Meet the Illustrator: Chris Case

Pride and Less Prejudice

How has the process of illustrating the Jacob books changed over the years? What has remained consistent and what has evolved?

So many things have changed over the years-it's hard to know where to start. The first book had a really tight turnaround time for reasons that had nothing to do with the publisher-it just had to be that way. I've gotten to take more time with the last two books in particular, which has been nice. And I've gotten to know the characters better as I've worked through the books-I don't know if that always comes through in the illustrations, but it helps me as I sketch. Magination (publisher) has also been great to work with, and I feel like the books have really benefitted from their editing and art direction. And Sarah and Ian Hoffman have been the constants in this-I've appreciated getting to work with them for over a decade now, and it's been a lot of fun to see their work evolve.

After illustrating three previous Jacob books, you've gotten to know the authors' style (and the characters) quite well! Did Jacob's Missing Book come as a surprise to you? What was your reaction to the newest installment in the Jacob series?

This book very much came as a surprise. I had to read the manuscript a few times before I felt like I'd gotten my head around it. Is it weird to think about the concept of "spoilers" for a picture book? I guess I can say that I thought that there would be a cleaner resolution at the end of this book. And that the adults in the story would sort of fix everything. And they didn't, and I'm glad that they didn't, but that choice was surprising to me at first. I was also a little surprised-pleasantly-that Jacob's dress wasn't as front and center in this book as it was in some of the others. It felt like maybe we'd moved forward a bit culturally in the last 10 years, and that we could openly portray characters who dressed in ways that were gender non-conforming without having to take time to explain or justify that to a reader. I like the idea of assuming that people would take it in stride and be fine with it. And then we could move on to tell our story. 

Are there any pages you felt particularly strongly (in any way) about in Jacob's Missing Book? Was a particular page or illustration especially challenging, fun, etc.?

I think that some of the pages that I felt strongest about were the ones that I could envision early on in the sketching process. There's a two-page spread of a slide that I'd sketched out pretty quickly in a first pass at thumbnails. It was a comfort to think about it when I was struggling with other pages; "I can't figure out pages 20-28, but at least I have that slide spread."

Aside from my emotional support pages, I felt strongly about scenes where adults and children were interacting. There weren't as many of them written into this book, so I wanted to try to be intentional about how the adults and kids were engaging with each other when they were on the same page. Namely, I wanted to show some contact between adults and kids in scenes that were more about love, or comfort, or reassurance: Jacob and his mom cuddling up when they're reading a story, or Emily and her dads hanging out on the couch together. But otherwise, I wanted the adults to be absent, or present but physically removed. It felt important to me that the kids be visually on their own as much as possible in this one, because they ultimately address their questions without a lot of direct support from the adults in the story.

The characters’ facial expressions in Jacob's Missing Book are so poignant - for example, Jacob's confusion when he can't find the book, Emily's frustration at the lack of representation of her family, and Ms. Reeves' discomfort in explaining what had happened to the book. How did you capture visually all that they were feeling? 

That's nice of you to say. I honestly don't know that I always captured those feelings as well as I could have, or as clearly as I wanted to. I use dots for at least some of my characters' eyes. I remember applying to agents forever ago, and getting a rejection letter back that just said "no dots for eyes!"  So I always think that I could be making characters more expressive, and am always sort of fighting the limitations of my style, or of my abilities. The facial expressions you see are often the result of erasing and redrawing a few very small lines-an eyebrow or a line under an eye-over and over again, and usually not getting it "right," but getting to somewhere that feels like it's close enough. If you're feeling like you're able to read emotions into their faces, that's probably at least in part due to the accompanying text, which I think that Sarah and Ian did a great job with.

What do you hope to hear from educators, parents, and caregivers about Jacob’s Missing Book after they read it with children?

I'd just want to know what they thought-whatever they had to say. The book doesn't hit you over the head with language about book banning and censorship-I think that those ideas are low-key put out there, but they're also coupled with messages about resiliency, and children ultimately finding ways to internalize and reflect stories that are important to them, even when those stories are taken away. So I'd like to know if kids in particular picked up on any of that, although it would make me happy if they came away having enjoyed the story on any level. Or even if they didn't like the book but thought about it-that would be fine, too.