I love watching the little birds that flit into my backyard and visit our crab apple trees. It somehow fills the soul to just take a minute to peek into their world. Today’s picture book captures that feeling with wonder.

Today I’m interviewing both the author and the illustrator of this picture book together at the same time.

Jennifer Grant is an award-winning author of books for children and adults, including Finding Calm in Nature, and Maybe God Is Like That Too (both Beaming). As a child, her imagination was captured by the song “Consider the Lilies” and the idea that God cared for the flowers just because God loved them. She lives in Chicago and enjoys flowers wherever she spots them―whether that’s in Australia, around her neighborhood, or on her own windowsill. You can learn more about her at her website or follow her on Instagram or BlueSky.

Julianna Swaney is the illustrator of over a dozen books, including The Garden We Share (NorthSouth), and the #1 New York Times bestsellers The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be and We Are the Gardeners by Joanna Gaines (both Thomas Nelson).  She lives in Portland, Oregon, in a craftsman bungalow where she enjoys breadmaking, gardening, and carving the occasional wooden spoon. You can learn more about her at her website or follow her on Instagram or BlueSky.

CONSIDER THE BIRDS is a picture book that manages to do and be SO many different things. It’s lyrical, a counting concept book, focuses on birds that many readers will recognize (with gorgeous illustrations of them), encourages gratitude, expands on a love and wonder of nature, AND ties in a religious theme of God’s love. I’m completely boggled by how it does all of these things together AND does them all equally well! There are even free activity pages that focus on bird feeders (watching them, building your own, etc.). Even better? It’s the first book in a series of nature focused books like this, each from the same author and illustrator we will be talking with today.

Please note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher to review, but the opinions, as always, are my own.

Welcome Jennifer and Julianna!

Me: You both have very successful careers, but just in case someone isn’t familiar with your work, can you talk about your creative journeys? How did you get started, and how did that lead you to the work you’re doing now with books for kids?

Jennifer: I’ve been writing stories since around the time I could hold a pencil! As a child, I’d fill notebooks with ideas, stories, poems, and character sketches…and I still do. After college (I studied English and Cultural Anthropology), I went to grad school and earned my Master’s degree in English and Creative Writing.

Since then, over the past 30+ years, I’ve held a series of writing (or writing adjacent) jobs. I’ve taught college literature and writing courses, worked as a newspaper columnist, written in corporate and non-profit settings (institutional stories, annual reports, donor reports), helped to “clean up” translations of picture books as well as full-length manuscripts for adults, been a developmental editor and ghostwriter, and, of course, have written several of my own books.

I now split my work hours between creative work and collaborating with editorial clients. Over the years, I developed a growing desire to write for children. My first book for kids was published in 2017. Books were truly a lifeline for me as a child, and I saw (and see) writing for kids as a great challenge and honor.

Julianna:  I’ve been making art full time in some way or another since I left school many years ago. I never had very much of a plan, though, and just took opportunities as they came along.

I spent a while doing traditional artwork and showing in galleries, I’ve illustrated for magazines, note card companies, wedding invitations, and I’ve even done logos for small businesses. Along the way, lots of people said I should do children’s books, but I never quite knew how to get into that world. Then one day out of the blue, a children’s books agent who had seen my work online emailed me saying she’d like to represent me. I jumped at that chance, and after a bit of a learning curve, I felt like I was in the right place. I feel very lucky to get to do this job.

Me: Jennifer, I love that you’ve combined the concept of birds, counting numbers, and that all creatures matter. What gave you the idea to combine all those things together for this book?

Jennifer:  I’m a bird lover from way back! I remember sitting outside as a child, staying as still as I could, almost willing birds to come land near me so I could look at them more closely. We had cardinals, robins, sparrows, and lots of crows in my backyard when I was growing up. (Crows are fascinating and so intelligent. You might know that they recognize human faces and leave gifts for people who are kind to them. They also remember when someone has been cruel to them, and, it is said, they hold a grudge!)

When I was a young adult, I moved to Dallas for graduate school, not long after a close friend died. I was grieving, and I spent countless hours watching a pair of mourning doves out my bedroom window. Hearing their haunting calls or the whistling of their wings when they took flight, watching them strut around together or eat the seed a neighbor left for them under a tree felt as healing to me as the therapy I was in at the time.

Later, when my own children were little, I taught them number sense by pointing out the birds on our backyard feeder. I loved exploring the natural world with them.

And now, even though I live in the city, I find opportunities to bird watch, either formally at nature centers or bird sanctuaries, or just as I walk around my neighborhood.

Me: Julianna, I adore the way you’ve portrayed the birds in this book. Each of them has such personality. I was actually astonished to see (when I went back through the book) that there were only two full bleed color spreads as the book feels so full and alive! Can you talk about the medium you used to create these illustrations? Are you a traditional or digital illustrator (or a blend of both)? What did you do to create such vibrant creatures?

Julianna: Since this is a counting book for young children, I really wanted to simplify and zoom in on the birds so there wasn’t too much business going on around them to be distracting. I still felt like I could show a lot of action and character even in relatively simple spreads, so I’m really happy to hear you felt that!

After many years of illustrating traditionally with paint and pencils on paper, I’ve slowly been transitioning to working digitally. I still do most of my sketches on paper, but the final artwork for this book was done in Procreate.

Me:  This book really helps young readers to slow down to enjoy and observe nature. Why is that an important thing for each of you to share with young readers? 

Jennifer: My last few books (for adults and for children) have invited readers to interact with the natural world. During the first half of 2020, during that odd “shelter in place” time, I was writing a different nature-centric book for adults called Dimming the Day.

I learned, when researching that one, that many mental health professionals were prescribing time in nature (including practices such as forest bathing) to patients suffering from anxiety, depression, and even PTSD. I read studies that indicated that for many people with mental health challenges, time in nature could be as effective as medication in alleviating symptoms. (If you’re interested in learning more about this, here’s a summary from the American Psychological Association.)

It was then when I first learned the word “biophilia,” meaning our innate human tendency to seek connection with nature. During the “unprecedented” time of the Anthropause, when people spent most of their time indoors and when regular routines were so wildly disrupted, there was a surge in pet adoptions, folks filling their houses with plants or cultivating their gardens, and a general embrace of the natural world. These things fueled a sense of well-being for many of us in a strange, unsettling time.

All to say, I feel passionate about this and know that interacting with the natural world is good for us, emotionally and physically. I know it’s good for me!

Julianna: I think observing backyard birds, and especially learning the names for them like you do in this book, helps you become more aware of the creatures around you. You see their personalities and then you can’t help but care more about them.

Me: The text is deceptively simple yet manages to count up and down. The illustrations are also deceptively simple but manage to capture greed, love, joy, and so much more. How many revisions did each of you have to make to get this story to the final product?

Jennifer: Oh, I can’t even guess how many times I revised it – even before my agent sent it out. My editor at Eerdmans is incredibly talented, and she and I passed it back and forth to each other many times. We both take writing for children very seriously and wanted it to be as clear and inviting as possible.

Julianna:  Since the birds come and go from the bird feeder in each spread, there was some working out and revising as we worked out the clearest way to show the birds that corresponded to the number.  I think the cover went though the most revisions as I was sketching it out since it was hard to pack so many different size birds into such a small space. It was like a puzzle!

Me: I understand that this is the first book in a series. That’s a lot of collaboration. Have you two met in person or communicated with each other directly in any way? Or are you both keeping separate to create your own words or art in their own arena? Which do you find easier to do?

Jennifer: No, we’ve not yet communicated with each other directly. When our editor sent me Julianna’s initial sketches and, later, drafts of the illustrations, I was thrilled. I don’t usually add notes to the manuscript, in terms of giving advice or instruction to the illustrator. I trust visual artists to interact with the text and create something wonderful, which she obviously did.

Of all my books for kids, I only collaborated with an illustrator on two of them. I believe that every time I suggested how the artist might illustrate a particular spread, her ideas were always so much better. (The artist was the amazing Gillian Whiting and the books were A Little Blue Bottle and Once Upon a Time Not So Long Ago. The latter is about the pandemic and how it affected all of us, for better and worse.)

Julianna:  While I was actually creating the artwork, we didn’t have any direct communication, which is pretty standard in publishing. It’s to ensure the illustrator has freedom to bring their ideas to the creative process. I did have some questions at a few points, though, and the publisher just passed those along for me. So it was still very much a collaboration.

Me: Do either of you have any advice for new writers and/or illustrators?

Jennifer: I have a few pieces of advice:

1. Join SCBWI and/or attend one of their conferences. You do not need to be a published author to join/attend. The “kidlit” world is a friendly one, and interacting with others is a joy and helps us grow in our craft.
2. Hold yourself to a high standard for your young readers: honor their intelligence and that they, like you, are emotionally complex. Never write “down” to them but approach them with respect.
3. Read your work aloud, over and over, as you write and revise, especially if you are writing for younger children.

Julianna:  My advice is always to keep sharing your work. Even if you don’t think it’s good enough yet, or if it feels vulnerable to share, do it anyway. It’s okay to share your process and your evolution. Also, draw A LOT. Draw things over and over. That’s the only way to get better at drawing and to find your style.

Wow! Great advice Jennifer and Julianna. Thank you both for stopping by my blog today.

Dear readers, this book published just last week. If you haven’t had a chance yet to read it, I highly recommend it. It accomplishes a staggering amount of things in both writing and illustrations that still leave me agog. Trust me when I say, you won’t want to miss it!