Guest Post: Author Jan Carr and Illustrator Kris Mukai Discuss the Buddy and Bea Series
Today I am pleased to announce a guest post from none other than author Jan Carr and illustrator Kris Mukai. Their Buddy & Bea early chapter book series premiered last year with Peachtree Press and has been going strong ever since. Today, they join us for a conversation about the series and their process to boot.
Enjoy!
If you know anything about kids’ books, you might know that though authors and illustrators “collaborate,” they’re discouraged from talking directly. This ensures that illustrators have the freedom to create, just as authors do, that they don’t have an anxious author micromanaging the art, crying, “That’s not how I envisioned it!”
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But now that author Jan Carr and illustrator (and cartoonist!) Kris Mukai have done four books together in the Buddy and Bea chapter book series, Jan has some questions for Kris. Can she ask them in a Q&A? Sneaky! Here’s how Jan describes the books:
Buddy and Bea are two second graders with distinct personalities in a busy, diverse classroom. Bea’s spontaneous and unfiltered, while Buddy’s more cautious and earnest. When Bea arrives as a new kid, she mistakes Buddy for her “buddy” and gloms onto him. He can’t shake her! Their combustible personality combo makes for numerous, humorous flare-ups, while also posing the more serious question: Can two kids who are so different get along? Every day?
JAN: Kris, when I go on school visits to talk about Buddy and Bea, I love to tell the kids that you’re a cartoonist and that you do work for Cartoon Network. That’s school-visit gold, and I’m immediately a celebrity by association. How does working on animations inform your work on books? Are they different?
KRIS: I started working in animation after working as a comic artist and illustrator for some years and the biggest adjustment for me was how movement is handled. In illustration you can draw someone jumping and running around and doing a somersault all in one single image, but in animation every gesture has to be posed out step-by-step over dozens of drawings. It’s always interesting to me how two jobs that focus so heavily on drawing can have such vastly different needs!
JAN: Movement is definitely a hallmark of your illustrations. You often show Buddy and Bea running or squabbling, or otherwise on the move. When I showed your art to an illustrator friend of mine, she pointed out the movement lines you draw around the characters. Are there other tricks?
KRIS: Movement lines do a lot of the heavy lifting! That’s a trick I picked up from reading comics. Another thing to keep in mind while drawing action is that you can always exaggerate a pose – if someone’s chasing after a runaway cat or something you can stretch their body and have them really lean into the movement.
JAN: I usually kick off any Buddy and Bea event by telling the audience that the books feature two characters with oil-and-water personalities, and that it’s the conflict between them that fuels the series. Then I show PowerPoint slides of your art, and people immediately “get” that relationship. You’ve done numerous pieces of Buddy and Bea together. How do you pick scenes to illustrate?
KRIS: My favorite scenes to draw are the ones with a lot of action and high emotion! I love how Buddy and Bea bounce off of each other’s personalities, and I love seeing the differences in how they approach the same problem. Also, if a scene makes me laugh then it’s going to the top of the list!
JAN: Wow! Now I have even more incentive to make scenes funny! You also render the characters themselves perfectly. Bea with her messy, flyaway hair, and Buddy dwarfed by his outsized glasses. Did the visual representations pop immediately to mind, or did you have some early character sketches where they looked different?
KRIS: The image of the kids was so clear from your descriptions of them that I pretty much knew what they would look like right away. All my early sketches were just figuring out their proportions and how to make them look the right age!
JAN: I also love the way you work with their facial expressions. Bea often looks like she’s shouting or about to exuberantly jump off the page, and Buddy looks like he’s pulling back, overwhelmed. Though in Books 3 and 4, there’s an emotional shift. There are illustrations where Bea looks abashed and upset, and where Buddy sometimes looks more annoyed than overwhelmed.
KRIS: Buddy has a lot of introspective moments in the early books where he’s trying to figure out what Bea is up to or what’s going on in the classroom, I really like that about him and I wanted to illustrate that thoughtfulness.
JAN: When I first conceived the series, I struggled with whether I should do it from Buddy’s POV, or Bea’s, or both. I decided on Buddy’s since his thoughtfulness, as you put it, allows for a lot of emotional nuance.
KRIS: Bea on the other hand comes in very confident and outgoing, so it was really interesting to see her express embarrassment or uncertainty later on, that reader is reminded that she’s also a kid learning and figuring things out for the first time.
JAN: The first two books feature a teacher, Jabari, who’s a bird watcher. When I wrote that, I didn’t know that you’re a birder, too. Your bio says you monitor hawk nests in your neighborhood. Did you, like Jabari, become interested as a kid?
KRIS: Birding is a very new hobby for me! There’s a raptor nest monitoring group in Griffith Park that a couple of my friends had been participating in for a few years. I thought it sounded interesting and signed up for it in 2020 right before the pandemic. At that time, I didn’t think of myself as a birder, but once you start looking for hawks you kind of can’t stop spotting them. Now I have a mental map of raptors in my area – there’s a great horned up the hill, a barn owl by the local cafe, and the Cooper’s hawk nest in the magnolia up the block – it makes me feel like I have a better understanding of my neighborhood.
JAN: As an author, I get to work things into the stories that I’ve actually experienced or that have meaning in my life. For instance, I knew a kid who actually did get stuck between two urinals, as Buddy does in Not Really Buddies. And I know a teacher who took all the books out of the classroom baskets and had the kids re-sort them, as Ms. Maple does in Tiny Tornadoes. Are there things you’ve been able to slip into the illustrations that express your own experiences or interests, things we might not even have noticed?
KRIS: I had no idea that Buddy getting stuck between the urinals was based on something that happened in real life, that’s amazing! The main thing I tried to contribute was to make sure that Buddy’s classmates felt like their own distinct individuals. I tried to be intentional with their expressions and what they wear.
JAN: You make the class look like such a fun and cohesive community. What’s been your favorite scene to illustrate? And do you have a favorite illustration you’ve done?
KRIS: All of book 3 was a blast to draw because I love drawing animals! My favorite illustration so far is the one of Frisbee running around Joey’s room and knocking the lamp over!
JAN: The composition on that scene was inspired! Talk about conveying movement! Though I don’t think I can pick a favorite illustration myself. Only because I love them all! When Catherine, our editor, sends me your sketches and finals, I often laugh out loud. Most often, it might be at pieces that feature Bea. Because Bea is Bea, and keeps the comedy front and center. But I also love the art that showcases the different emotional registers. And I feel all warm and fuzzy when I see the pieces of Buddy and his dads. They have such a sweet, funny home life. And of course, the ones with Ms. Maple and all the other kids in that busy, diverse classroom, everybody trying their best to get along, but being so very recognizably human.
KRIS: Thank, you Jan! It’s really encouraging to hear your reactions to these drawings, I’m really proud of these illustrations and I love these kids!
JAN: Do you have a favorite Whirligig? (Spoiler Alert for readers: Whirligigs is the name of the class.)
KRIS: I think my favorite Whirligig is Joey because I like drawing his power chair, it’s challenging and feels really satisfying to draw!
JAN: And my last question: Are you more of a Buddy or more a Bea? Do you identify with one more than the other? And when you draw them, do you ever draw on (pun intended) your own personality and/or experiences?
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KRIS: Oh, I am DEFINITELY more of a Buddy, I like to hang back and get a handle on the whole picture before jumping into something new. But that means that I really admire and strive to be like the Beas in my life who dive in feet first. When I draw Bea, I’m usually thinking, “this is something so-and-so would do” and draw from that!
JAN: I’m much more of a Buddy, too, but I love writing for Bea, so spontaneous and unfiltered, saying and doing whatever pops into her head. I think quieter personalities often like to read about characters who are outsized, and vice versa. It helps us access other sides of ourselves. And of course, that underscores the theme of the books, getting along with others who might have a different way of moving through life. Can we all get along? I hope so! And I hope Buddy and Bea adds some lightness to that journey. Your illustrations contribute so much to the humor and fun!
KRIS: Thank you, Jan! It’s been great to illustrate such a lively and relatable group of kids. The fun part of life is meeting people who are wildly different from yourself and I think these books are a little slice of that bigger adventure that we all experience.
Foof! I’ve done guest post interviews before, but rarely are they THIS in-depth. Loads of thanks to Jan and to Kris for suggesting this and putting it together. You can find the Buddy and Bea series in many a fine bookstore and library. The most recent issue is Pet-a-Palooza out March 5th. Look for it!
Filed under: Guest Posts
About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.
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Judy Weymouth says
I don’t remember if I’ve ever read anything about BUDDY AND BEA until this morning and I appreciate the introduction to these books and their TWO creators. I have known for years the facts but never really understood the usual boundaries between author and illustrator. This exchange of conversation in the post today very clearly gives me a sense of what that relationship is like although I struggle to understand how a writer can write without preconceived mental images to accompany their words. You have published a picture book, Betsy, and perhaps one day you might have time and interest to help me understand your thinking about this. I’m a reader of mostly middle grade realistic fiction and rarely are illustrations included in those books. Doesn’t my comprehension, engagement and also enjoyment require the creation of some kind of mental image? I’m thinking every reader forms different images and also thinking various illustrators would surely interpret a given text in various ways. I can imagine an art teacher sharing only the text of a picture book with students and then the students individually producing illustration. So much to consider early on a Saturday morning.
Also, I’m sure in the past I recall reading statistics and commentary regarding the percentage of award winning picture books that are written AND illustrated by the writer. I believe then there clearly was an advantage. I wonder if that is the case today.
The illustrations here included with this interesting and illuminating set of questions and answers are so pleasing to me. I’m looking forward to discovering the WORDS that accompany them and imagine the tiny rural Maine library I support might soon have copies on their shelves.! Thank you, Jan, Kris, and Betsy.
Jan Carr says
So glad you enjoyed the peek behind the scenes, Judy! And of course I’m glad the Buddy and Bea books are now on your radar. Yes, the author/illustrator collaboration can feel unusual. But most often, the results are a happy surprise!
Judy Weymouth says
How nice of you to take the time to respond to my comment. All three of your books should be in my hands next week and on the library’s shelves in the following days. I’m expecting all the adults who experience the stories before the kids (and the child readers, of course!) will be thrilled. Then we will anticipate #4!
Jan Carr says
Wow! Thank you so much, Judy! I hope you and the kids at your Maine library enjoy them. Happy Reading! And I send all of you lots of love!
Judy Weymouth says
I read all three books yesterday afternoon and found them to be absolutely delightful. Living with a cat and a Certified Therapy Dog, PET-A-PALOOZA was extra special. Grace (10 year old Golden Retriever) and I spend several hours each week at Read to a Dog events. Your books will be on the library shelves by next week. I wish you much success with the BUDDY and BEA series.