Classroom Connections: Painting Wonder by Katie Wray Schon
age range: 6-8 years
genre / format: picture book biography
Katie Wray Schon’s website
An accessible and inspiring mini-biography, delightfully illustrated.
— Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Please tell us about your book.
PAINTING WONDER is a picture book biography of Pauline Baynes, the talented woman who illustrated all seven of the original Narnia books by C.S. Lewis.
What inspired you to write this story?
As is so often true, this success story started with a bit of a failure!
I had decided to illustrate a few scenes from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe for my portfolio. I love that book, and I thought it would be the perfect source for some sample illustrations.
But I could not get the original illustrations out of my head! Every time I tried to start fresh, I found myself thinking back to those lovely, simple ink drawings of the Beavers’ kitchen, or the Witch’s sled, or four kids tumbling out of a wardrobe. And then I realized – I didn’t even know who had made those drawings!
The answer, of course, is Pauline Baynes. Once I started reading about her, I couldn’t wait to share her story.
Could you share with readers how you conducted your research and / or share a few interesting tidbits about your writing process with this book?
There is no published biography of Pauline Baynes, so I drew from recollections from obituaries (Pauline passed away in 2008), a few old articles in magazines, and bits of information in other extensive biographies of C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.
Pauline spent her very early childhood in India, and then had some difficult years at a boarding school. She was happiest there reading books – especially fantasies. She went on to study art and painting, spent some time in the war efforts during World War II, and then had some years of struggling to find her place as an illustrator. By a happy chance, J.R.R. Tolkien spotted her portfolio and loved it, and the rest was history.
I knew the general shape my story would take, but I had to make a lot of decisions about how to create a compelling picture book from the events of her life.
Because I am an author and an illustrator, my early drafts bounce back and forth between writing and sketching. I wrote, rewrote, and made lots of thumbnail drafts (tiny sketches of every page of the book) to make sure I was aiming for the right number of pages.
As an illustrator, the next step is to create a book dummy (a full-sized sketch version of the book). This also went through several rounds of revision – I revise a lot! – until I felt happy with the page turns and the pacing. My story had a throughline, and I was happy with the imagery in the illustrations, but something about the manuscript wasn’t sitting right.
Around that time, I went to an SCBWI conference and signed up for a critique with an editor. Before giving me any thoughts on the manuscript, he asked me two questions: “What kind of writer are you?” and “What do you think isn’t working in this manuscript?”
Answering those questions made it click: I love writing lyrically, and sparsely, with a lot of rhythm and imagery. But because this was a nonfiction story, I felt like I had to write out the events of her life in a no-nonsense kind of prose.
That same day, I sat down with a blank sheet of paper and rewrote the entire story. By this point, I knew the key events and moments in the story by heart. Starting with a blank page helped me to let go of old words and phrases and give Pauline’s story the kind of lyrical voice that I love.
The story was improved–which is not to say the revisions were done! I revised the dummy (again) to fit with the new manuscript draft–and revised, and revised, and revised. Then I submitted, and submitted, and submitted!
Happily, an art director I had sent the book to was doing work for Waxwing, Sarah Mackenzie’s publishing imprint. She felt like it would be a great fit for them – and Waxwing agreed! Painting Wonder had found a home!
What are some special challenges associated with writing and illustrating a picture book biography?
Pauline had such an incredible life and career, and I really wanted to share that in a way that inspired children. Distilling down the events of her life was hard, because there were so many wonderful things to talk about – it took a lot of revisions early on to pick a shape for the story.
Once the writing and shape of the story was established, and I was creating more detailed versions of the illustrations, I had to spend some time researching the clothing, settings, objects, and scenes of Pauline’s time. To draw the wildflowers she would have seen as a young girl, I had to find out what grows in Mussoorie, India; to show the boat ride back to England, I had to research passenger routes and likely ships from India to England in the 1920’s; and so on! It was both fascinating and frustrating to do the research: fascinating because of the all the interesting rabbit holes I had to jump down, and frustrating because I sometimes ran into walls of not enough information (or not knowing where to find it).
What topics does your book touch upon that would make it a perfect fit for the classroom?
I hope that the story prompts children to consider a few things: what might they grow up to be? What obstacles might they run into along the way – and how can they get past them?
Pauline turns to books for comfort when she is struggling to fit in at her school. Do they ever feel like they don’t fit in? Have they ever found comfort in a book – which one, and why?
There are some interesting historical moments in the book as well, from a general study of the life of a child in the 1920’s, to something more specific, such as the contribution of artists during World War II (one of those research rabbit holes that contains so many fascinating stories).
And of course, any classroom read aloud of the Narnia stories would be a wonderful place to include this book!