We all know this. But is it that easy to get the words translated to a picture for a child?
Illustrators mostly jostle with the text written by someone they have never met. An author who has asked for a small illustration to aid a story or from a publishing house that has sent a script to be translated to drawing. “The few things to keep in mind while drawing for kids is that you’ve got to be honest and true to your feelings. You have to keep it simple and it is never a translation of the text but an interpretation,” says Suddhasatwa Basu, a renowned illustrator, painter and animation filmmaker. His first book for children as a writer is The Song of the Scarecrow. “When I illustrate I don’t interact with the authors. An author has written and that’s it. I try to read it as someone who reads it for the first time, without knowing who or where the author has written the story. I like to approach the story just like the stranger who will pick up the book.”

Very rarely does the author-illustrator meeting take place. “Then the manuscript has to be something different,” says Neeta Gangopadhya whose illustrations are included in the book Once Upon a Time in India, which has been nominated for the IBBY Honours List in 2006. Neeta has illustrated Bimal Kar’s Satyadas for Katha. She recounts an incident where she was called to illustrate for a hardcore Islamic book. “I was totally clueless but somehow read up and managed to create something!” she says.

... contd.