When we started on the pictures for Woven with Starlight, we suggested a cover with a girl standing under a tree.
Naintara, who wrote the book, said no. She wanted just the moon and the stars. Her reason was simple: "kids are kind of also addicted to pretty stuff."
She was 13, and she was right. That cover is on the book now.
Her story explains how the moon got its shape. It follows Lily, an orphan girl, and a Shadow Weaver who covers the world in darkness. Lily has a sketchbook, and in the end it matters more than anything else.
Dark, but not scary
The story is quite dark, so we asked her if she wanted it softened for younger readers. She said no. "I did write the story like that, so I'm good."
She had only one worry. She did not want the Shadow Weaver to scare a six-year-old. So we kept the dark nights, but added lots of moonlight and starlight. We drew the Shadow Weaver as black mist, big and far away, without a scary face.
She corrected us more than once
She also told us that Lily is just a normal Indian girl of 7 or 8, that the tree in the story is an oak, and that the Creator in the story becomes the moon. Each time, we changed the pictures. Each time, she was right.
Her way of telling it
Naintara describes the beginning of her story slowly, then moves fast once things start happening. She told us this is just her style.
We kept it. Her slow parts got calm, quiet pictures. Her fast parts got more pictures with fewer words on each page. The book has 42 pictures, and every word in it is hers.
We made mistakes too
We look at every picture before it goes in the book. In the first round, Lily's old leather sketchbook came out looking like a spiral notepad on six pages. We fixed all six.
What I took away
We have years of making books behind us, and a 13-year-old still knew her readers better than we did. We talk a lot about keeping a child's voice in the words. This book reminded me that it matters in the pictures too.
If your child has a story they want to tell, we would love to hear it.
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