Kathleen Krull is well known for her lively, award-winning nonfiction for young readers. She lives in San Diego, California.

Stacy Innerst was born in Los Angeles and studied fine art and history at the University of New Mexico. Since then Stacy has received numerous awards for his paintings and editorial illustrations. M is for Music is his first children's book.

Kathleen Krull shares her thoughts on music and her new book M is for Music.
And be sure to scroll down past Kathleen's discussion to see our interview with the M is for Music illustrator, Stacy Innerst.

I live for music! I like all kinds:
Rock: I'm partial to the 60's & 70's, but do like many contemporary bands—Moby, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Chemical Brothers, the DandyWarhols, several Mexican rock bands. Classical: I enjoy both very early and very contemporary styles. World: From just about anywhere—especially music from Ireland, Jewish klezmer music, and Middle Eastern of all kinds (one current favorite is Radio Afghani on the web). I also like Ambient/Space music soundtracks and new sounds that I haven't heard before. It would be easier to list music I DON'T like.

My husband Paul Brewer and I dance informally around the house to blasting rock music, and we've also gone swing dancing several times and zydecodancing. Paul is obsessed with Frank Zappa & is excited about seeing him in this book. We go to a lot of concerts, buy a lot of CD's, listen to music on the Internet, and ALWAYS have the radio on. Our favorite stations are KCRW in Santa Monica and the college radio stations. The house is sometimes exploding with music, but no current neighbors have complained.

I sing (badly), play piano (passably), and when I was young played organ, guitar, violin, and viola. I minored in Music in college. Music books are very stimulating to me—it’s no accident that Lives of the Musicians was the first book in my “Lives of” series. My favorite books to write are the musical ones—Songs of Praise; I Hear America Singing: American Folk Songs for Children; The Book of Rock Stars, and now M is for Music.

I wanted to do M is for Music as a unique, all-encompassing, eclectic tribute to the power of music in our lives. It's meant as a springboard to musical activities and discussion of all kinds. I'm thrilled with Stacy's paintings—the combination of his unique images are almost the visual equivalent of music. And to those people have been asking me which came first, the words or the art—the words came first, but Stacy has interpreted them so thoughtfully and dramatically that you honestly can't tell.

I think music education is extremely important in school, so I dread cuts in funding. Music enhances just about everything—one's quality of life, knowledge of other cultures, sense of history, even math and spatial relationships. It's another mode of learning, and one with enormous appeal to children. Music fosters the expression of one's self, creativity, the learning a new language with its own rules, and very plainly, how to listen—a skill that tends to go underdeveloped. In lieu of classes called Listening 101, music is the most pleasurable way of learning how to pay attention with our ears. Knowing something about music and our musical heritage will make the mind blossom throughout childhood and beyond. My biggest wish is that that everyone’s lives could be full of music!

Q: How did it feel to transition your talents from political newspaper illustrations to children’s book illustrations?
A: It was a bit of a shift to go from editorial newspaper illustration to children's books, but I was eager to try it. The subject matter forced me to "lighten up" and take a breather from the news. It was also fun to create something for an audience that is composed mainly of kids and their parents—a group for whom I have tremendous respect! I still can recall the books that moved me when I was a kid. Even now I'll see an illustration from a book that was read to me as a child and, just like that, I'm five again. I've been reading picture books to my own kids for years and I've come to realize that children are so visual and unfettered that it is quite a challenge to live up to their standards—and you'd better have a sense of humor.

Q: The School Library Journal called M is for Music "an imaginative fusion of finely tuned text and inventive illustrations." How did you complement the text of the book with your illustrations? Did you concentrate on each letter of the alphabet and then let the creative juices flow, or did you create a world of music adapted to the story as a whole—later assigning alphabet text pages?
A: My approach to this book was pretty conventional. When I first got the text, I sat in the sun and let the images flow as I read it, one letter at a time. I've always loved music and have done lots of musical subjects in my editorial work so, in a sense, this was a natural progression for me. Kathleen's choice of words was so creative that each letter provided a subject that I really wanted to paint. I wanted the overall presentation of the book to feel like a musical score, with the kind of scrawled energy that one perceives when looking at a handwritten piece of music. Musical scores have always struck me as art objects and I wanted the pictures in the book to reflect that energy.

Q: You play the guitar and the drums and thus are very familiar with their compositions, but what of the rest of the musical scenes and portraits—did you have to conduct in-depth research to create these?
A: You're right, the guitars and drums came easily. The others subjects required a bit more work. I had dozens of photographs that I used for reference, even though I obviously took liberties with the personalities and instruments. For me, there are few objects more aesthetically pleasing than musical instruments. Some of the musicians are identified in the book, such as Elvis, Mozart and Louis Armstrong. Others are just some of my favorites that I used loosely to depict an all star jazz band here or a latino accordian player there.

Q: Which of the paintings in this book was the most interesting to produce? Are there any hidden messages in it, or in the other pages of the book?
A: It's funny, my favorite pictures are often the ones that don't resonate as much with the people I've shown the book to. My favorite is a very quiet painting of a storefront window full of guitars. I think the most interesting was the letter 'A'. It was one of the first paintings that I did and, in terms of expression and form, it set the tone for the rest. I used two very expressive faces to convey what it feels like to make music, and I exaggerated the accordian to cross the entire spread. There's nothing subliminal in the pictures, although there is a lot of personal information—more than you would ever want to know, I'm sure. My kids are in there. My dog. Me. Me as a kid. Me as a dog—just kidding.

Q: Tell us about your painting style. What brands of paints do you use, what mixing mediums, and why did you choose board and tin as the base for the M is for Music illustrations?
A: I usually start with a base of gesso on board and textured backgrounds of Liquitex acrylic paints. For this book I painted in oils on pieces of tin that I mounted onto the painted board. I used various mediums for flow and drying time for the oils, most often Liquin. I wanted the paintings to feel as if I've lived with them for awhile so I painted many layers and scrubbed away certain areas, and just generally made mistakes and corrected them as I went along to give the painting some depth. I started painting on tin or other materials partly as a means of tackling the "big, blank piece of white paper" anxiety that I seem to suffer from. I also grew up in New Mexico where the Santeros painted their devotional pictures on tin and those paintings left a big mark on me. They are still some of my favorite pieces of art... ever.

Q: What are your thoughts about how decreased funding for music and arts programs in public schools affects our children?
A: It's a terrible mistake to devalue an education in art or music. The arts teach children to think in a creative way that's only going to help them learn, even in the more popularly subsidized subjects like math and science. Studies have shown that learning to play a musical instrument helps children learn math. When taught as a discipline and not as recreation or entertainment, the arts can serve to elevate kids above the level of technicians. With the resources this country has, there should be a greater effort to nurture abilities that may go untapped and unnoticed.

Q: Do you have plans to work on more children’s books?
A: I've just completed a book written by Tony Johnston called The Worm Family.
I'm also engaged in the arduous task of writing my own stories. I'll tell you it's not as easy as it looks—paring things down to the bare minimum while keeping a rhythm and cadenceis difficult. I guess that's where having a good musical education might help, eh?