The Prerogative of Human, Traditional, Green, and Dreamlike: An Interview with Violeta Dabija

Violeta Dabija is one of the most prolific illustrators for children aged three to eight, in the United States and worldwide. She was born in Moldova, a small country situated in the extreme east of Europe, in 1979. She completed her art studies at the Academy of Music, Theatre and Fine Arts in the Republic of Moldova and illustrated her first children’s books for the Prut International publishing house and for UNICEF Moldova. In 2007, Dabija started collaborating with publishers from the United States and since 2011 with writers and publishing houses all around the world. She has illustrated about forty books, which have been published and translated in English, French, Korean, Chinese, Thai, Italian, Romanian, Spanish, and Turkish. Dabija is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and is best known for illustrating the nonfiction picturebooks of the Can Be… series by Laura Purdie Salas, which won prestigious awards and distinctions. Among them is the John Burroughs Riverby Award, 2012; Minnesota Book Award Finalist, 2013 and 2015; CCBC Choices, 2015; Scholastic Book Club Selection, 2013; IRA Teachers’ Choices, 2013; and NYC Reads 365 Recommended Reading List, 2017. The book A Leaf Can Be… is the most appreciated of the three, claiming Dabija’s unique talent in depicting green issues: “The illustrations should be on every Earth Day poster” (Smorris/KidLitReviews). “Grown-up readers may be a bit in awe too,” commented the New York Times (Paul). It was even said that if the artist were American, not foreign, she could have been awarded the Caldecott Medal for these illustrations (“A Leaf Can Be…”). Since 2018, Dabija has been living and working in California, in the United States, with her husband and son.

How would your personal style match the environmental agenda of the post-COVID world?

As I have been illustrating socially relevant issues for many years, the eventual “earth-friendly challenge” is likely up to me. In addition, illustrating children’s books for UNICEF helped me obtain skills of depicting stories of universal importance. Winter subjects are my favorite ones, and the magic of nature is a recurrent theme in many illustrations. In this context, the most representative are scenes from the nonfiction books A Leaf Can Be…, Water Can Be…, and A Rock Can Be…, which consider natural life in all its diversity. As a plant lover and as a mother, who wants her child to grow up in harmony with nature, I appreciate every effort to bring eco-knowledge in the forefront of people’s minds. That is why issues on antipollution, green and renewable energy, reduction and redistribution of waste, to name just a few, are likely to be represented in my pictures for little children.

Tell us more about your most acclaimed picture book, A Leaf Can Be… by Laura Purdie Salas.

It is a nonfiction book with beautiful rhyming text on different appearances of leaves and on the functions they have in nature throughout a year. For example, a leaf can be rain stopper, wind rider, water ladle, Earth greener, shade spiller, pile maker, nest former, etc. The book is an excellent tool to bring up and assimilate green attitudes from a very early age. In agreement with the text, I provided images of trees and pure ambiance, I introduced shades of greens in the renderings, and I experimented a lot with watercolor texture, which is my favorite working method. This enhanced the feeling of magic “immersion” in the natural world.

Among the most popular, in the nearest future, will also be technology-based issues. What is your professional opinion on representing artificial intelligence in children’s books?

I am not the kind of artist interested in technology or machinery, but rather in human beings. The ideas of anthropomorphizing the technology have been active for more than 100 years in children’s books, among other sources. But even if artificial intelligence is part of daily life and is becoming more...