Step-by-Step Seven Questions Over Breakfast with D.B. Johnson
For years you were a freelance artist. When did you know you wanted to write and illustrate books for children?
I’ve always liked telling a story with pictures, whether it was illustrating for a magazine or drawing a comic strip. I read lots of picture books to my kids. One day the idea for Henry Hikes to Fitchburg just flowed out of me. I submitted my manuscript to only one publisher, Houghton Mifflin, and within two weeks heard that it was a go. Though it took nine months to do, that book was more fun than I’d ever had.
What made you decide to pursue this as a career?
When I first began Henry Hikes to Fitchburg, I hadn’t intended to make a career of doing picture books. But I loved the complete control I had of everything from writing the story to deciding how and what to illustrate. It wasn’t like working for magazines where I was illustrating someone else’s ideas. Henry Hikes allowed me the freedom to work on a project that was totally ME. I decided right then only to do the things that I believed in.
How do you create your unique illustrations?
From small “thumbnail” sketches I enlarge my drawings to the size they’ll be in the book. Then I make an underpainting with thin layers of color and modify it with colored pencil. It takes a week to do each picture.
My process has changed over the years. I used to like realism. But as I got more confident, my work got more expressive. Now I’m playful. I aim for bold, simplified shapes and angles that fracture the image. I think the energy I feel really comes through in the books.
Walden and Thoreau have obviously had a profound influence on your life as an artist and thinker; what other artists and authors do you admire and find inspiring?
I love the early cubist work of Marc Chagall, particularly the paintings he did in Vitebsk. I’m inspired by Grant Wood landscapes and anything by Thomas Hart Benton.
On the writing side, I really admire Howard Zinn. I first had him as a professor in college and his view of history has had a real effect on me.
What has been the most unexpected aspect of the success of Henry Hikes to Fitchburg, Henry Builds a Cabin, and Henry Climbs a Mountain?
Well, I try not to think about success because it can be pretty distracting. People are suddenly asking me questions about a book I finished two years ago. I get confused. I need to concentrate on the one I’m drawing now.
Did you always intend to do additional books about Henry?
Yes. When I had my original idea for Henry Hikes to Fitchburg, I envisioned three books based on the life and ideas of Henry Thoreau. I didn’t know exactly what the other two stories would be, but I knew that a couple of big events in Henry’s life were building his cabin and going to jail.
In Henry Hikes to Fitchburg Henry’s friend is working, but Henry is just having fun. Shouldn’t he be working too?
Henry IS working. He’s a naturalist. The long walk to Fitchburg gives him a chance to observe plants, animals, and insects. Just because he gets to eat a few blackberries doesn’t mean he isn’t working. The real difference between Henry and his friend is that Henry isn’t getting paid.
You know, there are a lot of jobs we do that no one pays us for. There’s schoolwork, and raising children, and volunteer work. I wrote this book so people would see that working for what you believe in is the best kind of work there is. It makes work seem like fun!
So the fourth Henry book is about his work?
Yes, it’s called Henry Works. As I did my other books and spoke with people about them, I kept being asked why Henry didn’t work. That made me kind of mad. Why couldn’t they see? Why couldn’t they see all the people around them who work for little or no pay? I wrote the fourth book to defend Henry.
In my story, Henry wakes up early and says, “It’s a perfect day to walk to work.” On the path leading from his cabin, Henry digs up healing plants to give his neighbors, he lays stepping stones across rivers, he checks the sky for storm clouds and waters the wildflowers along the way. He does all these things, but none of the townspeople seem to notice. Since the people think he’s not doing anything, they try to get him to run their errands. Mostly, he obliges them. You begin to think everything he does on his walk is his only job. But at the end of the day, when the path leads him back to his cabin, Henry sits at his desk and begins his most important work — Henry is a writer!
Is that how it was for Henry David Thoreau, too?
Oh yes, I think a lot of people thought Thoreau was a slacker. He was a graduate of Harvard College who, they thought, just walked around in the woods all day doing nothing worth doing. In Walden he says he was the unpaid maintenance crew of all the natural surroundings in Concord.
Since I was in college and read Walden, I don’t think any other book has had such a big effect on my life. And I think that’s the way a lot of other people feel too. In 2004, Walden will have been continuously in print for one hundred and fifty years. I felt children needed to know that there’s a great reading experience in their future. Henry Works is my small tribute to this great man’s writing.
It’s been five years since your last Henry book. What have you been doing?
After Henry worked, he took a short vacation while I did a few other picture books. Eddie’s Kingdom is about a boy named Eddie who likes to draw. I loved doing that book. It was inspired by the "Peaceable Kingdom" paintings of the Quaker artist, Edward Hicks.
In 2006 I illustrated a wonderful book written by my wife, Linda Michelin, called Zuzu’s Wishing Cake. Zuzu can make anything. She is bursting with inventiveness--she makes a hat, a flower, even her pocketbook, out of a paper bag. She turns a cardboard box into a car! This was the first book I did in the comics panel style with voice balloons. It is a terrific early reader for that reason.
I followed that with a picture book inspired by George Orwell’s "Animal Farm." Four Legs Bad, Two Legs Good is my answer to what has happened to the animal’s farm since the pigs took over sixty years ago. The head farmer is a lazy pig named Orvie who doesn’t do any work because he claims to be "holding up the barn." So a mini-revolution takes place, lead by Duck who, naturally, can walk on two legs. This book was also done in the comics panel style for easy reading. I had a great deal of fun playing with the panels and dividing up the picture frame.
Last year I illustrated a terrific book written by Daniel Pinkwater, called Bear’s Picture. Daniel was so gracious in letting me add my own idea about what the bear was painting a picture of--you have to turn the book upside-down at the end to find out! We met for the first time after the book came out, and I can’t say enough about what an amazing friend he is to the picture book industry and how helpful he's been to me. His writing is always amazing and fresh. Somehow he continues to tap into that world kids love to play in.
When I finally got back to thinking about Henry again, I was reading his journal. I was fascinated by his many descriptions of walking in the woods on summer nights in the moonlight. He would stand leaning against a tree and angle his paper so the moon shone on it as he wrote. I thought about how many nights he went to sleep in his cabin at the pond, listening to the night birds sing. But now he is back living upstairs in his parent’s house in the village, and all he can hear at night are dogs barking and the noise of the family downstairs. My wife and I collaborated on the writing of Henry’s Night. Kirkus has given it a starred review, calling it "a great bedtime read, as mysterious and thought-provoking as a zen koan."
