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Between the Lines |
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Interview with Julius Lester and John Clapp |
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Shining
Julius Lester
Illustrated by John Clapp
Newbery Honor author Julius Lester has created a powerful tale about the importance of remaining true to one's self and finding one's voice. John Clapp's luminous paintings add a breathtaking dimension to Shining, a character as distinct and enchanting as the world she inhabits.
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Biography |
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Julius Lester has written more than twenty books for young readers, including Pharaoh's Daughter: A Novel of Ancient Egypt, which was a Publishers Weekly Best Book. He writes and teaches in western Massachusetts.
John Clapp is the illustrator of On Christmas Eve by Liz Rosenberg, which received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, and The Prince of Butterflies by Bruce Coville. He lives in California.
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Interview with Julius Lester—Author of Shining |
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Q: Shining is a brand new story set in older, more rural times—a young girl in a village, ancient traditions, spiritual leadership. How does the story cross the boundaries of time to appeal to young readers in our modern cultural?
A: There are situations which are familiar to us regardless of the time in which we live. There have always been children who have been regarded as outsiders, as different, as not belonging to the group. Shining is a child who does not understand why she is different but instead of trying to belong, she respects that there is something different about her.
Q: In your author’s note you state that you “wanted to create figures of speech in which the color black would be associated with goodness and beauty rather than evil and ugliness.” In Shining you’ve chosen to achieve this with the use of metaphors such as, “black as wisdom”, “black as destiny”, “black . . . as wonder.” Are you concerned that these unusual connections will confuse readers?
A: I have used metaphors like these in other books. I know they are unusual but readers like them. Using such metaphors is a way to have readers think about and experience emotions and concepts in a fresh way. At least that is my intent and hope.
Q: The use of metaphors is prevalent in Shining—not just for the color black, e.g., “killed by a knife as sharp as a lie”, “a robe flowing red like love.” What type of mood does this generate for Shining?
A: I try to create language that sings. Such images are part of the music of the book. It is my hope that they startle and surprise the reader and gets them to think about emotions in a new way.
I also hope that the images create a mood of beauty, perhaps a beauty that is, as Rilke wrote, "the start of terror we can hardly bear."
Q: What does the story say about the power to speak vs. the power to listen?
A: Speaking and listening are two parts of the whole we call communication. Speech comes easily to us. Listening is an act that must be learned, cultivated. Listening is not a passive act; it is active and entails hearing not only the words spoken by another but hearing, also, that which has been said but not in words. Thus, listening involves hearing the emotions behind someone's words. People do not always have the ability to put everything they want to say into words. Shining grows up in silence because she is being educated to listen to the emotions people cannot put into words.
Q: Is the book cross-cultural?
A: Because many of the metaphors deal with blackness and because the characters are black, the story deals with universals, universals that find expression in every culture as we know from myths and tales.
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Interview with John Clapp—Illustrator of Shining |
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Q: You moved away from your more-realistic illustration style for Shining and instead created silhouettes and muted images that could speak to humanity rather than culture. Is this book multi-cultural?
A: I think so. Immediately upon reading the manuscript, I felt that the images, costumes, and props would have to feel specific—as if they had the richness of a cultural history to them—but should not be tied in any identifiable way to existing cultures because that would label the story with a date, a place, and a people. To me the story was so archetypal; I wanted the images to feel the same way. By keeping the details of the faces and the surroundings vague, it discourages the viewer from shelving it in a particular cultural category, which I think makes it more accessible.
Q: Julius Lester wanted to convey a sense of “black” in this book. Was this instrumental in your choice of drawing tools—charcoal, graphite, etc.?
A: To be completely honest, I didn’t think too much about that because when I was creating the artwork I didn’t know that was Julius’s motivation for the story. What struck me about the story was the archetypal feeling I described above; and as I thought about how to convey that and started to explore different options, I was drawn to Chinese paintings of the “Lingnan School”—a group of 19th/20th century Chinese painters who mixed traditional Chinese painting techniques with Western representational ideas. While I don’t think anyone would ever identify the artwork I created with these painters, it was thinking about their work that suggested the media to me.
Q: What was it about these Chinese paintings that appealed to you?
A: It was their timeless quality. An untrained eye, looking at a Chinese painting is hard-pressed to say whether it was made twenty years ago, or a thousand years ago. A lot of this is simply their relative consistency of technique over that span of time, but technically, the way they work also communicates this feeling. The soft background gradations, the strong graphic elements, their use of silhouette, the powerful notes of single isolated colors used in opposition to a muted palette—all of these techniques help convey a kind of “archetypal” visual world—which is exactly what I was looking for.
Q: Many of the images contain a striking flash of red, sometimes subtle and small, sometimes brilliantly apparent. Do you attribute some symbolism to this color pattern?
A: As with the Chinese paintings, the single red note was a useful device to enliven the palette of these paintings. While I don’t think it’s necessary to understand this to enjoy the book, in my mind, the red represents, the goddess of souls, The One, watching over Shining and the village. As a bird, a moon, or a leaf, she is present throughout the book, even when she is not pictured--watching Shining’s progress, and making sure she is safe. Throughout the book, the palette tends towards blues and browns. Besides the small elements, the only time the palette warms up to the brilliant reds and oranges is when The Goddess (or Shining near the end) makes her appearance.
Q: How did you use the music of Passion by Peter Gabriel to inspire your illustrations for Shining?
A: Peter Gabriel is one of my favorite musicians. On that particular soundtrack, he blends haunting, evocative, and primal sounds to create an incredibly compelling aural narrative—even without lyrics, you feel the rising and falling dramatic tension of the story. It also happens to be the exact emotional tone I was trying to hit with the artwork for the story. So as I was working I kept the soundtrack playing over and over in my studio as a kind of emotional touchstone for my work on the paintings. If a painting didn’t feel like that, I knew it was headed in the wrong direction.
Q: On your Web site is a page of student work showing progress in self-portrait drawing. How does teaching your students add to your abilities as an illustrator?
A: Teaching does several things for me as an illustrator. Because I teach the classes that deal with a lot of the technical fundamentals of drawing and painting, my basic skills have really tightened up since I started teaching; some very difficult things are now much easier to do because I’m demonstrating these ideas for students every week. The other huge benefit is it gets me out of the studio every week, and I am interacting with people who are VERY excited and VERY enthusiastic about drawing and painting. It doesn’t matter that they are asking me the questions, their hunger and excitement encourages my own. By the end of the class, I’M excited to go home and think about or try some new things. That’s heaven—it’s exactly where you want to be as an artist: excited, enthusiastic, and anxious to test some new creative ideas.
Visit John Clapp’s Web site
Shining: The Process
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