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  • Integrity and Creativity:An Interview with Barbara Cooney
  • Louisa Smith and Lisa Schlangen (bio)

We interviewed illustrator Barbara Cooney May 6, 1992, while she was in Minnesota to receive the Kerlan Award, presented by the University of Minnesota "in recognition of singular attainments in the creation of children's literature." Her distinguished career, spanning several decades, has included two Caldecott Awards. What impressed us as well as the guests at the Kerlan Award banquet, was the energy and enthusiasm with which Cooney presents information about her art. She is always fresh and candid. We came away feeling that we had met one of the geniuses of the art world and a truly unique human being.

L.S.: Could you talk about the process that you go through when you receive a manuscript? Where do you start?

B.C.: Well, I've received quite a lot of manuscripts—almost all unsolicited. These are the books that I don't write myself. I would like to do my own writing. I've also done a lot of myths, fairy tales, and so forth. Those I found for myself, but for the books that I don't find for myself, I read them and if I like them, I say that's okay. I can't possibly do as many as arrive. I get a lot from people who have the mistaken idea that if they write a story and they can get me to make a few sample pictures, they have a better chance of selling it. But that's really going backwards. Editors and publishers know what's publishable and they know the right person to illustrate better than the author does.

Once in a while, I've collaborated from the start with an author; let's see, I had a friend of mine translate Mother Goose in French for me and he had a jolly time doing that. But on the whole, it's better for the author to go separately and the illustrator to interpret the text in her own way. My advice to beginning authors is to find a good publisher. Go to the library, go to bookstores, and pick out books that you like the looks of, the sort of book that you would like to have printed, and then submit your manuscript directly to them.

The Children's Book Council in New York City puts out pamphlets which have guide lines for aspiring children's book authors and illustrators, [End Page 184] so that lets me off the hook. I don't like to discourage anyone and I really don't like to criticize people who are trying. I really don't know because I'm not an editor. But I know what I want to do. I don't really have time to do all those things.

L.S.: But once you have one that you like, what happens next?

B.C.: I say yes. And then we dicker about the contract. Although we don't really dicker because the publishers treat me very well. Generally I work for what is now Penguin. All these really nice publishers, like Little Brown and Doubleday and Morrow and Lothrop, are such good people that they would never try to cheat me, but I go over the contract and if it seems to be okay then we sign it. And I get an advance against the royalties. They deduct what they paid out, so you might as well not take too much so you have a little more coming. That's my system anyway, and then, once it's signed, the next step is the design.

They say, "How do you want it? What size do you want it?" I usually say I want it as large as we can possibly get it and you know if it's a book that has an ocean in it, or where people are taking a walk, going somewhere, then those books are horizontal. You can see that, with the horizon, they are walking left to right. Or, for instance, I did an Aztec nativity story in which there are a lot of angels up in the sky, in which case...

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