Happy 2025! I'm so excited to kick off our Let's Talk Illustrators series this year with the incredibly talented Kari Percival, creator of Safe Crossing! I've been a fan of Kari's since I saw her multiple award-winning How to Say Hello to a Worm (check out my favorite barcodes, the book is a designer's dream!!) in 2022 so having to wait almost three years to interview her about her process has been a challenge to say the least! Enjoy our chat, I know I did!
About the book:
Every spring, frogs and salamanders must travel from wooded uplands where they were born to vernal pools where they will mate. Unfortunately, roads constructed through their habitats have made the journey dangerous for these slow-moving animals. Many never reach their destinations. But with the help of the Amphibian Migration Team, there is hope for a safe crossing!
Readers will learn so much about amphibians and their habitats and get a great introduction to civic participation, too. The citizen scientist at the heart of this story presents her proposal for a wildlife tunnel to her local City Council and coordinates with stakeholders in the process like a wildlife biologist, a herpetologist, a roadway engineer, a surveyor, the Conservation Commission, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Department of Transportation, contractors, and reporters. It's a fascinating way to find out how local government works and how kids can actively create social change.
Let's talk Kari Percival!
LTPB: Where did the idea for Safe Crossing come from? How did you first hear about this migration pattern?
KP: I first heard about volunteers helping spotted salamanders cross roads from one of my middle school students when I was teaching science in Rockport, MA, back in like 2002 or something. He told me that on the first warm rain after the first full moon after the spring equinox, that is when the salamanders crossed the road to go to the vernal pools to lay their eggs, and his family joined a group of volunteers to help. I thought this sounded magical and amazing, but I never found out how to join up.
Later on, when my kids were little and I was working on my children’s book illustration portfolio, I saw an article in Highlights Magazine about the Henry Street Salamander Tunnels in Amherst, MA, near where I had interned at the Hitchcock Center for the Environment. I’d been advised to draw the types of subjects for the kinds of books I’d like to illustrate. Big night salamander brigades were an example of citizen science and volunteer wildlife conservation, which is the type of book I pictured myself illustrating.
LTPB: Can you talk about your research process for this book, both text and visuals?
KP: I joined local amphibian big nights to witness spotted salamanders migrating to vernal pools and crossing roads near where I live. There is nothing like seeking out and witnessing a seasonal animal migration. To follow the temp and the weather reports and to go to a certain place on such and such a day and at a particular time, and to see suchshy creatures in person! It feels so primordial and amazing! I watched training videos from the Harris Center for Conservation Education in NH, which facilitates regional salamander brigades, I read a bunch of news articles about the Monkton VT Wildlife Tunnels, and I read other amphibian migration educational materials. I also sought out and interviewed people such as Chris Slesar, from the Vermont Agency of Transportation, who spearheaded the Monkton Tunnels, and Conservation Biologist at the Harris Center, Brett Amy Thelen, who both helped fact check Safe Crossing.
LTPB: What did you find most difficult in creating this book? What did you find most rewarding?
KP: The most daunting and humbling was finding and contacting amphibian experts to ask for their advice and their fact-checking. With an informational book like this, there are so many, many things to get right. (I know there are some wrong things that got in there even WITH all the fact checking.) What was most rewarding is hearing from those same experts when they received and read their copies that they told me how moved they were by the story’s depiction of their life long passion and struggle to fight habitat fragmentation and to protect amphibian species from local extinction.
For illustration, the most difficult thing was getting all the illustrations done. I was intimidated by this giant task I had set for myself - 48 fully illustrated pages! But once I realized that I did not have to do the illustrations in order, that I could choose which one I was moved to do in whatever order I felt inspired by, then I felt joyful and free. I could draw the drawings I felt ready for, and apply what I had learned to the next one in the order that made sense for me. That was SO helpful.
Most rewarding about illustrating this book was getting to work with the team at Chronicle: editor Ariel Richardson, Eugenia Yoh, designer and the production designer who told me they wanted to help my vision for the book come true. It felt amazing to be trusted as a creative with a vision. There were lots of back and forth experiments with papers and colors. And then to see the vision become manifest as a book in my hands! SO wonderful.
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?
KP: Wood cut printmaking inspires my process. I stack up textured layers in different colors using Photoshop, and then cut marks in each layer with subtractive mark making using a digital eraser. After that, I alter the opacity or lighten up layers in key places as needed to highlight focus for visual narrative storytelling. I also like to make real wood cuts, paint, draw with ink, make tinwork, sew, and do collage. Maybe some of those different media will show up in a book sometime.
I vary my approach based on the audience and the story: For How to Say Hello to a Worm, illustrated for ages 0-5, I cut figures out against the white of the page, no scenic backgrounds. I used a sunny spring garden color palette of light green, pinks, and browns. In contrast, for Safe Crossing, for older kids, grades 1-3, I flooded the page with dark rainy atmospheric night scenes lit by flashlights, purple shadows, wood grained raindrops, rare beams of white light and pops of neon yellow spot color.
LTPB: What are you working on now?
KP: I am working on more citizen science stories: one about the restoration of herring migration and one about the come back of piping plovers. I’m also working on a book about fall and some picture book biographies:
Nicole Fox at RISE x Penguin Workshop has acquired world rights to Fall Day, All Day by Ezra Jack Keats Award-winner Kari Percival (How to Say Hello to a Worm), a picture book celebrating the ways we connect to changes in nature, with a second book to follow. Publication is planned for August 2026 and 2027; Teresa Kietlinski at Bookmark Literary negotiated the two-book deal.
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?
KP: Oh, wow. I would say Fifi Abu. I love her ink drawings with watercolor painting. She grew up at the same moment I did, on the next peninsula over from where I grew up in Maine, but I never met her until we joined a picture book critique group meet-up in Somerville. She is so good at getting the drawing right of those unfortunate bowl hair cuts that were fashionable in the time of our formative years. I also love the wood cut printmaking of Naoko Matsubara or also the work of Tjitske Kamphuis for nature scenes - I love their trees and clouds.
A big thanks to Kari for answering some questions about this gorgeous book! Safe Crossing published earlier this month from Chronicle Books!
Special thanks to Kari and Chronicle Books for use of these images!

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