Have you ever noticed that there are typically two names on the front of children’s books? The author and the illustrator. I’ve always found it a little bit unusual that the two entities can be separated considering how beautiful and accurate the illustration mirrors the words.

I started doing a bit of researching when I developed an interest in writing children’s books; why exactly were the two jobs so starkly separated? I suppose I never got the why of the matter, but I found that most publishing companies specifically warn authors that it’s less likely that their book will be published if they are unwilling to publish it without their own illustration.

What?!

That’s insane to me. I mean, short of the author submitting some really terrible art – and I don’t think any author would do that because it would sell the story short – why wouldn’t you give the author input on the visual aspect of the book?

It makes me wonder whether all of those beautiful books that I fell in love with as a child were an actual representation of how the author had envisioned the book? Do you think that Margaret Wise Brown (“Goodnight Moon“) is horrified by the images created by Clement Hurd? That book stands out so starkly in my mind for it’s beautiful pictures, but I can barely recall the exact words. And it’s not because it’s not a beautifully written story; just, to me, the images represented the story so well that my mind dwells upon the visual.

It’s sad to think a book has less of a chance of being published if the author refuses to outsource the illustrations. I hope that there are some publishers out there that understand the important connection between the two and celebrate author/illustrators everywhere.