Key Characteristic #5: Illustrating Between the Lines

Leo and Diane Dillon are not literal illustrators.

Leo and Diane Dillon were quoted (on ourwhitehouse.org) as saying: “Our challenge as illustrators is to decide how best to graphically portray words and attack the viewer. We don’t illustrate words literally. It is our job to expand on the words—to illustrate between the lines."



When the Dillons write in "Jazz on a Saturday Night" that the music of John Coltrane talking to Charlie Parker is like "a river of melody sketched in dim light," they do not illustrate even their own words literally. There is no actual river, nor any sign of dim light. There are not any music notes. What exists on the pages are several illustrations: Coltrane and Parker wailing on their saxes, and then on the next page, a bunch of happy people clappng hands. This is their river of melody, and it is lovely to see, with faces of passion and delight and pure enjoyment in music, heads tilted up to rejoice in the church of jazz.

In "The Secret River," author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings does not actually say that a panther crouching before protagonist Calpurnia is frightful-looking, but the Dillons illustrate the panther with huge, fearsome fangs, pointy lower teeth, huge, bright, fearful eyes and a large mouth.

Also in "The Secret River," Calpurnia's dog Buggy-horse is described merely as having an "enormously fat stomach, just like a little old buggy horse." Buggy-horse is lazy and sleeps a lot. It is up to the Dillons to decide what Buggy-horse will look like exactly, and they chose a cute little plump beagle. It was not what I expected from the text, but I thought it lended a sweet rather than lazy, old look to the dog.

In another part of the book, Calpurnia wonders, "Now if I was a fish, what would I like to bite? If I was a fish, I would only bite something unusual and something pretty."

It is unexpected, but Calpurnia as a fish is illustrated as herself being "something unusual and something pretty!" This was something that the Dillons had to interpret and illustrate in their own way. These kinds of chosen interpretations add so much to children's literature. Because they are so creative and imaginative, they encourage children to be creative and imaginative as well. If the Dillons can see Calpurnia's head as being part of a fish, so can a child! And a child can go on to imagine her swimming around in a pond as a fish, eating little minnows, or playing with other fish. License to create and be imaginative helps open up children's minds, and illustration often begins to open that door.

Likewise, when Calpurnia writes a poem about bees, she does not imagine a headdress full of bees, and yet that is what the Dillons wonderfully illustrate with great creativity, color and wonder.

"Everybody's bees is my friends,/Everybody's flowers is my flowers./Everybody's happy hours/is my happy hours./All this goes on/and there is no ends," Calpurnia writes. Her mother responds, "You are really a smart child. But you should say 'are no ends.'" From the illustration the Dillons drew, the reader may believe that Calpurnia was too busy dreaming about her beautiful headdress of flowers with bees pollinating them to use proper grammar, but her mother didn't forget! 

By using such dreamy, thoughtful illustrations, the Dillons let us see inside Calpurnia's imaginative head, which helps balance out the superrealistic grammar lesson that her mother gives her, preventing the story from becoming overly weighed down with heavy seriousness.

In "Mama Says: A Book of Love for Mothers and Sons," the Dillons do other fun and creative interpretations to illustrate between the lines. The author Rob D. Walker merely writes, "Mama says/Have courage/Although I may be scared/Mama says/To walk with care/And I will be prepared" with no discussion of tightrope walkers. But that is what the Dillons have illustrated, with great perspective of space, distance, tension and color.

These contributions of the Dillons to the nature of children's literature truly do read between the lines and expand our understanding of the words before us.