Lizi Boyd

Lizi: A book maker needs a quiet studio and a merry band of believers to join in: a brilliant editor, clever eyes on the production, inventive marketing team, cheering publicity team and the band's leader: the publisher. I am fortunate to have found all these wonderful people at Chronicle Books.

I've been making books for years; the work has become an old friend. She's stubborn, demanding, insistent, questioning and forever curious. She also gives, delights and surprises me.

Zuli and Olive, my dogs, led me to ‘Flashlight’. They ran off on a moonless night. I grabbed a flashlight and went in search. I heard them in the field and flashed the light. Suddenly there was colour: their bright collars, fallen apples, tangled grasses and their eyes staring back at me. This is a book, I thought. The idea seemed so simple I was certain it had already been done.

My theory about ideas is that they float just above our heads. Whoever reaches up and plucks them down can take them. It seemed ‘Flashlight’ was mine.

At the time, I was working on another wordless book, ‘Inside Outside’. There was a wonderful rhythmic silence in the studio. ‘Inside Outside’ had been leading me far beyond its original sketches. The story was building in layers and nuances I hadn't imagined. Its process was teaching me a new kind of patience and trust.

‘Inside Outside’ wasn't finished but it waited a few days while I cut out pages to explore ‘Flashlight’. There was no story in my head. I mimicked what I was learning: following silence to sound. The sketches began by finding the images.

The sketches became a rough outline: a boy, a dark night and his flashlight. The characters presented themselves. The raccoon took the lead as he hid here and there, peering at the boy with his mysterious light.

‘Inside Outside’ uses die cuts as the book's structure. They are an integral part of the storytelling: the reader looks through the window and sees a glimpse of what will happen on the next spread. (The boy is hanging up a drawing inside. Outside, through the window, one see the birds.)

‘Flashlight’ uses several die cuts throughout: the moon, leaves and the rocks. Initially there were more: I liked the idea of creating another forest in the book made only of shadows. It would present itself only if the reader looked at the book with a light shining down through the pages. This might not happen for several readings. In the end, these die cuts were too problematic for the book's production.

I made several completed dummies before I went to the finals. I was imagining the paintings being as simple as the idea itself: dark, sparse, only the single flashlight beam of colour. Once I began the paintings, this changed.

Then there was a question of what paper to use. I'd sketched ‘Flashlight’ out on a dark grey but in the end I chose a dense black. The paper was 100% cotton, absorbent and very unforgiving. I began by working just the greys on five or six spreads at the same time. I'd then add the beams of light that required a few coats of white. Working the illustrations this way felt as if I was preparing the forest for what was about to happen.

It was July, the month we spend at our summerhouse. Often, I'm in the midst of a book so I set up a small studio in the big room. The front of the house faces the lake, the backside the edge of the woods. There is no internet so there are few interruptions and distractions.

On one of my first nights at the lake, I saw the luna moth. It had just hatched and was drying itself, hanging on a tree. It was then that the luna moth began its flight through the pages.

Others presented themselves too: the tiny white spiders in the paint trays, the white moths circling the lamp. I'd go for a walk collecting things from the forest floor. The illustrations grew more elaborate and layered. The simplicity of my days, nature's noise, her silence, the lake and woods all worked themselves into the book.

‘Flashlight’ is a wordless book but isn't it filled with sound? If the raccoon is sneaking around in the bushes can you hear the scratching leaves? If the fish are jumping can you hear the splash when they land? If the owl is flying can you hear the hum of its wings? Sound is elemental.

At the end of July I made a terrarium of ferns and mosses to take home. I needed a little of the woods around me while I finished the book.

The cover, in sketches, had always been the boy shining his flashlight, looking out from inside his tent. When all the art was delivered, Chronicle felt it didn't quite work. I'd submitted several title page ideas: one was of the boy with his flashlight. Chronicle suggested I reverse the two images, cover and title page. This is why as book makers we need our merry band of believers!

Months later, the first copy of ‘Flashlight’ arrived from Chronicle Books. When I opened it I bent my head into the inky smell of its pages. The smell was as pungent and dense as the woods themselves.

‘Art is childhood’ —Rainer Maria Rilke

Illustrations © Lizi Boyd.

Buy this picturebook

Flashlight

Lizi Boyd

Chronicle Books, United States, 2014

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Inside a tent it's cozy. But what is going on outside? Is it dark? Is it scary? Not if you have your trusty flashlight! Told solely through images and using a spare yet dramatic palette, Lizi Boyd has crafted a masterful exploration of night, nature and art. Both lyrical and humorous, this visual poem – like the flashlight beam itself – reveals that there is magic in the darkness. We just have to look for it.

• English: Chronicle Books (USA)
• French: Albin Michel Jeunesse
• Danish: Espergærde
• Korean: Kids-M
• Chinese (Simplified): Jieli Publishing House Co. Ltd.
• Chinese (Traditional): Global Kids Books