How a Book is Made according to Mac Barnett

This weekend at the Gaithersburg Book Festival, I had the pleasure of hearing Jon Scieszka and Mac Barnett speak together in a talk called Picture Book Fun. (Read more about their talk and the festival HERE.) The audience LOVED seeing them and Mac Barnett shared how his first book was made. I wish I had a video of this because the pictures don't do justice to how funny and engaging his explanation was! 

But, without further blabbing from me:

How a Book is Made according to Mac Barnett 

(paraphrased by yours truly.)

Here is how Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem was made. This is a picture of..... right the United States as it looks from space. This red dot is me in California. I came up with the story and after about the 5th draft sent it to my editor....

 in New York. (See the Statue of Liberty?) An editor is like a teacher and tells you what to fix and what jokes aren't funny. So I changed to the ideas of hers I liked and sent it back.

"But you didn't change this."
"Well, I didn't think it was a good idea."
"I think it's a good idea."
Back and forth and back and forth. (That would be all the red lines crossing the US.)

Then around the 10th draft it was ready to go to the illustrator.

Adam was the illustrator (shown here by the glasses near the Statue of Liberty) and he sent me a few pictures of monsters.

"But these aren't whales?"

"Yeah, they're for my book."

"But what about MY book??"

"I'll get to that.... after I move to Arizona....and write a novel."

(Apparently while moving to Arizona, Adam took a wrong turn and went to Canada and then hiked through the mountains. His move is noted by the green dots from the glasses to the cactus which Mac says looks quite a bit like Adam.)

Finally, the book has pictures and it's sent back to NY where it is ready to be printed. 

Now if you were going to print something that needed to be sent all over the country where would your print it? Exactly, in the middle (see the X.)  And they print it really close to there, over here in CHINA. (big red circle on the bottom of the board.) This is just what China looks like from space. 

Then they print stacks and stacks of my books. You can see them from space, just like the Great Wall of China. (great likeness in the picture too...)

So after they are all printed, how is the fastest way to get them here? Right, by boat...

The boat sails through the sea is then boarded by pirates, who don't care about books since they don't read, and then the boat goes on past a sea monster and into the Bermuda Triangle. Finally, after months and months it pops out up by NY. But all the words are backwards. So they have to sail back through the Bermuda Triangle to POP back out with the words the right way. 

Then they send them out all over.

And that is how a book is made. 

As I said, it would have been great as a video. But now we know why it takes so long to get a book published, printed, and out to the readers!