JooHee Yoon

JooHee: ‘Beastly Verse’ was born from an idea I had many years ago. I wanted to create a book bringing together my interest in the natural world with poetry. Often people seem to view poetry as something daunting, perhaps a feeling left over from long days in school struggling through strange words and the anxiety of memorisation. But this could not be further from the truth and I am always astonished by what a handful of words can accomplish. I wanted to share this appreciation, especially with children, who I think are naturally drawn to the rhythm and playfulness that can be found in poetry.

One of the challenges was to make the poems approachable. I was aware of other books previously published exploring a similar theme. But most poetry books I think have too many poems all crammed together and not nearly enough pictures. I wanted to create a book where both the writing and the images had equal importance, and at times the pictures had a bigger role to play in the telling.

My initial sketches were simple outline drawings capturing my ideas. The artwork went through many changes, mostly due to my dissatisfaction than anything else. But from the start I knew the element of surprise would be the driving force of the book.

The main challenge was capturing the story found in the poems in one or two spreads. Unlike a continuous story where each picture connects to the next and builds up the narrative, in this book each poem is a separate story. It was like having sixteen stories in one picture book. My solution was to use the flipping of the pages, to play with the before and after, sometimes the scale of the objects, and a fold-out page structure for some of the longer poems.

In order to make all of these separate narratives come together, I created a world these characters could inhabit through my way of mark-making and drawing. A place in which all the characters could be imagined to live together. Where hyenas play the concertina on their days off and pelicans multiply endlessly.

I am fascinated by the process of printing, both traditional printmaking techniques and the industrial process. Rather than mixing colours on a palette and putting it on paper, I enjoy working with flat colour layers overlapping one another to create the secondary colours. I admire books from the mid 1900s, when working with spot colours was the norm since reproduction methods were not as developed as they are today. It is amazing what some artists could do with so few colours! This is the same process I am using, but one from choice rather than necessity. I love the luminous, brilliant quality of the images when they are reproduced this way.

This book has been printed using just three colours: the pink, yellow and blue. The areas where the main colours overlap creates the secondary colours, resulting in a book that seems very colourful when in fact only a limited palette was used. Seen alone, each layer is a meaningless collection of shapes, but when overlapped on top of the other, it is magically transformed. I enjoy the challenge of figuring out what colour goes where to make a readable image. For me it is like solving a puzzle.

In selecting the poems, my goal was to bring to light ones with great humour and beauty and wonderful characters – poems that I remember enjoying when I first read them. I tried to stay away from the too well-known, but there are obviously famous selections such as ‘The Tiger’ by William Blake that were too good to pass up. Many of these poems have been buried by time and perhaps forgotten, as in ‘The Three Black Rats’ (pictured above). There are poems that typically don't appear in picture books, such as ‘The Hummingbird’ by D.H. Lawrence, and ‘The Snail’ by William Cowper. Both pose challenging vocabulary and abstract ideas. But the imagery they conjured up in my mind made me feel these were worth keeping. And I hope over time, the youngest readers learn to appreciate the humour in the writing.

I wanted to create a book that not only tells wonderful stories but one that is a beautiful object. To me, the design of the book is just as important as the content, and the two are inexorably linked. I think all elements, from the font, the layout of the text in relation to the images, the binding, and the size and weight of the book, contribute to the experiencing of reading. This book was my most long-term project to date. From sketch to production took almost three years, and I hope readers enjoy it as much as I did in the making.

Illustrations © JooHee Yoon.

Buy this picturebook

Beastly Verse

JooHee Yoon

Enchanted Lion Books, United States, 2015

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A playful romp through verse, rhyme, and gorgeous illustrations, ‘Beastly Verse’ carries children into the poetic realm in a way that is not only inviting but inspiring!

Consisting of sixteen wonderful animal poems, ‘Beastly Verse’ transports the reader into a richly-worded world of tigers, hummingbirds, owls, elephants, pelicans, yaks, snails, and even telephones!