I am very please to share my interview with María José de Tellería about The Green Otter, written by Eduardo Halfon. The illustrations are just as sweet and unique as the text, and it was a pleasure and an honor talking to María about how they came together. Enjoy!
About the book:
A father sets out with a simple mission: to bring home a blue horse for his young son. But when he returns, nestled beside the horse is a tiny green otter—an unexpected gift that captures his son's heart in ways no one could have foreseen.
Check out the endpapers:
Let's talk María José de Tellería!
LTPB: How did you become the illustrator of The Green Otter? What were the first images that popped into your mind when you saw Eduardo Halfon’s text?
MJT: The project began with the desire to work with an author who is widely read and deeply admired: Eduardo Halfon. When Yael Berstein, editor of Tapioca Stories, and I first met, we thought we could work with this story and transform it into a picture book. In the end—and this was very important—Eduardo liked the idea. The Green Otter is a short story of his that appears alongside others in Un hijo cualquiera, a collection of short stories for adults.
Eduardo has a series of books that explore fatherhood and the way he looks at his own father now that he himself is a father. Something very similar happens to me as a mother.
Ultimately, I believe the topics that move us are the ones we can truly work with in hopes of also moving readers. I’m sure that when something touches us deeply, it’s a good place to start. It’s no guarantee of anything, but at least it’s a beginning. Relationships such as fatherhood and motherhood are themes I return to again and again.
At first, the book was worked on by the three of us together: the author, the editor, and me. Eduardo had to rewrite it, keeping in mind that the audience was now also children and that the text would be accompanied by illustrations. We thought carefully about each page—what to say with words, what to say with images, and also what not to say; what could be repeated and what we could play with.
It was a very beautiful process, an intense back and forth.
The images of a father and child playing were the first images that came to my mind, and also the first ones I drew—remembering my own father, and also my partner with our children when they were small.
LTPB: Can you talk a little bit about the visual evolution of The Green Otter? As you got to know the characters, how did your illustrations evolve? Did you always know you’d only do one color at a time and that the color would transition from blue to green over the course of the book?
MJT: Finding the right tone for a book is always the most difficult part, and for me, it’s also the most important. Until I find the tone of a book, I can’t begin. Many times, the character of a story comes from the technique I use. In this case, it was the characters themselves—the father, the child, and the otter—who, with doses of humor and tenderness, helped me find the exact point from which the story could best be told.
The shift in color from blue to green was one of the very first decisions I made. During the bookmaking process, it’s important to move forward gradually, to let the story lead you, while also maintaining a perspective that can hold the book as a whole.
As we moved forward, the book began to find its tone—becoming a bit more playful, a bit funnier.
I have artists I look to who are especially interesting to me in the way they work with humor, such as Tomi Ungerer and Roger Duvoisin (The Happy Lion).
The story begins by working with an idealized world, represented by blue: the figure of the father, the man, the horse. In that space, many things already communicate through color and gender.
When the otter appears, it disrupts that ideal entirely. Something unexpected arrives—green, a small animal that is almost unknown. An otter? And feminine.
An otter? What does an otter look like? I had to make it loving, simple, warm, and funny. A little animal that wins over the child character.
What is wonderful.
What moves us deeply.
What makes us laugh.
LTPB: What did you find most difficult in creating this book? What did you find most rewarding?
MJT: At the beginning, what I found most difficult was working with the image of the otter. It is not a very commonly seen or illustrated animal, nor as popular as others such as a dog, a cat, or a bear. Because otters are fairly unfamiliar, I needed to rely on photographs to understand what they looked like and how they moved.
It was quite challenging to create a character that had humor and felt tender and comic at the same time, neither too bland nor too mocking or too close to comicstrip style.
The technique of using pencil with a single color, either blue or green, began to yield lovely results. And as I moved forward with the book, the otter started to feel increasingly funny and endearing to me.
LTPB: What did you use to create the illustrations in this book? Is this your preferred medium? How does your process change from book to book?
MJT: I almost always work with the same materials. Sometimes I rely more on certain ones than others, but they are always colored pencils, black pencils, and some kind of wet medium such as tempera or acrylics.
In The Green Otter, I used a very rough paper with a lot of texture, which added a great deal of warmth and texture. Because it created resistance in my line, it led to results that felt quite new and unexpected.
LTPB: What are you working on now? Anything you can show us?
MJT: At the moment, I’ve just finished a book in which I used color very freely, it’s very, very colorful. It doesn’t have a single recurring character; instead, it’s made up of poems with different characters all the time. There’s a lot of humor and wordplay, and I wanted to reflect that in my work as well. I approached it not only through the type of illustrations, but also through a wide variety of materials. Everything that the otter imposed on me in terms of materiality and color, I deliberately left far behind in this book.
I’m very happy to be able to work with editors who encourage me and give me freedom. They believe in my ideas and in my decisions regarding style and visual language.
LTPB: If you got the chance to write your own picture book autobiography, who (dead or alive!) would you want to illustrate it, and why?
MJT: That’s a very difficult question. On the one hand, I think I would like a close friend, someone who knows me very well and whose intelligent way of seeing the world I deeply admire, to illustrate it: Yael Frankel (The Elevator).
And I would also choose the illustrators I mentioned earlier, Tomi Ungerer and Roger Duvoisien, for their humor and for the fresh, loose quality of their lines.
MJT: The project began with the desire to work with an author who is widely read and deeply admired: Eduardo Halfon. When Yael Berstein, editor of Tapioca Stories, and I first met, we thought we could work with this story and transform it into a picture book. In the end—and this was very important—Eduardo liked the idea. The Green Otter is a short story of his that appears alongside others in Un hijo cualquiera, a collection of short stories for adults.
Eduardo has a series of books that explore fatherhood and the way he looks at his own father now that he himself is a father. Something very similar happens to me as a mother.
At first, the book was worked on by the three of us together: the author, the editor, and me. Eduardo had to rewrite it, keeping in mind that the audience was now also children and that the text would be accompanied by illustrations. We thought carefully about each page—what to say with words, what to say with images, and also what not to say; what could be repeated and what we could play with.
It was a very beautiful process, an intense back and forth.
The images of a father and child playing were the first images that came to my mind, and also the first ones I drew—remembering my own father, and also my partner with our children when they were small.
MJT: Finding the right tone for a book is always the most difficult part, and for me, it’s also the most important. Until I find the tone of a book, I can’t begin. Many times, the character of a story comes from the technique I use. In this case, it was the characters themselves—the father, the child, and the otter—who, with doses of humor and tenderness, helped me find the exact point from which the story could best be told.
The shift in color from blue to green was one of the very first decisions I made. During the bookmaking process, it’s important to move forward gradually, to let the story lead you, while also maintaining a perspective that can hold the book as a whole.
I have artists I look to who are especially interesting to me in the way they work with humor, such as Tomi Ungerer and Roger Duvoisin (The Happy Lion).
The story begins by working with an idealized world, represented by blue: the figure of the father, the man, the horse. In that space, many things already communicate through color and gender.
When the otter appears, it disrupts that ideal entirely. Something unexpected arrives—green, a small animal that is almost unknown. An otter? And feminine.
What is wonderful.
What moves us deeply.
What makes us laugh.
MJT: At the beginning, what I found most difficult was working with the image of the otter. It is not a very commonly seen or illustrated animal, nor as popular as others such as a dog, a cat, or a bear. Because otters are fairly unfamiliar, I needed to rely on photographs to understand what they looked like and how they moved.
The technique of using pencil with a single color, either blue or green, began to yield lovely results. And as I moved forward with the book, the otter started to feel increasingly funny and endearing to me.
LTPB: What did you use to create the illustrations in this book? Is this your preferred medium? How does your process change from book to book?
MJT: I almost always work with the same materials. Sometimes I rely more on certain ones than others, but they are always colored pencils, black pencils, and some kind of wet medium such as tempera or acrylics.
In The Green Otter, I used a very rough paper with a lot of texture, which added a great deal of warmth and texture. Because it created resistance in my line, it led to results that felt quite new and unexpected.
MJT: At the moment, I’ve just finished a book in which I used color very freely, it’s very, very colorful. It doesn’t have a single recurring character; instead, it’s made up of poems with different characters all the time. There’s a lot of humor and wordplay, and I wanted to reflect that in my work as well. I approached it not only through the type of illustrations, but also through a wide variety of materials. Everything that the otter imposed on me in terms of materiality and color, I deliberately left far behind in this book.
I’m very happy to be able to work with editors who encourage me and give me freedom. They believe in my ideas and in my decisions regarding style and visual language.
LTPB: If you got the chance to write your own picture book autobiography, who (dead or alive!) would you want to illustrate it, and why?
MJT: That’s a very difficult question. On the one hand, I think I would like a close friend, someone who knows me very well and whose intelligent way of seeing the world I deeply admire, to illustrate it: Yael Frankel (The Elevator).
And I would also choose the illustrators I mentioned earlier, Tomi Ungerer and Roger Duvoisien, for their humor and for the fresh, loose quality of their lines.
A million thanks to María for taking time to answers some questions! The Green Otter publishes today from Tapioca Stories!
Special thanks to María and Tapioca for use of these images!
This post contains affiliate links. For more information, visit my policies & disclosures page
No comments:
Post a Comment