Yuval Zommer
About Author
Yuval Zommer graduated from the Royal College of Art and has worked as a creative director for some of the world's top advertising agencies. His first picture book, The Big Blue Thing on the Hill, published by Templar in Spring 2014, was shortlisted for the Cambridgeshire Read it Again Awards 2015 and the Teach Primary New Children's Fiction Award 2015. His second book, One Hundred Bones, was published by Templar in August 2015.
Interview
ONE HUNDRED BONES
PUBLISHED BY TEMPLAR
AUGUST 2015
Yuval Zommer's debut picture book The Big Blue Thing on the Hill, published by Templar in 2014, attracted much attention and his latest picture book, One Hundred Bones, in which a scruffy stray dog digs up a spectacular find, is likely to do just as well. Like his earlier title, Zommer's new story focuses on a group of animals and how they work together to solve a dilema.
When Scruff, a stray dog who likes to dig, uncovers more bones than he can possibly enjoy on his own, he enlists the help of the neighbourhood dogs to help him dig up all the bones. Together, they take some of the bones to a museum (the Natural History Museum in London) to identify what they have found. It turns out that Scruff's discovery of one hundred bones is something rather splendid...
We spoke to YUVAL ZOMMER about One Hundred Bones and asked him the following questions.
Q: Your background is in advertising, so what took you into creating picture books?
A: After studying at the Royal College of Art, I went into advertising and became a creative director working on commercials and advertising but I found I was always trying to think of stories for books as against working on a product.
Advertising was fun but it's also very restrictive and while I loved making commercials, I wanted to do something that was just for the joy of the story, which was always my passion. I had grown up reading a lot of books but it took a long time to decide that that was what I wanted to do full time. The Big Blue Thing on the Hill received enough attention for me to feel I could do this so I left advertising and these days, I mainly focus on creating picture books.
I found that advertising was a very good discipline because it teaches you to be restricted with your message so it's a good learning ground because you have to be focused and economical and get your story to the target audience in as short a space as possible.
Q: What characterises the kinds of picture books you like to create?
A: My stories are universal, about nature and animals that are not humanised; my animal characters don't wear clothes or drive cars, I try to keep them as normal as possible. Children relate to and connect with animal characters so I don't need to make them too human. I illustrate real dogs and make them as natural as possible; we see them interacting with each other but not with people. Nature is the connecting theme in my books.
I also like to write stories from the point of view of the animals and both The Big Blue Thing on the Hill and One Hundred Bones are about what the animals get up to. It's a stylistic thing as I feel the story is more interesting told from the animal's point of view and children somehow appreciate it, are fascinated by it. Animals have teeth and tails and move in a certain way and maybe that's something that young people recognise in a book.
In One Hundred Bones the main character, Scruff, is a very real dog. He enjoys digging and being messy and that pays off; eventually he is appreciated for what he does.
Q: Scruff's 'find', the one hundred bones, turn out to be those of a dinosaur - was his discovery always going to be this spectacular?
A: I thought the dinosaur bones would be most amazing kind of find and children are fascinated by dinosaurs. Plus it meant I got to create a dinosaur myself, on the final pages!
Originally I had illustrated the page where Scruff finds the 'one hundred bones' with just a lot of bones but I hadn't actually counted them. Then my publisher realised there needed to be exactly one hundred bones in case anyone did want to count them, so I had to do a lot more work on that image. Plus I only used the bones you see on this page in the final dinosaur figure.
Q: Scruff is friends with a group of local pampered pooches. How did you decide what kinds of dogs would be in his gang?
A: That came about because of where I do my work, which is in front of a large front window because I need a lot of light. When I take a break from the computer and look out the window, what I see is people with their dogs. They tend to take their dogs out at the same time each day so I see a parade of dogs all day long, from posh dogs that are very well presented to those that are not so posh.
What I find fascinating is that the dogs do resemble their owners so this cliche is based on some truth; they look similar to their owners or their character is similar.
I decided that I wanted to create a story with the dogs themselves, this gang, and the story I came up with needed a variety of dogs with different shapes and sizes.
Q: Do you have pets of your own?
A: We used to have dogs and I often drew them when they sat down or fell asleep. I don't have a dog at the moment - I'd love to but I have to stop myself from going down to Battersea Dogs' Home or I think I'd end up bringing home two or three dogs.
Q: Are there any animals that you find harder to illustrate?
A: I don't know because there are a few things I haven't tried to draw but as long as I like the story or the characters, I think I will enjoy illustrating it.
When you're an author / illustrator, you choose a subject you love, so you'll be quite happy illustrating it; certainly that's been the case for me so far. I've even managed to get the Natural History Museum into this story, it's one of my favourite places.
Q: How important is it for author / illustrators to have a recognisable style?
A: I think it's very important to have a distinctive style, it's what people look for if they liked some of your work and they will expect to see something similar again. I don't call it a 'style' but it is the way you work with words and images. You're creating a whole world for people to get lost in and you have to make sure it's organic. Words and pictures and colour work together to deliver the message of the story.
For me, if that is about nature, I tend to use what I see are naturalistic colours - nature, plants, trees are the inspiration so I don't have the ultra-bright colours you see in pictures although when that is done well I do appreciate them.
Q: How do you create your images?
A: I have tried out a range of media but these days I'm happy to work digitally because you can do things and move things about so much more easily.
Working digitally is a steady kind of progression; eventually you reach a point where you don't have to think about what you're doing and you work instinctively with the drawing and colouring tools without thinking about the process.
These days I use a Wacom tablet to build up the image in layers using a variety different tools - brushes, pens and pencils. I tend to work on more than one page at a time to see it all in context.
The reality is that I spend hours and hours in front of a monitor once I'm in the flow. It's good to have deadlines because you can spent a lot of time on this kind of work and when I look at the finished book I always see things I could have done differently.
Q: Are you planning follow-ups to either of your picture books, The Big Blue Thing on the Hill or One Hundred Bones?
A: When I visited a school recently they had made their own follow-up to The Big Blue Thing on the Hill, which continues the story after the animals see a spaceship arrive on their hill. The children had created drawings and characters and taken the story further and I thought if they could do a follow up, maybe I should!
I would have loved to have done this but for now I'm focusing on my central character in One Hundred Bones, Scruff. He's very engaging and I think there are many more adventures Scruff could have.
Q: What are your favourite ways to relax when you're not working?
A: I'll be doing a lot of school and library events around the launch of the book in August but I'm lucky enough to live in central London and can easily fill my time just going around the museums or the zoo, there are so many things to do locally. I also wish I had time to read more books!
The Big Blue Thing on the Hill
One Hundred Bones
