Throw Wide Those Cemetery Gates: Leigh Bardugo and John Picacio Discuss The Invisible Parade

I need you to see something.

Here. Look at this:

Wow. Just…

Wow.

And let me tell you, the insides of this book are just as enticing as its outsides. Out August 26th, this collaboration between Bardugo and Picacio, the artist who did interior character work for a special edition of NINTH HOUSE, has a long and storied history. We’re going to get to all of that, but first I’d like you to hear a description of the plot of The Invisible Parade. From the publisher:

“It’s time to join the party! Adventure awaits readers of all ages on Día de Muertos​ in this stunningly original and lushly illustrated tour de force about family, love, and overcoming grief from #1 bestselling superstar Leigh Bardugo and World Fantasy Award and Hugo Award-winner John Picacio.

Everyone in the neighborhood was getting ready for the party. 
Everyone knew somebody on the guest list. . . .
This was the day the dead returned.

There’s a party tonight, but Cala doesn’t want to go. While her family prepares for the celebration, Cala grieves her grandfather and tries to pretend she’s not afraid.

But when she is separated from her family at the cemetery, Cala encounters four mysterious riders who will show her she is actually quite brave after all.

Brimming with magic and humor, The Invisible Parade is the first picture-book collaboration between award-winner John Picacio and New York Times bestselling Leigh Bardugo. Set on the night of Día de Muertos, Cala’s story is one of love, loss, and the courage that can be found in unexpected places.”

When you see the book (and you WILL see this book) you’ll probably have loads of questions about it. I sure did, so today I’ll spare you some time and just ask Leigh and John directly. Easy peasy:

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Betsy Bird: Hi, Leigh! Thank you so much for answering my questions today. You know, I’ve heard of plenty of picture book authors pitching ideas to possible illustrators but THE INVISIBLE PARADE may be one of those rare cases where the artist pitched its concept to the author. As you mention in your Author’s Note at the end, people adore pitching you ideas and you more often than not turn them down. So what was it about John’s pitch that struck a chord? 

Leigh Bardugo: Thank you for hosting us! It’s an honor. You’re right, I was skeptical. But “Wizard of Oz set in a graveyard” grabbed me immediately. Yes, there was an aesthetic element—I was a kid who spent a lot of time walking through cemeteries, listening to The Cure and The Smiths, reading epitaphs. But the heart of the story was what really drew me. I wanted to write a book that would help families talk about grief and I had been noodling on that for a long while, trying to find the right point of access. John threw open those cemetery gates. I could instantly imagine a story that would honor the fear and sadness that come with loss, but that would take us on an adventure too. 

BB: John! Thank you too for talking with us. Since Leigh mentioned in her Author’s Note that your pitch to her for this book was “It’s The Wizard of Oz set in a graveyard,” as elevator pitches go, that’s pitch perfect. But what precisely did you mean by it?

John Picacio: I knew this was the journey of a young girl confronting the death of someone she loves, for the first time. And she was going to encounter four horsemen along that journey, on the night of Día de Muertos. The basic story structure, and the color progression, is very Wizard of Oz, with a girl encountering a series of potentially scary beings that have needs, but are much more than meets the eye.  

THE INVISIBLE PARADE is about a girl trying to make sense of life and death, but *on her terms*, not just her family’s terms, or her culture’s. It’s not a story about tradition, for tradition’s sake. It’s about a girl struggling with overwhelming grief and loss, and within that struggle, she’s trying to find herself and who she is. 

BB: Just to follow up on that, almost ten years ago you pitched the idea for THE INVISIBLE PARADE to Leigh, but insofar as I can tell you’d never done a picture book before. When you suggested to Leigh that you two do a book together, did you think from the start that it would be a picture book or some other format/style? 

John: Good question. I knew THE INVISIBLE PARADE was a picture book from the start, and you’re right — I’ve never done one before. I knew the basic beats for this one, and I wanted to evolve it with someone I’d enjoy, who would equally push and pull the story to form.

I started at the top of my list, made a wish, and miraculously, my very busy friend Leigh said ‘yes’. We met each other before her debut novel SHADOW & BONE officially released, and we stayed in touch over the years. She’s not only one of the great fantasy writers, but I think she’s one of the great contemporary American authors. Every spread in this book is filled with her heart and her magic. She took my beats and we riffed back and forth — first in museums and cemeteries in LA, and later on the phone. We flowed, never compromising, always shaping beats and ideas into a little symphony of us, personal and true. 

BB: Leigh, insofar as I can tell, this is your first picture book. One might argue that writing good picture books requires an entirely different set of muscles than YA or adult titles. What did the process of actually sitting down and writing this book look like to you? 

Leigh: I started collecting picture books when I was a teenager. I love them the way I love poetry, and maybe for similar reasons—the economy of language, the innovation the form demands. I’ve written a dozen novels at this point, but this was an entirely new challenge and I needed to approach the process as a student. I had no illusions about just jumping in. John and I spent a lot of time talking about the story before we ever wrote a single word. We discussed our favorite picture books, short films, our own experiences with grief. We shared inspiration from Octavio Paz to Jorge Gutierrez to Shaun Tan. I just committed to it being a highly iterative process and then I went to work, finding the rhythm of Cala’s life and loss. It was intimidating, but I think art worth consuming happens in revision and the only way I can approach any project is to trust in that process of revision. 

 BB: And John this is, as I mentioned, your first picture book too. Was there anything about it that surprised you while making it? Anything you tried, and that ultimately did or didn’t work? 

John: Sure. I committed to drawing big, lush drawings that were much larger than the final printed size of the book. And in the end, I think drawing these huge pieces in graphite was worth it. I hope it will be. But that will be decided by everyone reading this, and everyone who experiences THE INVISIBLE PARADE.

The thing is, these drawings took so long to produce because of the size at which I was working, and how much I was putting into them. I think the process took years off the lives of not just myself, but Alvina Ling and David Caplan too (editor and creative director). Alvina never shamed me about how long it was taking, and neither did Dave. Both were steady beacons, never wavering, always encouraging, even when I felt horrible about how long it was taking. The best editors and creative directors know how to get the best out of creators. And they did. That’s why they’re great. 

Leigh was the one always bringing surprises though. At least for me. And hopefully I was doing the same for her. Often, we saw story ideas the same way, and it was easy. But when Leigh and I riff off each other, she sometimes plays notes that I wouldn’t necessarily play. And when I like the sound of those, I play notes that I wouldn’t normally play. And that feedback loop is all about surprise. It fueled this book.

BB: Leigh, at the heart of this story is Cala and the way in which her grief colors absolutely every aspect of her life. How did the shape and personality of Cala form for you? How much of you is in Cala, and how much of John’s daughter? 

Leigh: I don’t know if there’s any way to pull that apart now. I think John’s daughter was our touchstone. Her perspective had to guide us as we considered the way Cala saw the world. Cala barely speaks in the first part of the story. She’s rejecting the living world, all of its color and enthusiasm. It’s only when she meets the horsemen that she starts to find her voice again and that she begins reengaging with her family and the people around her. When my mom had me, she moved in with her parents so that she could go back to school, so I was pretty much raised by my grandfather. He loved stories—poetry, novels, opera, cowboy songs—and he taught me to love them too. I wish he could have seen me become an author, so in some ways, that is the unfinished story at the heart of The Invisible Parade: all of the moments we don’t get to share with the people we lose, and the possibility that we do get to share them after all. 

BB: John, you mentioned this a bit already, but the publication page says that illustrations in this book were drawn in graphite on Strathmore 500 Bristol paper. Looking at this sumptuous, engrossing art, one suspects that there may be a bit more to your process. Could you tell us a bit about how you work?

John: Yeah, I drew everything with Palomino Blackwing pencils on Strathmore 500 board. The drawings are big — 14.5″ x 27″ — because each double-page spread was drawn as a complete, full-value composition. The book is a series of double-pagers because it creates a horizontal experience flowing across time and space — as parades do. Each spread was its own unique labor. Final drawings had to be scanned in three parts, in high resolution — which meant that I had to re-assemble those scans back to a single whole. And then I digitally colored each composition. The color design is telling a story just as much as the words and graphite drawings are. That was a big deal to Leigh and me, from the beginning.

When we were designing our Horsemen, I was both sketching on paper and sculpting little maquettes to figure out shapes and silhouettes. Someday, I’m hoping these big graphite drawings and these little noodlings and sculptures can become an exhibition, maybe even one that tours city-to-city.

BB: Speaking of the horsemen, Leigh, one request I used to get quite a lot when I was a children’s librarian was small children asking for picture books that were “scary”. The horsemen in this book certainly look striking, though John does a remarkable job of mixing together the silly with the potentially frightening. How did the two of you walk that line so that the book landed squarely in “comfortably creepy” territory? 

Leigh: We agreed early on that we weren’t going to shy away from the spooky. For Cala’s courage to matter, she has to be a little scared. My way of coping with fear has always been humor, so I made sure to keep that in mind: War is that jerk who always wants to argue. Plague has a permanently runny nose. 

Witches, ghosts, haunted houses—I loved all those stories as a kid, and they absolutely scared me, but I don’t think I ever doubted my ability to encounter creepy things and survive the adventure. I still remember the thrill I got the first time I read Bunnicula because somehow James Howe executed this perfect mix of humor and a real sense of danger. It’s tricky, but there’s a reason kids love Halloween and it isn’t just the candy.

BB: True enough (though the candy doesn’t hurt). John, as I was telling Leigh, you do this amazing job of making things scary but never too too scary. But how did you gauge what was and wasn’t appropriate? Did you have a team working with you or did you ascertain the level of scariness entirely by yourself? 

John: Leigh had opinions about scariness. So did Alvina and Dave. Our agent Jo Volpe spoke up too. I listened to all of them. But in the end, I trust my sensibility. Part of that confidence comes from being a dad. I never felt in doubt about what I thought was ‘too scary’ for kids because my daughter was seeing what I was doing. And while some might mistakenly think, “Well, she’s your daughter. Of course she’s going to side with you and like what you do.” They couldn’t be more wrong.

As an art director, my young daughter is a cold-blooded savage who doesn’t say much, and suffers no fools. She loves scary and spooky, so long as it’s not gratuitous. I wanted a book that would hit home with kids like her. So I had a good internal sense of where my lane was, regarding scariness.

BB: Leigh, it was only after a couple reads that it slowly dawned on me that these four horseman share some fairly striking similarities to four other horseman out there. Those of the apocalypse persuasion. Why did you alight on horsemen, specifically, to lead Cala to meeting Death once and for all? 

Leigh: That was part of John’s original pitch, and I wanted to make sure that each horseman had a lesson for Cala. Grief can take a lot of different shapes, and when we lose someone, particularly when we’re young, that pain can manifest as fear of wildly different things—sickness, any kind of conflict, the sight of others’ suffering. I wanted to take the mystery out of those things and give kids a chance to look at them directly without lecturing them about how they should feel. 

BB: John, the Dia de Muertos element to the story is seamlessly worked into the story of Cala’s grief (and will dovetail nicely as a permanent Dia de Muertos holiday storytime staple for years and years to come). Was that holiday always meant to appear in the narrative or did you and Leigh add it to the text later in the course of writing the book? 

John: Oh, it was always at the epicenter of the story. This was always a Día de Muertos tale because I’m like Cala in some ways. I’m Mexican American, and even though I’m much older than her, I’m still redefining the terms of how I carry my culture with me. And as a creator — right now at least — I’m constantly redefining how I want to contribute to it.

Leigh and I always knew we were making this book for all people, and all ages. I give Alvina huge credit for understanding that. This particular holiday allowed us to tell a story about grieving that mattered to us, and hopefully helps others when those times arrive.

BB: Leigh, just to finish up, John’s art on the book is jaw-dropping throughout, but is there a particular image in the book that resonates more with you than any of the others? 

Leigh: It changes every time I read the book. Obviously the gatefold is a showstopper. It’s this huge moment of catharsis where Cala finally gets to experience celebration. But I think for me the most powerful image will always be Cala standing, small and alone, separated from her family, in front of the cemetery gates. This is the way we all feel in the face of loss, but we have to walk through those gates to feel okay again.

 BB: And John, would you be interested in doing more picture books?

John: Absolutely. I want to keep telling visual stories. That’s part of who I am now.

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Scads of thanks to both Leigh and John for not just the amount of time they put into these answers but also the careful thought and consideration present as well. As I mentioned earlier, you’ll be able to see The Invisible Parade as early as August 26th. It truly is like nothing else you’ve seen. Thanks too to Victoria Stapleton and the Little, Brown team for helping to bring this whole discussion together.

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2025, Interviews