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WTM: visual moons, editor's reply
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From: WilliamsJ
Date: 29 Jan 1996 09:43:42 U
I'm sneaking in one more WTM explanation before July ends and your discussion of Mahy begins in earnest--though I hope to slip in answers to earlier questions on WTM during August, in between a week of teaching and the descent of all my Creech family.
The editor at HarperCollins who worked on WTM during its final stages just filled me in on the evolution of those two pairs of visual moons in WTM.
Here's her response:
The visual moons on p. 149 were "a design device to show the break between two sections. Usually we use a blank line to indicate a break, but there at the bottom of the page, a blank line looked like a mistake rather than a conscious break. Hence, the moons."
The editor also says that the "generic term for these symbols used to break text is 'dingbat'!"
It was the editor who suggested a dingbat on p 149, perhaps two moons or a moon cycle, and it was the book designer who chose to use a pair of crescent moons, which she drew freehand.
The final pair of moons (on the last page of WTM) was then added
"because it seemed appropriate" and for "continuity."
Voila!
I loved this book's 'design' (type face, Indian symbols, etc.) from the moment I first saw it. In March, after the Newbery announcement, I met the designer, Alicia Mikles, in NYC. She explained that she had collected those symbols many years ago, when, as a child, she visited Colorado. They are
'authentic' Indian designs, though from which tribe I don't know.
In March I also met Lisa Desimini, the jacket artist, and heard many people tell her how much the Newbery medal resembled a beautiful full moon rising out of that river/lake! It was an earlier editor's decision to ask Lisa to do the cover, after he had seen her cover for Barbara Kingsolver's Pigs in Heaven--if you have a chance to see that cover (the hardback version--I'm not sure if the paperback is the same), you'll see why that cover reminded the editor of WTM. I was entranced by what Lisa came up with for WTM's jacket art (the front)--with her collage style, she managed to incorporate several of the book's key images, and I thought those tire treads on one mountain and the 'hidden city' in another, plus that abstract scrap of metal down in the grass were all brilliant! What do YOU think?
The cover type face, incorporating the two moons within the 'O's' of MOONS and the symbols on the back of the jacket were the designer's doing--and again, I think, Wow! Maybe everyone else isn't as impressed as I am with the way the book's cover and design enhance the text, but I find it so exciting, this collaborative effort to produce a book!
One final anecdote: my grown daughter and her boyfriend loved those Indian symbols on the back cover so much that they each got a tattoo of them!
My daughter has the bottom portion of the design (leaves/feathers and rising sun??) discreetly tattooed on her ankle, and her boyfriend has the top image permanently etched on his shoulder. Gol?ng!. That's family loyalty for you!!
hanks again to Ginny for raising the original question-- else I might have forgotten those little 'slippers' of a moon on p 149 and would never have known about 'dingbats'!
Sharon Creech
Received on Mon 29 Jan 1996 09:43:42 AM CST
Date: 29 Jan 1996 09:43:42 U
I'm sneaking in one more WTM explanation before July ends and your discussion of Mahy begins in earnest--though I hope to slip in answers to earlier questions on WTM during August, in between a week of teaching and the descent of all my Creech family.
The editor at HarperCollins who worked on WTM during its final stages just filled me in on the evolution of those two pairs of visual moons in WTM.
Here's her response:
The visual moons on p. 149 were "a design device to show the break between two sections. Usually we use a blank line to indicate a break, but there at the bottom of the page, a blank line looked like a mistake rather than a conscious break. Hence, the moons."
The editor also says that the "generic term for these symbols used to break text is 'dingbat'!"
It was the editor who suggested a dingbat on p 149, perhaps two moons or a moon cycle, and it was the book designer who chose to use a pair of crescent moons, which she drew freehand.
The final pair of moons (on the last page of WTM) was then added
"because it seemed appropriate" and for "continuity."
Voila!
I loved this book's 'design' (type face, Indian symbols, etc.) from the moment I first saw it. In March, after the Newbery announcement, I met the designer, Alicia Mikles, in NYC. She explained that she had collected those symbols many years ago, when, as a child, she visited Colorado. They are
'authentic' Indian designs, though from which tribe I don't know.
In March I also met Lisa Desimini, the jacket artist, and heard many people tell her how much the Newbery medal resembled a beautiful full moon rising out of that river/lake! It was an earlier editor's decision to ask Lisa to do the cover, after he had seen her cover for Barbara Kingsolver's Pigs in Heaven--if you have a chance to see that cover (the hardback version--I'm not sure if the paperback is the same), you'll see why that cover reminded the editor of WTM. I was entranced by what Lisa came up with for WTM's jacket art (the front)--with her collage style, she managed to incorporate several of the book's key images, and I thought those tire treads on one mountain and the 'hidden city' in another, plus that abstract scrap of metal down in the grass were all brilliant! What do YOU think?
The cover type face, incorporating the two moons within the 'O's' of MOONS and the symbols on the back of the jacket were the designer's doing--and again, I think, Wow! Maybe everyone else isn't as impressed as I am with the way the book's cover and design enhance the text, but I find it so exciting, this collaborative effort to produce a book!
One final anecdote: my grown daughter and her boyfriend loved those Indian symbols on the back cover so much that they each got a tattoo of them!
My daughter has the bottom portion of the design (leaves/feathers and rising sun??) discreetly tattooed on her ankle, and her boyfriend has the top image permanently etched on his shoulder. Gol?ng!. That's family loyalty for you!!
hanks again to Ginny for raising the original question-- else I might have forgotten those little 'slippers' of a moon on p 149 and would never have known about 'dingbats'!
Sharon Creech
Received on Mon 29 Jan 1996 09:43:42 AM CST
