Friend Friday

I fell in love with Jaime Temairik the very first time we met. She is one of those people who makes you happy just to be around. In addition to being funny and kind, she is incredibly talented. My advice is to stock up on first editions of her books so you can sell them on eBay in ten years and send all your grandkids to college on the proceeds.

Jaime Temairik

I have been called a lot of things in my day, some of them not suitable for PG-13 ears or eyes, but one of the BEST things I've ever been called is Kirby's Friend. I am so honored to share TROLL 2... 3... 4... with you here on her blog.

The book! It is slowly making its way from England to America. It may not even be in stores yet, unless you live in a troll-dominated region. The publisher, Parragon Books, is based in England, in Bath, no less, and while working on TROLL I did have dreams of visiting the company, being greeted at the Parragon doorstep and getting promptly sucked into a Jane Austen time portal.*

I am the only illustrator for TROLL—when I got the manuscript it had a different author. Which is to say, after turning in the final art, the book was rewritten.**

While I probably can't share too much of the hiring and working process I can probably share that after the rewrite I was hired to redo a few of the illustration spreads that needed to change for the rewrite, and WHO AMONG US WOULD EVER turn down the chance to draw more trolls?

One new experience for me on this project: The cover was finished waaaay before the interiors. I really like this cover, and it was a nice standard to hold the rest of the book's drawings up to for look and feel. 

There were a lot of trolls in this book. A lot. Like, more than four. But in life how many puzzles are more pleasing than figuring out how to draw twenty or so unique-looking imaginary beings?***

You can’t make twenty trolls look different if you don’t know their backstories, so yes, though the book only centers on the littlest green troll and the human boy on the cover, every figure in the book has a backstory to me and a whole, full life.

Maybe it's the week I've had, or the year, but I'd like to say, I’m really thankful for the opportunity to work at making books for kids. It really is more fun than insurance, or, quite possibly, animal husbandry.**** 

I know what a special thing it is to do this, I hope I never take it for granted, and I can't wait to work on my next project. Which happens to be the first book I've both written and illustrated, ALICE AND LUCY WILL WORK FOR BUNK BEDS, out with Hyperion*Disney next year. I should be working on it right now, in fact, so I bid you all a Happy Friday and a Long Live Kirby!!

xo,

Jaime

*As you may well know, authors and illustrators spend a lot of their working/waking hours alone so I will spare you the full and sordid details of my imagined visits to Parragon, but we definitely had high tea.

**Lo! Writers reading this! Do not fear! Apparently things like this can happen to ideas created in-house. But not out-house ideas. I'm not sure if that's the proper term, but let's go with it.

***If your answer is there are VERY FEW puzzles in life more pleasing, then you will love being an illustrator. You will also be a BIG hit at the sanitariums.

****I'm 98% sure I haven't had experience with either.

Jaime is a children's book illustrator (and nearly author!) living in Seattle. Check out her website! And buy her books.