It’s a Belgian Cover Reveal Day! A Talk with Leo Timmers About Kiki & Me

Don’t you love it when you think you know what a picture book creator is capable of, only to discover that they’ve been holding out on you? Leo Timmers, that Belgian artist who as recently as last year released the beautifully kooky picture book The Monster in the Lake, has a new title coming out in America this year. It’s called Kiki & Me and it’s releasing around October 5th. Today, I’m going to reveal the cover to you (of course). And I’m also going to interview Leo (of course). This is all pretty standard. But what I want you to understand is that this book of his is different. Every librarian I’ve shown it to has been awed. It’s a work of absolute, unmitigated beauty the like of which I’ve not seen in this form in years. It is legitimately awe-inspiring. I’ll show you an interior or two in the course of this interview, but let me say this much: If Leo Timmers were American, this book would be a shoo-in for ALL our Caldecott discussions. This is, and I mean this sincerely, one of the great picture books of 2026.

The description from the publisher reads:

First there was a long, windy road. Then I heard voices. The gate lowered . . . and there she was. Kiki.

It took her a while to get used to me, but she was a fast learner. Kiki did everything for me. She watered me, kept me warm, groomed me, and fed me. Kiki loved me. And I loved her.

Kiki and her horse explore the landscape together and are inseparable. But Kiki grows older and things change. One day, the horse is alone―and thinks it will be forever.

Delicate black-and-white drawings alternate with rich, dramatic paintings to tell a poignant story about inseparable friends and growing up.

And now, a word with the man of the hour.

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Betsy Bird: Leo Timmers it is an honor and a pleasure to get a chance to speak with you today. I’ve been a fan for years, but the moment I was shown KIKI & ME I was gobsmacked. I’m having difficulty not being overly effusive about the book with my co-workers and friends. Please, where did this particular book come from? It hits very differently from your other titles. 

Leo Timmers: First of all, it’s an honor for me to speak with you, Betsy. I’ve been following your work over the years as well, and I’ve been truly delighted by the kind words you’ve written about my work. Thank you!

Yes, Kiki and Me is quite different from my previous books. Although I feel that all my books differ from one another, this one stands out because of its shift in tone and technique. 

Humor has always been an important ingredient in my stories, but here the voice is a bit more serious and poetic.

When I first stumbled upon this story, I was a little afraid of it. It didn’t feel like something I would normally make, yet at the same time it was the most personal story I had ever created. So I knew I had to make it.

The story is so personal because it is rooted in my own childhood. My father bought me a horse when I was about ten years old, and many of the scenes in the book are drawn directly from my own experiences. 

I had to take care of the horse, but I also imagined myself as a cowboy. Together with my teacher, we would ride through fields and forests, sometimes even in the rain. These are profound memories.

At the same time, I think I am also channeling my feelings as a father of two daughters. Watching them grow up and slowly leave home has inevitably seeped into this story as well. 
I think I needed to reach a certain age to be able to tell this story.

BB: All your books are gorgeous. Each and every last one. This book, however, feels wholly new. That’s partly due to the storytelling, but you also allow yourself this vast range of different landscapes, weather events, seasons, etc.  There’s a distinct playfulness to the sheer variety of them. When you were planning this book at the start, was it always the plan to indulge in these incredible colored, silent sequences? Or did the form of the book change as you worked on it?

Leo: It’s always surprising how stories emerge. Usually it takes a long time to find the right structure, rhythm, or a satisfying ending, but this one arrived almost fully formed, including the idea of the silent spreads. I can’t explain where that came from. 

Of course, the order of the scenes changed many times, and I spent a long time thinking about what each image should carry. 

In the earliest versions, Kiki and Polly sometimes appeared large on the page, almost in close-up, but as I was sketching, it became clear that the landscapes needed to be vast, overwhelming in scale. 

The only way to achieve that was to make Kiki and Polly very small within them. A bicycle trip in Ireland also helped me to ground these spreads in reality. The overwhelming scenery was an inspiration for this book.

Each spread represents a feeling: adventure, exhilaration, tenderness, awe, fear, and so on. I was always asking myself what I wanted to convey with each image and how it could help tell the story on a purely visual and emotional level.

Equally important was the suggestion of time passing. For example, at the end of the seven successive spreads, there’s an image of Kiki and Polly looking out over the ocean from the edge of a cliff. The image captures a high point in their friendship as they watch a whale in the moonlight, but at the same time, the cliff also symbolizes the end of something.

Color, of course, was very important in conveying emotion. Early on, the sun breaks through to emphasise a new beginning. Later, when Kiki and her friend sail away in a boat, the world turns grey and misty. This mirrors Polly’s sadness and the uncertainty that lies ahead. Each painting had to have its own tone, colour palette, and meaning. I love thinking about these things.

BB: Tell us a little bit about the decision to alternate painted sequences with black and white ones. As a reader, I feel that the impact of the colored sequences is heightened considerably when your eyes are allowed to relax between spreads. Is that why you did went in this direction or did you have another reason? 

Leo: The idea of alternating between black and white and color really grew out of the sketching process. The more I worked on the drawings, the clearer it became that this was the right direction to take. There were multiple reasons for that.

As you say, the impact of the landscapes is stronger because they’re surrounded by colourless pages, and that was a big part of the decision. 

The black-and-white drawings also bring a real sense of intimacy to the relationship between the two characters. Without color or background, there’s nothing to distract you from what they’re doing together. It felt very pure and honest to me just like their friendship is.

The landscapes, on the other hand, do something quite different. In those spreads, the surroundings are more important, and Kiki and Polly become just a small part of a much larger world. They’re not just moving through it. They’re really feeling and experiencing it. Those scenes are meant to be very sensory.

There’s also a more personal reason behind the choice. Working with pen and ink takes me back to my own childhood. When I was about ten, I used to draw comic strips in black and white, often in my father’s studio. He is a painter, mostly of landscapes and also horses. 

It’s funny to think about this —and maybe I’m reading too much into it — but perhaps that environment influenced me more than I realised.

BB: There is a general understanding, often repeated, that the most difficult things to draw/paint are (1) Horses and (2) Bicycles. You went with the horse option, and (if I may say so) you paint a BEAUTIFUL horse. 

But can you speak to what it is about horses that so many other people find difficult? What is it about a horse’s physiology that confounds so many people? Because the musculature on your horses is, and I say this with complete and utter awe, incredible. 

Yes, horses are notoriously difficult to draw. It’s hard to pin down exactly why. I think it’s a combination of things, especially the proportions between the body and the legs. The position of the legs is also very challenging.

I used Eadweard Muybridge’s Animals in Motion book to learn about the physics of how a horse moves. What I found most difficult was making the horse my own. 

If you change the proportions even slightly, it starts to look strange and suddenly no longer reads as a horse.  There isn’t much room to play, the way there is with other animals. 

BB: Was there anything different or new that you tried with this book that you’d never thought to attempt before? Did everything you tried work, or were there experiments that had to be discarded or excised?

Leo: Oh, pretty much everything in this book was new to me. So many things were discarded along the way. Pen and ink, for example, was not my first choice at all.

I started with graphite pencils, then tried black pencils, and after that I experimented with painting in grey tones using acrylics. Nothing was really working, so I turned to fineliners. For months I tested different brands and sizes. 

For the first time, I attempted cross hatching, which I had never done before. I looked a lot at Gorey, and Sendak’s pen drawings were certainly an inspiration. After about three months, I gave up on fineliners and finally tried a dip pen. 

That felt much better, but it was so new to me that I didn’t even know which pen or ink to use. I bought and tested so many different ones. And don’t get me started on the paper. 

Finding the right surface, grain, and smoothness cost me a lot of money. I watched countless YouTube videos reviewing paper, pens, and inks.

But when I was working with my dip pen I suddenly knew the horse had to be black. Black ink, black horse! In the earlier versions Polly was white, then brown, and only when ink came into play, she became pitch black. 

A black horse meant a lot of cross-hatching! So I really worked hard on the technique, which took ages. Learning how to create light, volume, and contrast was a slow process, and I had to start over again many times. 

When you make a mistake, it’s impossible to correct.  But as hard as that is, I also think it’s a necessity. It makes me feel like an amateur and prevents me from repeating myself.

I could tell you a similar story about painting the landscapes, but I’ll spare you that. Let’s just say they were equally challenging, but for very different reasons.

BB: I almost feel as though I’m not allowed to ask this, but I have to know. Of all the beautiful spreads in this book, which one is your own personal favorite? 

Leo: It’s very difficult for me to separate the finished images from the process of making them. Every piece is tied to its own making of story. In that sense, the one that surprised me the most was the snow landscape.

I painted the landscape in a fairly loose, almost vague way, with Kiki walking through the snow. I had planned to spray paint the snow on top of it, and that’s exactly what I did. Using a can of paint, it took only a minute to spray the snow over the landscape, but the result was completely unexpected. It was even better than I had hoped! It is probably the most abstract, minimal paining I ever did, and for that reason I like it a lot.

BB: Here is a question that I’ve wondered for years. Could you tell us what your process is? A publication page can only tell the reader so much, and so often your art feels almost three-dimensional on the page. How do you prefer to create it?

Leo Timmers: My process has changed a lot, and is still changing, but over the last 10 years I’ve more or less worked in the same vein, using mostly acrylics. I used to paint in a more traditional way, using small brushes to painstakingly paint every detail. 

Now I’m experimenting more with tools such as sponges and razor blades but also with different grounds and products to create textures and tactility. For example, for the fur bear in Bear’s Lost Glasses, I used a sponge on a very glossy ground so the strokes in the paint stay visible. 

After drying I start adding transparent layers to add shade without losing the textured ground color. I like to create depth, which is something that comes naturally to me.

It’s a slow process, where different stages have to dry before adding a new one. I always have a blowdryer at hand to speed up the drying process.

Having said this, I painted the spreads in Kiki using many materials depending on the image. The book I feels like a culmination of everything I’ve learned over the years, combining them here all together. From sponges, palette knife, toothbrushes, and others painted more classically. Whatever the image asked for.

BB: Finally, what else are you working on these days? What’s next for you?

Leo: I’ve been traveling a lot lately, following my books around the world. My most recent trip was to Shanghai, where Kiki and Me was presented at the Shanghai Book Fair.

After Kiki I really needed a break. I worked for two years on this book and was exhausted when I finished the last painting. At the moment, I’m finishing the design for a large mural, and it’s been nice not to think about a book for a while, but now I’m looking forward to start again. 

I honestly have no idea what will come next, but I’m excited to find out!

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Boy, that was satisfying. I hope I’ve given you just a bit of a glimpse into what makes this book so extraordinary. And here, for one and all to see, is the incredible cover:

My thanks to Leo cannot be expressed in words. It was an honor to speak with you. Thanks too to Lindsay Matvick and the team at Lerner for allowing me to premiere this cover. I know all of you will have to wait until October 5th to see it, but believe me when I say that this book? It’s worth the wait. One of the absolute best of the year. Mind-blowing.

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2026, Cover Reveal, Interviews