Boop! It’s a (Five Starred) Skeleton and Cat Q&A with Author/Illustrator Brandon James Scott

Can an Instagram account yield a great work of children’s literature? When I started writing about the art of the children’s book back in 2005, this question was not one that I ever considered asking in the future. Yet the origins of any book, regardless of the source, are worth investigating. There is no perfect way to create a book for kids. And if a man’s off-handed posts on Instagram about a skeleton and a black cat yield, in time, some kind of sweet picture book creation, what’s wrong with that?

The Skeleton and the Cat by Brandon James Scott has garnered, as of this post, FIVE starred reviews. Five. Do you know how hard it is for a single book to get even three starred reviews, let along a whopping FIVE?!? That kind of thing doesn’t happen by chance. In fact, there is a very good reason for this cacophony of praise: Uh… it’s, like, really good?

Look, here’s the description of the plot from the publisher:

“A humorous and touching tale of the unexpected friendship that blossoms between a peaceful skeleton and a persistent cat. Told in five short and charming stories that will remind you of Frog and Toad.

Skeleton lives alone in lonesome bliss. She reads books, drinks tea, and tends to her garden. It’s simple and peaceful. Until, one day, a cat knocks on Skeleton’s door…

“Can I come in?” asks the Cat.

Readers and cat lovers of all ages will adore this surprising duo who is sure to convince you that skeletons are gardeners, cats tell good-ish jokes, and, together, they make the best of friends.”

I can’t state it any better than that. But what I can do is provide you with some background information via the creator himself. Brandon James Scott, everybody!

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Betsy Bird: Brandon! This is a real treat for me. I’ve been a big time fan of yours ever since I saw your work on A BEAR, A BEE, AND A HONEY TREE. It’s great to see you doing the author/illustrator thing. Now I dug around your Instagram account, and as far as I can ascertain, you’ve been drawing these two on and off since 2022. Considering their massive following, at what point did you get the idea of spinning them off into their own picture book?

Brandon James Scott: Thank you! It was originally just a personal art project with these two characters and was never intended as a book. I treated it as a playground for visual ideas for the longest time, and shared them online and built a bit of a following. But after making hundreds of illustrations, the Skeleton and the Cat really started to develop strong personalities and felt like real characters so… I had to do something with them. I have to credit my wonderful literary agent, Emily Van Beek at Folio Jr., for the gentle nudge to pursue making a book with them. She really convinced me it was something worth trying.

BB: Well, kudos to you, Emily! But, y’know, it’s one thing to decide to take beloved characters and put them into a story and another thing entirely to figure out the tone and the plot. You’ve opted to settle into the short story format, and the burgeoning friendship as it develops between these two. Tell us about some of your earliest drafts. How did you eventually figure out how you wanted this book to go?

Brandon: I tried to write a more traditional picture book with them – one big story. It didn’t work. Or at least, I wasn’t ready to do it. I couldn’t figure it out. So I tried to go back to the mindset I had when I was making a daily illustration with them, which was: What’s a fun moment they could have today? There was no pressure in that. Some illustrations would be better than others, but it was about exploring lots of ideas instead nailing one perfect idea.

I ran with that mindset and I was able to generate a lot of short ideas that way. It was more like writing skits than full stories. And I found that I could take some of them and string them together and it sort of told a larger story anyway, and also hinted that there were lots more stories that haven’t been told yet. It felt like a perfect format for these already established characters – and also one that worked for other amazing friends stories I love like Frog and Toad or George and Martha.

BB: Glad to see you know your classics. Looking at your art, I noticed that neither the cat nor the skeleton show expressions through their mouths. Rather, you’ve opted to show it all in their eyes.  And this is going to strike you as kind of a silly statement, but I’d like to commend you for making the skeleton female without the cartoony indications of femininity (eyelashes/bow/books/curvy body/etc.). She’s just a skeleton, albeit one donning somewhat Grim Reaper-adjacent garb. I know you’ve been drawing her for quite some time but how did you initially settle on her look? And has it changed at all over time?

Brandon: Honestly the Skeleton has been pretty much the same since I first started to draw her. Both her and Cat were born from me just wanting to illustrate things that I thought were fun to draw. So the characters had the simple black silhouettes, the goofy-looking skull, the super expressive skeleton hands, the lack of facial features or details, and all of it juxtaposed on top of colourful lively backgrounds – it’s all just what I settled on because that’s what I found fun to draw day after day. You can do a lot with a few shapes, and you can say almost everything you need say about a character’s emotions with just their eyes. I find the limitations fun and a welcome challenge to see how much I can get out of the characters when I don’t have a lot to work with. I think there’s also something nice about limiting how specific you get with characters because it can help the viewer relate to them more.

As far as the Skeleton being a female – this has surprised people when they find out and I’ve gotten a lot of comments on it. I remember thinking, why does everyone assume a skeleton is a male by default, and why aren’t there more female skeletons out there anyway?

BB: Damn right. So was there any idea you initially wanted to have in the book but had to cut along the way?

Brandon: One of the illustrations I did when it was just a daily personal art project was a picture of the Skeleton and Cat floating up into the sky holding hundreds of balloons. It’s one of my favorite pictures I did and I tried to make a short story in the book based on it, but I couldn’t land on something that worked on its own or within the context of the other stories, so it was scrapped along the way. I will bring it back some day!

BB: Excellent. Sequel fodder then. By the way, I am making the huge leap of an assumption that you are, yourself, a cat owner. If so, I insist you pay the cat tax. Deets please.

Brandon: Sadly, I do not own a cat – at this moment. But judging from my own kid’s requests that may change soon. However I did grow up with a cat, and have spent many years gaining a deep understanding of the ways of the most awesome of house animals.

BB: Good save. Now can we hope for more Skeleton and more Cat in the future? Or do you consider this a one-off?

Brandon: Absolutely! A second Skeleton and Cat picture book is coming out next year, in fact! I’m finishing up that one right now. And there will be some more after that too…

BB: Makes sense. I mean, one does not receive five stars from reviewers and then drop the premise entirely. Finally, what else are you working on these days? And what’s next for you?

Brandon: More Skeleton and the Cat, and I also have some rough drafts of a new story I’m working on. I would also like to get back into the habit of making those daily illustrations using traditional media this time. Maybe it might lead me to the next book…?

Thank you!

BB: Thank YOU!

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Swell fella. Swell book. If you’d like to get your hands on a copy of The Skeleton and the Cat I have some excellent news for you. The book is already out, so you’ve no excuse. Go find yourself a copy and prepare to be charmed. Consider it Halloween in July. I sure do.

Thanks to Brandon for answering my questions and to Taylan Salvati and the team at Harper Collins Children’s Books for helping to put this all together.

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