A little word play and a little imagination go a long, long way in this picture book!

Josh Funk has visited my blog numerous times over the last few years that I’ve known him.  He is the co-creator of the Lady Pancake & Sir French Toast series, including Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast, The Case of the Stinky Stench, Mission Defrostable, Short & Sweet, The Great Caper Caper, and Attack of the Scones. His other works include How to Code a Sandcastle, Lost in the Library, Albie Newton, and more. Josh lives in Massachusetts with his family. You can learn more about him at his website or follow him on BlueSky, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.

Renée Kurilla is a children’s book author and #1 New York Times bestselling illustrator. She loves drawing nature, animals, and working on projects that require a little bit of research! Some of her author-illustrator titles include the It’s Fall!, It’s Winter!, and The Flower Garden (a 2026 Illinois Monarch Award nominee). She has illustrated many books for other authors as well including Just Because by Matthew McConaughey, Today at School by Jessica Young, Farm Boots by Lisl H. Detlefsen, and the Ada Lace Adventure series by Emily Calandrelli. She currently lives in Massachusetts with her illustrator husband, their nine-year-old daughter, a corgi puppy named Yoshi, and a million stuffed animals. You can learn more about her at her website or follow her on Instagram, BlueSky, or Facebook.

THE DINO DOOR is a picture book told in short phrases using clever word play. Yet it’s the interchange of word play and illustrations that make this book magic. It’s nearly impossible to tell where the writing or the illustrations are doing the heavy lifting here. THIS is the kind of book we creators dream of: that perfect marriage of text and art. The premise of the book is a little dinosaur fan who escapes into imagination via a door in the bedroom. I don’t want to say much more than that as this is one that just needs to be seen to be believed. It’s SO hard to describe adequately in just a few words. It’s just brilliant!

Welcome Josh and Renée!

Me: Josh, I think this might be your shortest text ever! What a concept! I love the mash up of word play AND an imaginary journey! What gave you the idea for this story?

Josh: I was thinking about the word “dinosaur” and I realized it had the word “soar” in it (at least phonetically) and I thought to myself Dinosaur … dino soar and then immediately jumped to dino ROAR and I realized there was something there. I immediately started thinking of all the words that rhymed with “-or” and started putting them together in my head to see if I could put a story together.

And there were so many single syllable words. Score, floor, door, chore, oar, bore, pour, shore and more (literally and figuratively).

But it actually came together rather quickly. Most of the words were fun, but a few of the words had conflict built in, specifically, CHORE and BORE. I immediately knew the story was about a dino-obsessed child who needed to stop the fun and do some boring chores. And what chores? Cleaning the FLOOR, of course.

But it needed more. A little magic … and that’s where the DOOR comes in. It transports the child into a real dinosaur world of adventure.

Me: Why did each of you become involved in this project? Josh, what made you want to write this particular story? Renee, what brought you to this story and drew you to illustrating it?

Josh: I love challenging myself when writing stories. Sometimes the challenge is writing in rhyme. Sometimes I like to create other little puzzles, like writing a book without the letter “R” – see My Pet Feet. And for The Dino Door, the puzzle I posed to myself was, could I write a satisfying, creative, fun story where every single word rhymed.

Renée: The most frequent way I come upon new projects is through an editor sharing a manuscript with my agent, Jennifer Rofé, who then shares it with me. When I read a new manuscript, if I can visualize the art in my head, that’s a good sign. I start to immediately problem-solve. It gets me excited and then I can’t wait to really dig in, even though that part usually doesn’t come for a few months after that initial reading because of my schedule.

When I read The Dino Door, I envisioned the Dino-EXPLORE page in my head and replied to my agent with an enthusiastic “YES- I MUST illustrate this book!” 😂

I’m starting to lose count of how many books I’ve illustrated at this point! (somewhere in the 65+ range, including chapter books). All that drawing experience has given me much more confidence than I used to have, so if I was presented with a manuscript like The Dino Door 10 years ago I’m not sure I would have been able to tackle the challenges it presented. (Read: How do we as readers get through the door?)

Me: Renee, I love your illustration style and all of the details you included in your illustrations. Can you talk about the medium you used to create these illustrations? Are you a traditional or digital illustrator (or a blend of both)?

Renée: Thank you so much! I almost always use Adobe Photoshop in my final illustrations. (The only exception is Farm Boots with Lisl Detlefsen where I used Procreate on my iPad.) I have done a lot of work to make my art style appear hand painted, so I appreciate that you weren’t entirely sure if I used a combo!

I have been using the same series of Photoshop brushes for years: a big texture brush, a pencil brush, a gouache brush, an ink brush, and a watercolor brush. I do like to experiment with different styles, but it is also important to me to not get hung up on that because solving other story problems should come first, like pacing, page turns, etc.

Me: Let’s talk about the scarcity of text here. Josh, how many words are there? 50?! Were there art notes about what each line meant to the plot of the story? Who invented what parts? Renee, did you have enough freedom to do what you wanted to artistically?

Josh: I know that there are only 20 different words in the text of the book (there are a few others in the art, like the “To Do” list and a “clink” of coconut cups and the rhino at the end). I definitely had general art notes, but I’ll bet the editorial team stripped most of them out before it got to Renee. They were more to help the editors visualize what might be happening so they could successfully acquire it.

So my answer is basically, Renee invented pretty much all the parts.

For example, for “Dino Score” I had suggested that the kid was playing with a dino toy playing soccer or something. But Renee drew the dino in the basketball hoop, which is so much better.

And I had originally suggested that the kid just find the dino door after cleaning up the messy floor. But that didn’t really make much sense. Renee had the kid create the door using art, which actually makes magical sense and doesn’t leave the reader with unexplainable questions.

Renée: I think it’s amazing that Josh chose 20 words and we were able to create this whole world out of just that. Yes, there were art notes – they were not stripped out – and I am totally OK with that but I don’t always follow them to a T as you can see! 😂

Ultimately what got me thinking was that, through my own illustrations, I am pretending. I am inventing. Maybe the child can be creating art and be SO into it that they imagine themselves there, in their own creation. 

I watch my daughter and her cousins do this all the time. They create and create with no inhibitions. Their art is all over my house…and that is what inspired the taped drawings in the main character’s bedroom.

One art note in particular that I loved was that once we were through the door, maybe the colors became richer…like Dorothy in Oz. I purposely left a lot of white on the page in the beginning to allow for this.

Me: The text and illustrations work so wonderfully together in this story. How many revisions did each of you have to make to get this story to the final product?

Josh: One. And it was after it was acquired. Which is not normal for me (or anyone, I assume). I never even sent this to a critique partner. I wrote it in a span of about 15 hours between 9pm and noon the next day. I read it to my wife and then I sent it to my agent. She liked it as-is, we made no changes, and after sitting on it for a few months (since we were out with other projects), we sent it to one editor who I thought would like it as an exclusive and she acquired it a week later. When I told my kids “I sold THE DINO DOOR,” they were like, “We’ve never heard of that book.” And they were right, I never told them about it.

As far as that one revision, the editorial team had done some loose pagination and we rearranged bits of what happens behind the door. That was also when I added the only two-syllable rhyming word, EXPLORE. But there wasn’t really much left to do. There were only so many words we could use or revise with, so it was all left to Renee at that point.

Renée: It took me a few revisions, including turning the entire book horizontal because the original sketches were vertical! 🙂 But I do pretty detailed sketches, so once they are finalized, it’s off to the races. I don’t think I had to do too many revisions on the color art. We added comic panels to frame some of the moments, but that stuff is really more design than illustration! It makes me weary when a book is almost too fun…because it’s like – what’s the catch here!? But it really was fun the whole time. 

Me: What is something that surprised each of you in the creation of this story?

Josh: I’m surprised there’s a little Geisel Award buzz (or maybe I’m just trying to generate that buzz myself). A former member of the Geisel Committee said it was definitely a good one for consideration, so that’s exciting – and not why I wrote the book.

And I’m not necessarily surprised, but I’ve been wanting to work with Renee since before I was published. I’ve always loved her art dating back to the days when we bought prints from her Etsy shop for our walls when our kids were little (they’re now both legally adults). So, not a surprise, but a dream come true.

Renée: The biggest surprise for me was learning that The Dino Door was the #1 Kids Indie Next list pick for May/June of 2026. So much time had passed between the time the book was finalized to when it was officially released that it caught me totally off guard that people were reading it and liking it! Isn’t that weird for me to say!? Like, of course folks will read it…but what an honor to have it recognized that way.

Me: Both of you have published numerous books for kids at this point in your careers. In these difficult publishing times, what keeps you both creating them? What encouragement would you give to other creators who are trying to publish picture books in this market?

Josh: It’s hard to be encouraging in these “difficult publishing times” as you put it. I guess I’d say that you should keep learning, keep reading (especially books by a diverse collection of creators), and keep creating yourself. Try to make something that no one has seen before. We’ve seen a lot of picture books published this century that have been so fantastically creative. It might seem hard to come up with something new. But that great idea that only you can come up with and execute – that’s the one that’s gonna set your manuscript or dummy apart from all the rest.

Renée: Gosh, I just love making books. I love the challenge of telling a story in a certain amount of pages. I think art is therapeutic and I love the act of creating. It’s a bonus that, then, I get to share my art and stories with kids who are SO enthusiastic. School visits recharge me. There’s something about that big drawing tablet and marker. I start a picture and then ask kids to help me finish it. We create an image together and when I explain…”You’re creating a story right now!” – something clicks, you can see it in their eyes. And then so many of them are ready to go off and create MORE. I love it. Art helps people. Stories help people. I’ll never stop. You shouldn’t either. 

That is great advice. Thank you so much Josh and Renée for stopping by my blog today.

Dear readers, this book published at the beginning of the month. I can promise at 20 words that it’s a quick read! But trust me when I say, you’re going to want to take your time studying this one! You won’t want to miss it.