If you’re hearing the Bee Gees simply from reading the title of this book, you’re not wrong!  This book illustrates their song with gorgeous art by Jennifer L. Meyer.  Let me just say this: bunny mermaids!

J.L. Meyer is a freelance artist (and I have been a fan of her work for YEARS!).  She has visited my blog once before. Her work has won two awards from Illustration West, presented by the Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles, and has been featured several times in Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art. She has illustrated Cleo Edison Oliver, Saving Emma the Pig, Calpurnia Tate: Girl Vet, and Lily to the Rescue.  You can learn more about her at her website or follow her on on Bluesky, Tumblr, & Instagram.

HOW DEEP IS YOUR LOVE? is a picture book illustrating the song by the Bee Gees with bunny mermaids.  When I heard about the concept, I absolutely wanted to learn more.  I was dying to know how do you illustrate such a famous song?  And why bunny mermaids?  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Those are interview questions!  In this story, a couple of bunny mermaids face threats on every side.  They are illustrated SO adorably that I was seriously worried for their welfare!  Yet true love conquers all.  And the illustrations also do a wonderful job of illustrating the lyrics, yet telling a story all their own.  It’s a stunning accomplishment you will want to see for yourself.

Welcome back Jennifer!

Me: I am fascinated by this book.  Did you have the idea to illustrate the song?  Or did a publisher approach you?  How did this project come to be?

Jennifer: This was a big project from the publisher.  They were creating a new line of books, Lyric Pop.

Me: I love the idea of mermaid bunnies!  What gave you the idea to illustrate this song with them?

Jennifer: The publisher was very open to ideas, and the artists got to pitch their thoughts on how to illustrate the story. Their guideline for pitches was the book be as accessible to as many people as possible. When I started to work up the ideas for my pitch, I looked at the title and the lyrics.

Deep in the song title made me think of the ocean. I wanted to visually show the theme of deep with their love and the depth of the ocean.  I’m sure this surprises no one who knows me, but bunnies were also on the brain. I think it was around May so mermaids were on my mind as well.

After that I pondered what trouble would the world throw at bunny mermaids…what could keep them apart. I wanted to end on their own problem of separation with no communication but that was because they wanted to do something nice for the other person out of love. The depth of their love gave them the strength and patience to stand against what the world would throw at them.

Me: I love that.  While the words of the Bee Gees’ song do the narration, your illustrations also tell a story without words.  There is a thrilling three beat of dangerous elements woven throughout that is brilliantly done.  Did you do a lot of sketches or revisions to get to that superb pace?

Jennifer: Oh thank you! I am a giant fan of wordless comics! I also adore when I find wordless picture books. So the idea of a hybrid book made me excited. For the pacing all I really remember is that I wanted to keep it along with the song. So I went with single beat images for most of the song then multiple panel pages were set  to go with the chorus.

Come to think of it, there was one page that got revised. I found it when looking for images to send. Its page 5. I had a more playful version to start but it didn’t quite flow right. In the revision for page 5, I added a small panel on the right  to break things up and get things rolling with the transitions onto the next page of the chorus and start our descent into the deep.

Me: I wasn’t familiar with Akashicbooks or LyricPop until I heard about your book.  How did you come to work with them?

Jennifer: They approached my agent.  My agent then put out a call for illustrators that wanted to participate. When you were picked, you could choose which songs you liked. At that point, the company assigned the songs to illustrators. I was so delighted and excited to get How Deep is Your Love. 

Me: Were there any surprises for you while working on this project?

Jennifer: The length of the approval process sorta surprised me. There were several people in the approval process, including the music publishing company and the licensor. Also, sadly, the timing for approvals versus reality (I’m looking at you pandemic) was unfortunate and caused an unanticipated delay.

Me:  What is one of your favorite illustrations from the book?

Jennifer: I had fun hiding a mouse mermaid in the book. I now wish I had hid a bunch of them throughout the book. 🙂 It would be fun to go back and find them all. (Oh great, now I want to paint a mermaid mouse book.) 🙂

Illustration wise, it would be a tie between the first scene and the hugging bunnies. I really like the bunny mermaids’ long tails. They were such fun to paint! I think the first picture really shows it off. I also liked the hugging scene because they were so happy and relieved. I wish everyone could be that happy and content. 

Me: I missed the mouse mermaid until you pointed it out!  YES, please do a mouse mermaid book!  As is typical, books come out much later in publishing than when they were first created.  I know you worked on this book a while ago, but do you have any other projects that we will be seeing in the near future or that you’re currently working on?

 Jennifer: Thanks for asking about other projects! (Come to think of it, I think I was working on this book at the same time as the Calpurnia Tate Christmas Goats. Its so interesting looking at it now with the changes in my painting over the years.)

Lucky Ducky comes out in February.  Lucky Ducky is a chapter book that I did 15 spot illustration and the cover for with lots and lots of cute animals. It is the ugly duckling in an adventure setting style of story. Fight Bunny the graphic novel is almost done (lots of animals there, TONS of mice). 

The 3 Usagi-Yojimbo variant covers I did are coming out now. The first one is out. The Lilo and Stitch variant cover is out on January 31st. I will eventually do prints of a lot of my recent covers, including Maleficent. Sign up with my newsletter for notification for pre-order only print runs.

I can’t wait to see the Lilo and Stitch cover.  I saw you share some of that piece on social media.  It’s beautiful!  Congratulations on all of these upcoming projects and thank you for stopping by my blog again today.

Dear readers, if you haven’t yet had a chance to check out the LyricPop books, you should.  There are a ton of songs you might recognize, by picture book illustrators you’re sure to know.  Of course, I love this one by Jennifer probably the best.  It has danger and hope.  It has wonderful illustrations that will forever change the way you think of the song (though it also has the risk of having that song stuck in your head for days too).  Plus, you now know about the easter egg hidden within!  You won’t want to miss it.