If you were a fan of Mirka’s first KITTY AND CAT book, I can’t wait to give you a sneak peek of the sequel!

Mirka Hokkanen has visited my blog a few times.  She talked about her first KITTY AND CAT book just earlier this year.  She is a good friend of mine, as well as the author/illustrator of Mossy and Tweed, Kitty and Cat, and the illustrator of several books for children. Growing up in Finland, Mirka imagined that gnomes hid behind tree stumps and under roots—just out of eyesight. You can learn more about her at her website or follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

KITTY AND CAT: BENT OUT OF SHAPE is even funnier than the first book with these characters!  Where the first book concentrated on opposites, this book uses shapes to great comedic advantage.  Not only is each page a bit of hide-and-seek where the reader gets to guess where the cat is hiding, but each page has you scanning for a shape hidden within the context of each scene.  Genius, right?  This is a book that had me laughing out loud at the hilarious contortions of the grumpy old cat all the way throughout the book.  I can’t wait to add this book to my collection.

Welcome back Mirka!

Me: I laughed so many times while reading this book.  I love the idea of cat contorting himself into shapes (for the concept book) in order to get out of a bath, as well as the “hide and seek” aspects for younger readers.  What gave you that idea?

Mirka: After the first Kitty and Cat book, I wanted to continue the series of concept books, and add colors, numbers and shapes books. Cats contort themselves into weird shapes in real life, so it was a natural progression to combine cat shapes and the concept book. This book was originally a lift-the-flap book, but we had to scrap that idea to keep in line with the picture book series, which is where the current form emerged from. 

Me: I love how the characters are further developed in this second story.  We get to see more of the dog (whom we only met at the end of the last book) and there is again a “HA!” ending.  How did you think of a new concept story while keeping all the same elements as the first board book?  Did you have a checklist of things you used or liked from the first book to keep track?

Mirka: I wanted to create a series of four concept books as described above, and so in a way I had a checklist of things I wanted to include in each book: teach a concept, be funny, include the main characters, and have a storyline. It was a bit of a struggle to shift this book from a lift-the-flap book to the current form, but I figured it out eventually with the help of my editor and art director. We went through a ton of revisions to get it just right, even though in the end it looks deceivingly simple!

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I also added an extra layer of education, because the text is very sparse, that might not be obvious at first read. For example, possibilities of other opposite word pairs in the first book, and in this second book we travel through a different room in the house for each page. So, on subsequent readings, the book can be explored in different richer ways.

I imagine myself reading this to my child and how I would approach going through the book on multiple readings. Sometimes it can be fun to be silly and act things out or get loud, and sometimes it’s nice to be quiet, ask questions, and let the kids do some of the talking. We can talk about what room the scene is happening in, how do we know and how is that room in the book different or the same as the one in our house? 

Me: From opposites to shapes, these books develop a concept for early readers while still appealing to older readers.  Is that a fine line to balance?  Or is that even a goal for you with these books?

Mirka: In general I have a more than one goal with my books, one of which is to make them fun for both kids and parents to read. I’m a mom of three and have been reading picture books for over a decade, and know there are those books that your kids love, but you silently groan because they are too long or boring. I prefer story time to be enjoyable for both grownups and kids.

I also know how quickly kids change as they grow, and I often have a very specific age that I’m thinking about when I’m creating a book. So having a wide age appeal isn’t big on my list of priorities, but if it happens naturally after the book has been created, then I feel it’s a great bonus.   

Me: You already had the characters and setup developed in the first book.  Can you talk a little bit about your creation process for this second book in the series?  Was it harder or easier to do a second story with the same characters and parameters?  Where did you start with this one?  Illustration or writing?  How did it evolve all the way to this finished product?

Mirka: Kitty and Cat: Opposites Attract was the clear first book in the series. After that, when I wanted to expand the series, all the ideas came very rapidly, and I wrote and took notes about illustrations for all of them at the same time initially. I’d be brainstorming one and would have a funny idea for another and so they were all born very symbiotically. When we pitched the series of four books to Candlewick, they picked the two stories that they liked the most to develop.

There is little text in Bent Out of Shape, and it came to me as a concept, with Cat avoiding a bath contorting into shapes. I thought of it in pictures first and had a lot of laughs thinking about where Cat could hide and the funny positions she’d be in. Kitty and Puppy didn’t have as big of roles in the original concept, as in the beginning Cat was more of the main character for me.

But as the flaps were eliminated, I had to figure out how to keep the element of surprise in the book while we went looking for Cat. I tried a few ideas, and finally landed on the current concept with page turns and more of a role for Kitty and Puppy causing mayhem to reveal Cat. In the end, I think it worked out perfectly, and turned out as good as the original idea.

Me: I love the color palette you chose for this story that I see running throughout every spread.  It feels very similar to the first book, though perhaps a bit more refined.  Are you sticking to the same color palette for each book in the series?  What made you choose these colors (a more muted, almost pastel set)?

Mirka: I’m hoping to keep a similar vibe through the whole series – even though the colors might shift a bit from book to book. I wanted to keep the book easy for little ones to visually decipher, and having clear illustrations with the white backgrounds was important. A limited color palette plays into that too. With the first book, I had a few surprises with how the physical book colors turned out from my digital illustrations, so I was able to refine the colors a bit better for the second one. 

I really like Eric Hill’s Spot books and he uses a very limited color palette. I wanted to make a bit more updated version of that for my books.

Below is one of the spreads from the book. It was one of the first spreads that I did in color, and it took me a few tries to get it looking balanced and just right.

Me: I absolutely adore the sense of humor I see coming through in this series.  It’s hilarious.  Is there a potential for more?  Can we hope for a third book in the series?  (Please say yes!)

Mirka: Yes – maybe? As I mentioned, I wrote this as a series of four concept books, with more ideas for other themes (like Christmas and summer). I hope that the first two books do well, and we’ll continue to make more. Fingers crossed!  

Me: What is one thing that surprised you in writing and/or illustrating this story?

Mirka: I think what surprised me the most was how pleased I was with the end result. When the flaps were a no-go, I was stumped at how on earth I’d ever be able to make a lift the flap book a successful picture book. It was like I had built a perfect playdoh castle, and now had to mush it back up and build it again. I kept pushing and pulling things, and for a while I had no idea how to build it back up. Thankfully after enough hours, there was the lightbulb moment, and with a lot more work and the help of the publishing team, we were able to mold an even better castle than the first one.  

I think so!  This book is hilarious, clever, and adorable.  Thank you for stopping by my blog again today Mirka.

But wait, dear readers!  There’s more!  You can find Mirka’s free printable downloads to accompany the book here.

AND finally, Mirka has also agreed to giveaway ONE copy of this book to a US resident.  You can enter the rafflecopter here.  Good luck!