The Great Zapfino: A Visit with Marla Frazee
May 3rd, 2022 by jules
I’ve got a review over at the Horn Book of Mac Barnett’s spectacular The Great Zapfino (Beach Lane, April 2022), illustrated by Marla Frazee.
That review is here. And Marla visits today to talk about creating the illustrations for the book. Fortunately for all of us, she shares lots of images.
Let’s get right to it, and I thank her for sharing.
Marla: I was immediately captivated by Mac Barnett’s manuscript for The Great Zapfino. I’d never really seen anything like it. There are words at the beginning and end, but the middle is completely wordless. Mac had provided narrative suggestions for the wordless portion, but they didn’t feel like illustration notes — which is an important distinction. The story is about a character who wasn’t ready, for whatever reason, to do the thing the book said he was about to do. I absolutely loved that, because I feel as if I’ve spent most of my life feeling that way!
The Great Zapfino opens inside a circus tent and then moves to a city where the rest of the story takes place. A few years ago, I took this photograph of a circus that suddenly popped up near my house and I’ve used it for reference a few times now. (I seem to illustrate circuses a lot.)
After I said yes to illustrating the book, I spent some time walking around New York City and taking pictures of buildings that I thought Zapfino might live in, once he escapes the circus.
I started sketching and discovered that the climax of the story — Zapfino diving out of a 10th-story window with smoke billowing out of it — really begged for a cartooned approach to take the edge off the subject matter. I focused on character and tried to lighten up!
At first I imagined that the Great Zapfino was the youngest and smallest member of a circus family. Maybe Zapfino didn’t want to be in the circus at all. He was a writer. Or an artist. The last thing he wanted to do was jump off a diving board onto a trampoline from a dizzying height. I decided that he wouldn’t escape to New York but maybe somewhere like Venice Beach, California, where everyone wears and does whatever they feel like wearing and doing. He could still wear his circus costume and cape but no one would even notice. I liked the idea of Zapfino blending in as himself, instead of having to adapt himself in order to fit in.
It was this image that gave me that idea. (I’m not sure where I saw it.)
I started sketching with this new plan.
Here he is working on whatever he is working on, and the ringmaster’s patter interrupts his concentration.
And he still is holding onto his journal as he climbs the ladder. My thinking was that Zapfino — at the end of the book when he eventually jumps out of the window to save himself — is also saving this opus. But sometimes certain ideas don’t work, because I’m trying too hard to add something that maybe shouldn’t be added and, in this case, that’s what was happening. This idea couldn’t be sustained. “You’re strong-arming the text,” Allyn Johnston, my editor, once said to me about another project. I think of that a lot. So I went back to figuring out the setting again. I often shift back and forth between setting and character. When I hit a wall with one, I can move to the other, hit a wall there, move back. … Eventually I keep inching closer with both, and the book comes into focus.
Right around then, I was at the Los Angeles Central Library and stumbled across an Ansel Adams show of photographs taken in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Because of these images, I gave Zapfino’s world a 1940s vibe.
I based Zapfino’s apartment building around these buildings in Tel Aviv. I was fortunate to go to Israel in 2018 as a guest of PJ Library, along with other children’s book writers and illustrators. I loved the beachy mid-century architecture of Tel Aviv.
So this became Zapfino’s 10-story apartment building.
Playing around with setting, character, thumbnails, and pagination often occupies me for months. Sometimes it seems like nothing is ever going to work, but usually (and thankfully) it comes into focus.
I used a lot of references from the Tenement Museum in New York City for the interior of Zapfino’s apartment.
(Click to enlarge)
I felt pretty strongly from the start that the book should be in black and white. I think it was because I started to see it as a comic book for a young child. I also felt that color would distract us from the pathos of the story. Zapfino makes a huge decision to not do the thing he is supposed to do. It would be brave, had he done it. But it is equally brave, if not more so, that he doesn’t. Sometimes black and white feels more “serious” and focuses our attention on the details of what’s happening.
The drawings were done with black Prismacolor Verithin pencil on Grafix Dura-lar Matte acetate. Eric Rohmann told me about what a pleasure it is to draw on — so smooth — and he’s right. It’s really something.
One of the most important things for me to puzzle out was what exactly Zapfino should do after he leaves the circus. Clearly he has emotional stuff to work out. Mac’s narrative said Zapfino would commute back and forth between his office and apartment. But doing what kind of job? I felt strongly that his job should be visually understandable, especially to a child. And ideally it should mean something to the story. I also had a problem. I was running out of pages! A picture book is short! It sure would be great, I thought, if he didn’t have to commute to work. If he could live and work in the same place. And then I had it. Zapfino is the elevator operator! Taking all those people up and down, all day, every day, for who knows how long, traversing those 10 terrifying stories — but on his own terms. By the time he takes the dive, he is ready to do it. With aplomb.
Then I started researching elevators and became pretty overwhelmed. How was I going to depict all that machinery with any accuracy?
I tried to simplify it by showing boxes with arrows going up, going down.
Then I simplified it even more and just drew a series of boxes, almost like single-panel cartoons.
(Click to enlarge)
It’s great when there is a solution to something that is stressing me out (i.e., drawing what I don’t understand and am not good at) and I can find a better solution that also makes me happy and is fun.
Lastly, I want to mention the handlettering on the cover and title page. I sketched them out and then asked my son, Graham, for his feedback. He’s a typeface designer. (His design studio is called Roxaboxen, a name that will resonate with children’s book people!) I thought he’d have one or two little suggestions for me. Or none.
These are the kind of notes he sent back. I’d revise and then he’d send over some more. Type is hard!
(Click to enlarge)
I am so happy to have had the opportunity to work with Mac Barnett. And, Jules, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about the process of illustrating The Great Zapfino.
THE GREAT ZAPFINO. Text © 2022 by Mac Barnett. Illustrations © 2022 by Marla Frazee. Published by Beach Lane Books, New York. All images here reproduced by permission of Marla Frazee.
Amazing to learn so much about the process of illustrating The Great Zapfino. Can’t wait to see the book!
Thank you for sharing so much of your process, and all the care that went into making The Great Zapfino. It makes me love the book even more.