Interview with Michael Hall, Author of “Red: A Crayon’s Story”

What inspired you to write Red: A Crayon's Story? 

During the 1970s, I was a big fan of an artist named Mickey Myers, who used crayons as the subject of her silk-screened prints. Crayons as the subject of art, rather than a tool for making art, made a lot of sense to me. They represent attributes that I try to bring to my own work: playfulness, simplicity, beauty, and joy. So, when I began making picture books, I knew that I had to do something with crayons. Eventually, I wondered what would happen if a crayon was mislabeled. That was the beginning of Red.

How has your work in graphic design influenced your work? 

My approach to making picture books owes a lot to what I learned as a designer of trademarks for companies and organizations. For me, economy, timelessness, ambiguity, and humor are important considerations in both trademarks and picture books. In both cases, I look for words and images that can be interpreted in different ways and are both visually and conceptually compelling.

My visual style is clearly that of a graphic designer. I prefer flat images and avoid techniques that imitate three dimensions. I like characters that simply live on the flat white page, rather than in a house, a field, or a nest. I’m constantly trying to remind the reader that the images are, first and foremost, ink on paper.  

Can you talk a little bit about what it's like to be both an author and an illustrator of your work? 

I’ve always been interested in the way words and pictures can play off each other and feel lucky to be able to do both in my books. A picture can alter your understanding of a word, and a word can change your perception of a picture. On the first page of Red, the picture and the words contradict each other: “He was Red,” says the narrator. But next to those words we see a picture of a blue crayon with a red label. 

I like things that are made from other things.  In My Heart Is Like a Zoo, there is a heart that has been made to look like a frog by adding some bars and dots. It really doesn’t look much like a frog, but, next to the image I wrote: “Jumpy as a frog,” which invites the reader to use their imagination to find the frog. I like it when pictures teeter back and forth between two or more meanings.

What has your experience been like visiting schools?

For an introvert like me, school visits can be exhausting. But I’ve come to enjoy them and appreciate the thoughtful, funny, and often touching comments I get from the kids. 

As I prepared to promote my first book, My Heart Is Like a Zoo, I was surprised to discover that school sessions were usually about fifty minutes long. It only took five minutes to read my book, so what would I do with the other 45 minutes? 

Since then, I’ve been making interactive events with projected images for each new book. While promoting Red, for example, I led the students through a crayon-making exercise. In one point, I projected an illustration of a bowl of wax cubes. I asked the group to rub their hands together to create heat, and as they did, the wax magically melted.

How have students reacted to Red: A Crayon's Story? 

I’m amazed and encouraged with the way young children effortlessly relate the troubles of an anthropomorphized blue crayon to their own world and experience. They so often surprise me with their perceptive comments. I think it’s common for grownups to underestimate the depth of understanding a child can have. 

My second crayon book, Frankencrayon, was criticized for being too complicated for children. And yet, it is the book they most often ask me to read. By the way, I’m working on a third crayon book that I hope will come out in the next few years.  

What is one of your favorite children’s books and why?

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein changed the way I thought about picture books. I am dyslexic and was embarrassed that I was given picture books to read at an age when most of my classmates were reading chapter books. The Giving Tree spoke to me at a higher level than the other picture books — which I called “baby books”. It is the first book that made me want to make picture books. 

As I grew older, I found new meanings in the story. This is a quality that I try to incorporate into my work. I want to make books that a 12- and 20-year-old can carry around as comfortably as a five-year-old.