.
So I went home a bit disappointed and came up with this cover, where the kids were playing in the middle of a
circle and there was room to put 'Magic Beach' and my name and all the imaginary stuff was happening around the outside.
And once again I'd drive back into the city pretty pleased that I'd got it done and I showed it to my editor,
who's very tall and skinny and British and she has, you know people who leave big gaps in their talk so you get
a bit nervous and you feel like you have to fill it in?
She looked at it for a long time and she said, 'Well, it's very nice but we can't possibly use it' and I went
'Why not?' and she went and got 'The Journey Home', which is a book that I'd done the year before, off the
shelf and pointed out that 'The Journey Home' had a mermaid in this corner, a pirate in this corner and a
knight in this corner, so I was kind of really just doing the same thing again.
So, I had to go home again and keep trying for the cover.
Had this idea where it was like a life preserver.
It looked too English; it looked more like 'Tim Goes to the Lighthouse'.
And then here came back to the idea of a circle and I started playing around with all different patterns of
shells and up here thought 'Aha, I know what I could do, I could have a picture from inside the book and just a border of shells around the outside.'
And I felt so stupid that it'd taken me weeks and weeks to come up with that idea.
And then at the very last minute the designer - I made the border of shells - she said 'I think it needs some
colour behind it, they're just kind of falling off the white.'
So I did a blue background and that was the book, the cover that we got.
And this is a new edition, you can see we've changed it a little bit, like, the sky's gone, I think, hasn't it?
We put sparkles on so, and a different font so it looks a little bit more modern.
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Summary:
Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo is about what happens over six seasons in one year.
When Frank was Four portrays a boy’s life between the ages of 1 and 7.
You could try making a book about a period of time:
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Alison Lester: These are the 'Clive eats alligator' books I call them.
And this was the first book, 'Clive Eats Alligators, Rosie Sips Spiders'.
So this was the dummy and this one's the finished one and you can see how similar they are.
It's really good for you to see these rough drawings and realise that I don't draw very carefully.
For my first draft of drawing, I let myself make lots of mistakes and I try to get a lot of energy into my
drawing instead of just being sort of stiff and careful.
And you can always photocopy or trace to translate it onto better paper but keep that in mind when you're
working that, the more energy you put into that first drawing, the better it will look.
There's a picture of Rosie sipping spiders and here's the picture that it turned into.
Do you know what spider's are? Do you ever have them?
Child: It's like lemonade and ice cream in it.
Alison: Yeah, they're yummy. Especially the lime ones.
Here's another one called 'Tessa Snaps Snakes' which is about the same one.
And here's ... often I have to make big lists like this one, where I'm planning what I'm going to do.
I'm a great maker of lists.
Yeah, you would have had these ones before, I think.
Here's ... those pencil drawings have been traced and I've drawn over them in pen and then coloured them with watercolour.
Here was one that I didn't like that I covered up and, of course, I wouldn't do that anymore because
everything gets designed on the computer so it's really easy just to change something within the design program.
But Clive eats ... I mean 'Ernie Dances to the Didgeridoo' was a book that I did with a group of kids in Arnhem Land.
And they'd actually made a book the way you're going to make a book now and it was such a lovely book.
It was called 'We Love Gunbalanya', which is the place they live, so I decided to do the next book in the series based up there.
So it talks about Ernie going up to Arnhem Land for a year and arriving at his new house and then, up there
there is six seasons, so for each season the kids write back, or Ernie writes back to the kids down south,
describing his life up there with the indigenous kids.
So it says, 'Dear Clive, it's Kudjewk now, the monsoon season.
It rains every day but I'm having a good time.
Sammi surfs in the puddles.
Christine slides in the mud.
Ernie catches frogs.
Joseph plays football.
Patrick spears a barramundi.
And Jenna rides her bike in the rain.
But Tammy and her baby brother watch a goanna floating in the floodwaters.'
Because it rains like crazy up there.
'Dear Frank, it's Bangkerreng, harvest time, It has stopped raining and the sun shines every day.
Christine plays tin-tin.
Sammi jumps into the waterfall.
Ernie sneaks up on the buffalo.
Patrick collects goose eggs.
Joseph does backflips off the coconut tree.
And Tammy gets chased by a crocodile.
But Jenna goes for a walk and her grandfather's pig goes too.'
Now, just before we start making our books I'll show you another nice ...
This one, 'When Frank Was Four', follows the kids through from when they're one until when they're seven, which is another way of doing it.
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