Viviane Schwarz

Viviane: I made three picture books with cats in them.

There are at least three friendly, colourful felines in each, up to about ninety. One book contains a complimentary dog. I like to keep readers happy.

I've been working as a picture book writer and artist for about fifteen years now – that is, as a published one. I've been making books all my life, pretty much. Before I could write, I drew and dictated them. My mother pierced bundles of my stories with a cast iron hole punch, and she said: “Behold the strength of your mother's arms.” My father gave me binders to keep them in and said: “What are you going to make next?”

A page from my diary.

I was surrounded by books about everything that anyone in the family had ever wanted to know. Our walls were lined with bookshelves. My parents took me to the library weekly to take out as many as we could carry. It was awesome. I taught myself to read very early, because I had the notion that I could find anything I would ever need in books.

I was sure that I needed a cat.

I wrote a letter of complaint to the local newspaper about it. It said: I want a cat but my father doesn't allow it. I couldn't quite work out if my writing was made out of actual words yet, so I drew a cat on it for clarity. They didn't print it anyway.

Cat, from my very early unfinished 240 page picture book epic, ‘The Hoop’.

For a few weeks, a neighbourhood cat visited me through the window until it got flattened by rush-hour traffic.

There were never enough cats in the books. Plenty of horses and dogs. I didn't care for those at all. One day I found an old novel about a cat and a girl. I loved it, except when they were suddenly killed by a bomb. I carefully tore out the whole last chapter and made it into a small papier mache cat. Then I felt awful because I didn't really know who the book belonged to, and whether it was the last surviving copy. I didn't want to censor the story, I just wanted a copy of it where they didn't die.

I resolved to only edit books that belonged to me and weren't rare.

I cut and copied, traced and reassembled. I tried what happened if I changed boys into girls or mixed several books together.

A page from my diary.

Everything in the whole wide world could be found in books, but they were flat – even flatter than the cat who had been my friend for a short time. There was no way to get in there, even with scissors, but sometimes things could come out.

Pop-up books were great, but my favourite books had instructions in them. In an Astrid Lindgren book, some children escaped from a locked room by pushing a piece of paper under the door and tapping out the key. I did the same when I was grounded for glueing magazine pictures to the hidden sides of expensive furniture.

I didn't think I wanted to be an author, or an artist. I thought that all adults naturally developed the ability to make proper art and books, like growing invisible antlers. I wanted to be an inventor.

When I was twenty-seven, I had learned English and studied literature for a while and got a master's degree in illustration. I moved to London to create picture books for a living.

I learned that in London, invisible antlers are not enough to keep you safe.
I had massive panic attacks every day, leaving me in so much pain that I could hardly draw a circle, let alone a whole book.

My publisher, Walker Books, gave me a desk in their offices so I could come in and work there.
“I don't know what to do,” I said. “I can't draw any more.”
“I think you should write a book about cats,” said Deirdre McDermott, head of picture books.
“Cats have flair. People keep drawing cats. Someone has to write the stories.”

The next week, I told Deirdre that I wanted to write a book that actually had cats in them.
“Not just drawings,” I said. “A book that has cats in it, for when you really, really need them.”
“What would they be doing?” she asked.
“They'd be having the best time,” I said. “The best time ever. All day, and then you'd read it again. And again. It would never end.”
“I think you should draw the pictures yourself,” she said.

I went home and tried to draw. I cried because I couldn't.
Then I put away my drawing nibs and pencils and tried to use brushes instead. I painted big, colourful shapes and didn't even try to use detail. My arm still really hurt, but by and by, I filled a sketchbook with cats.

(Jeffrey didn't make it into the book)

(Moonpie did)

Deirdre said: “I would like you to meet some people. I think you'll work together well.”
Ben Norland and Lucy Ingrams art directed and edited all three books. I think I've never had more fun than working with them. I convinced them that I could invent a book that actually had cats in them, for when you needed them.

They gave me blank dummy books of the right size which I scrawled all over.

There was no beginning, middle or end, just badly drawn cats trying out everything they can do with a book, like kids trapped in a paper playground.

I cut and copied, traced and reassembled.
I made holes and tore pages in half.

We talked about meta levels and emotions and glue dots, clowning and Robert Altman movies and having to present this in sales meetings. We talked for months.
“It'll be like magic tricks,” I explained, throwing a used up marker pen across the office and missing the bin.

Magic tricks were another thing I read a lot about as a child. I had a strong interest in escapology.

Misdirection is important in magic. So is repetition. My favourite thing, though, is that it is very easy to confuse the audience about causality and agency. Try this: when you notice that the sun is just about to come out from a cloud, quickly say something wonderful.

Cause and effect are easily reversed in human perception.

In ‘There are Cats in This Book’ the cats keep telling you to turn the page. You were going to do that anyway. What else, tear it out? But that's what cats are like. Telling you to wake up just before the alarm goes off. Telling you to feed them when you are already holding the cat food.

So you keep turning the pages, until...
just for a moment, it changes. You do what they ask. It must be because they are your friends, and you are a nice person.

When the first book came out, I had the usual fear that everyone would hate it or a child would choke on a badly designed part (actually, there's extensive testing where the books get ripped up and eaten by robots, I am told). Instead, I suddenly found that strangers were nice to me, because they'd enjoyed the book. People told me how their children talked to the cats. Often the children renamed them and decided what gender and age they were, and I was glad that I had left space for that.

They asked me to make another book, so I did.

Thumbnails and notes for ‘There are No Cats in This Book’.

And a third, with a dog in it, for everyone who asked when I'd make a book about dogs instead of cats. It's a shy little dog of the sort that doesn't make me sneeze too much.

‘Is There a Dog in This Book?’, Walker Books, 2014.

After the second book, Moonpie the blue cat started to get fan mail. People send me letters saying that one of the other cats is their favourite, but Moonpie is the only one to quite regularly get addressed directly.

I think of the books as ongoing little theatre shows – paper stages with flat cats acting in the voices of whoever is best at reading or has memorised all the lines.

Sometimes I catch a performance in a bookshop: parents trying the book out. I tried to write it so that it's easy to perform. If it's fun for the person reading out, it's probably fun for the person listening.

‘There are Cats in This Book’, Walker Books, 2008.

On the way to my first author's talk I gave the books to some kids on a train to stop them from playing hide and seek, which is not a good game to play on a full train. They read the book to each other and agreed that the cats looked nothing like real cats, then they read it again. And again. It's good to have cats in a book when you need them.

‘There are No Cats in This Book’, Walker Books, 2010.

I put a lot into these books. No, literally: I put a lot of stuff in there. Their comfy blanket is a photocopied piece of knitting I did when I thought it would be nice to have a cosy blanket myself. Their exciting holiday destination outside the book is a particularly boring wall in Peckham, where I lived then.

Moonpie looking for a place to park his mobile home.

The boxes they play with are all from my local Lidl; I collected a stack on a very windy day and almost got blown into the street.

Original art made from many tiny bits of many large cardboard boxes.

I also put a lot of love in there. I made sure that the cats were safe and kind – not to pretend that it's a safe and kind world, but because their book exists in our real world. I knew they'd have to deal with some harsh challenges, for example being torn out and sellotaped back in. You are a very lucky person if that never happens to you; actually, most people get sellotaped back together at some point and not all of them neatly.

The tricks aren't the point of the book. The cats are. For when you need some cats.

All the unused paintings of Moonpie panicking on the sofa.

Did I tell you enough about how the cats are painted? I paint them quickly, with liquid dye and indian ink, many times, until they look exactly right. That's all there is to it. I painted every character so often that in theory I could animate the whole thing just with the pictures I didn't use. I throw away most of the spares, though, and keep only the few that seem alive, to arrange them into new scenes and sell them.

A while ago, someone asked me if they could translate the speech bubbles into other languages and just glue them into the copies they bought. Of course they can. I really hope that there are many copies out there with speech bubbles glued in.

You can make them say anything you like, actually, as long as it's your own copy. If you do, write your name on the front cover along with mine, and put ‘edited by’ – I think that's fair, so that we all agree I didn't write it like that.

It's your book, with your cats in it, for when you really need cats.
It's maybe someone else's book too, though, so ask them first, even if they are very small. It's not okay to mess with other people's books.

‘There are No Cats in This Book’, Walker Books, 2010.

Oh, yes, and I'm better now.
But I still like to draw with brushes. And, this is the best thing:

LOOK AT MY THREE DIMENSIONAL CAT!

So that went well.

Illustrations © Viviane Schwarz. Short films recorded and edited by John Peacock.

Buy the series

The ‘Cats in this Book’ series

Viviane Schwarz

Walker Books, United Kingdom, 2008–2014

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When did you last play with cats... inside a BOOK?! The cats in these books want to have fun, and by turning the pages and flipping the flaps, you can play their favourite games with them!

‘Witty, original and charming... extremely successful with toddlers, who will not only enjoy the jokes and connection with the cats, but also learn to understand and delight in the way books work.’—The Sunday Times

• English: Walker Books (UK) — Candlewick Press (USA) — Walker Books (Australia)
• French: Tourbillon (France) — Pastel–l'école des loisirs (Belgium) — Editions Fides (Canada)
• German: Knesebeck Verlag
• Italian: La Margherita
• Danish: Jensen & Dalgaard I/S
• Spanish: Editorial Milrazones
• Catalan: Editorial Milrazones
• Japanese: Dainippon Kaiga