{"id":5581,"date":"2022-05-03T00:01:08","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T06:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=5581"},"modified":"2022-05-02T18:25:29","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T00:25:29","slug":"the-great-zapfino-a-visit-with-marla-frazee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=5581","title":{"rendered":"The Great Zapfino<\/em>: A Visit with Marla Frazee"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\nI’ve got a review over at the Horn Book<\/em> of Mac Barnett’s<\/a><\/strong> spectacular The Great Zapfino<\/em> (Beach Lane, April 2022), illustrated by Marla Frazee<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n

That review is here<\/a><\/strong>. And Marla visits today to talk about creating the illustrations for the book. Fortunately for all of us, she shares lots of images.<\/p>\n

Let’s get right to it, and I thank her for sharing. <\/p>\n

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Marla<\/font><\/strong>: I was immediately captivated by Mac Barnett’s manuscript for The Great Zapfino<\/em>. I\u2019d 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\u2019t feel like illustration notes \u2014 which is an important distinction. The story is about a character who wasn\u2019t 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\u2019ve spent most of my life feeling that way!
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\nThe Great Zapfino<\/em> 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\u2019ve used it for reference a few times now. (I seem to illustrate circuses a lot.)
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\nAfter 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.
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\nI started sketching and discovered that the climax of the story \u2014 Zapfino diving out of a 10th-story window with smoke billowing out of it \u2014 really begged for a cartooned approach to take the edge off the subject matter. I focused on character and tried to lighten up!
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\nAt first I imagined that the Great Zapfino was the youngest and smallest member of a circus family. Maybe Zapfino didn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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.
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\nIt was this image that gave me that idea. (I\u2019m not sure where I saw it.)
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\nI started sketching with this new plan.
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\nHere he is working on whatever he is working on, and the ringmaster\u2019s patter interrupts his concentration.
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(Click sketch to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
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\nAnd he still is holding onto his journal as he climbs the ladder. My thinking was that Zapfino \u2014 at the end of the book when he eventually jumps out of the window to save himself \u2014 is also saving this opus. But sometimes certain ideas don\u2019t work, because I’m trying too hard to add something that maybe shouldn\u2019t be added and, in this case, that’s what was happening. This idea couldn\u2019t be sustained. \u201cYou’re strong-arming the text,\u201d 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.
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\nRight 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\u2019s world a 1940s vibe.
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\nI based Zapfino\u2019s apartment building around these buildings in Tel Aviv. I was fortunate to go to Israel in 2018 as a guest of PJ Library<\/a><\/strong>, along with other children\u2019s book writers and illustrators. I loved the beachy mid-century architecture of Tel Aviv.
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\nSo this became Zapfino\u2019s 10-story apartment building.
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\nPlaying 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.
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\nI used a lot of references from the Tenement Museum<\/a><\/strong> in New York City for the interior of Zapfino\u2019s apartment.
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A final spread<\/em>
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\nI 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\u2019t. Sometimes black and white feels more \u201cserious\u201d and focuses our attention on the details of what\u2019s happening.
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\nThe drawings were done with black Prismacolor Verithin pencil on Grafix Dura-lar Matte acetate. Eric Rohmann<\/a><\/strong> told me about what a pleasure it is to draw on \u2014 so smooth \u2014 and he\u2019s right. It\u2019s really something.
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\nOne 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\u2019s 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\u2019t 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 \u2014 but on his own terms. By the time he takes the dive, he is ready to do it. With aplomb.
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\nThen I started researching elevators and became pretty overwhelmed. How was I going to depict all that machinery with any accuracy?
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\nI tried to simplify it by showing boxes with arrows going up, going down.
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\nThen I simplified it even more and just drew a series of boxes, almost like single-panel cartoons.
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A final spread<\/em>
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\nIt\u2019s great when there is a solution to something that is stressing me out (i.e., drawing what I don\u2019t understand and am not good at) and I can find a better solution that also makes me happy and is fun.
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\nLastly, 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><\/strong>, a name that will resonate with children\u2019s book people!) I thought he\u2019d have one or two little suggestions for me. Or none.
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\nThese are the kind of notes he sent back. I\u2019d revise and then he\u2019d send over some more. Type is hard!
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Final cover<\/em>
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\nI 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<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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THE GREAT ZAPFINO. Text \u00a9 2022 by Mac Barnett. Illustrations \u00a9 2022 by Marla Frazee. Published by Beach Lane Books, New York. All images here reproduced by permission of Marla Frazee.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-interviews","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}