Ricardo Cortés, PARTY and GO THE F*CK TO SLEEP
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the web-e-nominated podcast.
[0:12]Moms don't have time to read books.
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[0:31]I'm really excited to be here with Ricardo Cortez today who is an artist, writer,
[0:35]and a number one, New York Times best-selling illustrator and publisher.
[0:39]Books of his include The Party, written by Jamaica-Kincade.
[0:42]It's just a plant, sea creatures from this guy, go the leap to sleep, and seriously go the
[0:48]blank to sleep. I didn't want to say it on the podcast.
[0:51]You currently live in Brooklyn, New York. So welcome, Ricardo.
[0:55]Hey, thanks so much for having me here today.
[0:57]How did you decide to illustrate the party your most recent book with Jamaica-Kincade?
[1:02]And basically, how did you get started illustrating books to begin with?
[1:05]Well, I started illustrating books actually, how about a strange way?
[1:08]I was actually into doing political activism to a certain extent,
[1:11]and I was interested in drug policy reform.
[1:13]And strangely enough, my first book was a children's book about marijuana.
[1:19]And actually got a grant that to write a children's story about how the child
[1:23]he finds out her parents are using marijuana.
[1:25]And basically, it would be analogous to maybe a book about sex education for kids.
[1:30]It wasn't teaching kids how to smoke pot, or the pot is for children at all whatsoever.
[1:35]But it was talking to children and parents could use it as a tool to explain why some adults
[1:41]are using this thing. And what it's about, so yeah, it was a very kind of strange way
[1:44]to get into children's books. And that's how I got into it. Yeah, I did a book,
[1:48]and it was moderately successful. I started publishing in my own.
[1:51]I couldn't find a publisher for a strange book like that. That was back in 2005.
[1:56]And the cultural landscape has changed a lot since then.
[1:58]But that's really how I got into it. And I was always the illustrator.
[2:02]I think that was my, that's how I began. And that's how I got into books.
[2:06]And I've done a couple of books since then. But how I found partie, Jamaica story was in a
[2:11]book called Talk Stories, a book of basically her stories that were the talk of the town pieces
[2:17]she'd written for the New Yorker magazine at the beginning of her career, her writing career.
[2:22]It was just a collection of all these essays. And I love them. I mean, they're great,
[2:26]they're great little little pieces. It was when the New Yorker was publishing the talk
[2:30]of the town stories anonymously. You know, there wasn't a byline at that point, if I recall.
[2:34]And there were just these wonderful stories and also a very interesting evolution of her
[2:41]early writing career. It was fascinating. But partie was one of the stories that I found,
[2:46]especially intriguing. If once you read the story party, as it is published right now,
[2:51]the children's book we have, it's essentially word for word exactly how it was published
[2:55]back in 1980, I believe. And yeah, so where it was originally written, it was written for adults,
[3:01]you know, this is just the New Yorker magazine. And it was kind of a satire homage to Nancy
[3:07]Drewbook mysteries. And it's about three young girls who go to a party. And it's a literary party
[3:14]for the Nancy Drewbook. And they see something at the party that is mysterious and really mysterious.
[3:21]And the short story ends basically without a conclusion as to what the girls see.
[3:26]And basically I just read the story and it just grabbed me. I was like, wait, what was that?
[3:31]What did I just read? I really had to read it again because it was such a strange little thing.
[3:36]And I just loved it. And obviously because it was those children of the story and I've done
[3:42]children's books, I started to think, wow, this would make a really fun kid's book.
[3:46]And it wasn't written like that necessarily, but it could be made into that. And I especially
[3:52]liked the idea that there wasn't really resolution to this weird crazy mystery. And the idea of
[3:59]trying to illustrate that and turning into a book. And that's how basically I found the short story.
[4:03]And in short, I reached out to Jamaica out of the blue and introduced myself and asked if she
[4:09]would be interested in interpretation and she generously said yes. So that's basically how the book
[4:15]well, that's so neat. I know I had to reread it myself because I was like, wait, did I miss
[4:19]what this mysterious surprise was that I was like scanning the picture? Like, could I see it?
[4:24]Could I not see it? Yeah. Yeah. Because that's how it was designed, definitely. And
[4:29]you know, I mean, I probably anticipate a question of like what, you know, what do I think the
[4:33]mystery is what did Jamaica mean by writing the mystery and she has her own interpretations. But for
[4:38]myself, the open endedness of it was what made it so fun. And especially thinking about
[4:44]writing for children and anticipating the reading of the story of kids and then the discussion
[4:49]afterward of, wait, what do you think the mystery was? You know, and obviously we've, you know,
[4:54]read the book to kids and you got some great answers. So it's fun in that way too.
[5:01]And when you're brainstorming how to illustrate a book like this, how do you do it? What's your
[5:05]process? Like, do you divide up the words? Like, can you er, do you just see a series of images in
[5:10]your head and then sketch them out? Like, take me through the process of how you do this.
[5:14]Yeah. Well, yeah, sure. Every book is different. But for this one since the text was already
[5:18]defined, I basically didn't want to change anything about it. And I also made the decision that
[5:23]I didn't want to reveal what the mystery was, right? I mean, again, because I'm not even sure
[5:29]what it was, but I even had a wide range of possibilities. But it would have for me ruined the story
[5:36]if there was an answer in it. It was kind of designed that I wanted it to be mysterious enough
[5:41]that you could think that there was the answer is in the book and possibly it is, in fact,
[5:45]possibly it is. And so I was thinking as a child reading myself, once I read that story the first time,
[5:52]I'd read it again and look closely at the pictures. So there's, yeah, lots of things that are
[5:56]embedded in the story, little embellishments or different colors or different flowers or
[6:01]mark, you know, what's going, there's a lot in their details that hopefully a kid on a second
[6:05]reading or third reading is looking for clues. But so how I map out a story like this is
[6:11]yeah, basically on the back of a napkin, I'm kind of doing storyboarding out of what I think are
[6:15]the important beats because this was, you know, just a couple of paragraphs of a short story.
[6:21]It wasn't broken up into segments and so I'm thinking of that. And then in terms of illustrating
[6:26]itself, the way I work best is actually working with models or working with actual children. The
[6:31]illustrations in this book are pretty maybe photorealistic as a way to describe that they look
[6:35]like actual children. It's not really stylized. So actually, the kids in this story are actually
[6:40]some friends of mine that I did a series of photoshoots with and tried to storyboard out certain
[6:47]actions and emotions and to be frank, two of the kids were at least one of the kids was a little
[6:52]too young to even be given any type of direction at all. It was like kind of like hurting cats.
[6:58]So basically just, yeah, just hung out with these kids. We took a lot of pictures and hung out
[7:03]played and through the pictures that I have, I was able to pull out certain emotions that I was
[7:07]looking for, right? You know, the youngest girl in the story. So she gets upset because she doesn't
[7:12]really see what the mystery is and her, the two older girls do see it and she doesn't really
[7:17]understand, is there really something there? Are they making it up? The older sister never tells
[7:21]me anything. You know, she just telemed into the youngest sibling. So yeah, there were a lot of
[7:26]different emotions I got from hanging out with these kids. And then I mean, technically what I do
[7:30]is I'm taking these photographs and I'm composing them sometimes in Photoshop or whatnot.
[7:35]And using those compositions that I create to ultimately illustrate. So I have a pretty good idea
[7:41]of what the final thing is going to look like by the time I'm getting to the pencils and putting
[7:45]it out there. And in this process, I was able to share with Jamaica where we were going and
[7:50]hey, this is what I think of what it would look like and the girls are looking like this and
[7:54]there's this surprise and what do you think? So yeah, that's kind of how it goes down until I
[7:58]basically get to the pencils. This book was done in colored pencil. I worked with other
[8:02]mediums but this book was in colored pencil. Wow, that's so neat. So then do you have in your
[8:09]studio, like what does it look like when you're actually working? Do you have these up on the wall
[8:13]like all around you different pages or do you just, are you just really methodical and you have
[8:17]a whole little pile and you finish one and moving on to the next? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I mean,
[8:22]the most part we're working one by one and beforehand I have mapped it out pretty
[8:27]meticulously in Photoshop which just allows me to create the composition and I'm actually
[8:33]using the photos of the girls in the poses that they are in the book. And some of it is
[8:38]stage and some of it was just happenstance. Like, you know, there's one point where the older girl
[8:43]has to grab the girl, the other friend by the shoulders and, you know, kind of be up in her face
[8:48]and that was something we were able to stage. But even that one of the girl's faces from one
[8:53]take was better in another. So I'm really in Photoshop doing a lot of composition. But once I
[8:58]have that, I have these images and oh, and a lot of the background of the stories from the
[9:03]Schwartzman Library, the 42nd Street Library in Manhattan, the main library with the lines outside
[9:08]there are these beautiful marble backgrounds, you know, of that library. And it just seemed like
[9:14]a really fitting stage for this story. So I went there and I took a lot of photographs of those
[9:19]and I'm using those actually in the layer in the computer with the photographs of the girls
[9:24]to compose the images. So once I have everything laid out and I know what it looks like in the
[9:29]background and even sometimes to coloring the lighting, I print those pages out and yeah, I'm
[9:33]using those really as my template to go directly onto the page. I kind of have this real,
[9:39]I don't use a light box which is what a lot of illustrators might use. I have this real kind
[9:43]of like hack do-it-yourself thing that I kind of put the pages over the pages and I kind of trace
[9:48]them out with a ballpoint pen and it embosses like this lines into the blank page and then I use
[9:53]those lines to kind of use as a sketch to do my kind of illustrations in. So yeah, there's a
[9:59]lot of difference.
[10:00]But once I get to just the coloring and the pencils,
[10:02]I've already thought out everything so much
[10:05]that once I get to that is just kind of fun
[10:07]and I'm just drawing and I could listen to music
[10:09]and I don't have to pay as much attention
[10:11]to the story kind of done the work beforehand.
[10:13]So how did this project differ?
[10:15]How did you end up doing the, you know,
[10:17]go the F to sleep book, which was, you know,
[10:19]read by every single parent, I know, basically.
[10:21]Can you tell me about that collaboration
[10:23]and how that project came to be?
[10:25]Yeah, sure.
[10:26]When go to F to sleep.
[10:28]Before that came out, I had done a couple children's books
[10:30]and a guy that I kind of grew up with
[10:32]who was a novelist out of Man's book.
[10:34]He, I don't believe it ever done the children's book before
[10:36]but he had a daughter at that point
[10:38]who was the inspiration for the story
[10:40]and he'd written this basically poem
[10:42]and sent it to me and said,
[10:43]hey, what do you think about this?
[10:44]Would you like to make sure
[10:46]would you like to do a children's book together?
[10:48]And yeah, I loved it, it was fun, it was funny.
[10:50]And really, at least from my part,
[10:52]there was no anticipation that it would be
[10:55]a really big success blockbuster
[10:57]and people would know about this book.
[10:58]It seemed just to me, something really fun
[11:00]and quirky and strange is,
[11:03]and a lot of my books up at that point
[11:04]had kind of been like that.
[11:06]So yeah, it was a really small project
[11:08]and we reached out to Akashi Books in Brooklyn.
[11:10]I'm living in Brooklyn, New York
[11:12]and they're independent publishing group
[11:14]that we both had some relationship with before.
[11:17]They hadn't really done many picture books
[11:19]or children's books, they were doing a lot of fiction
[11:22]but we really liked them
[11:23]and sent it out to Johnny Temple at Akashi
[11:25]and he liked the story.
[11:27]I think, I mean, actually I think at first,
[11:28]he was a little hesitant, I think he showed it to his wife
[11:31]and she's like, yeah, this is great,
[11:32]you gotta probably say.
[11:33]And he's like, all right, yeah, okay, so sure,
[11:36]you guys want to try this.
[11:37]So it was a really small project, you know?
[11:40]And even a physically small book
[11:43]and we put it out there.
[11:44]And I mean, there's been a lot of stories
[11:46]about how it kind of essentially blew up
[11:48]but it was kind of an accident.
[11:50]The book became a very big viral success
[11:53]before the book had even been published.
[11:55]At first it was just word of mouth
[11:57]and it started pre-order, started cracking up on Amazon
[12:00]and became very close to like one,
[12:02]maybe even though number one or number two book
[12:04]on Amazon.
[12:05]And we hadn't even got the book published yet
[12:07]and it was incredibly strange
[12:09]and that summer was like, what is going on?
[12:12]And then the PDF went out
[12:14]and that's how a lot of people saw the book.
[12:15]The PDF started, you know, being virally shared
[12:18]and at first we were really scared about that.
[12:20]It was like, wait a second,
[12:21]our book hasn't even been published
[12:22]and now everyone has it for free.
[12:25]And, you know, that was a concern as well
[12:27]but then it still was becoming popular
[12:29]and people were still pre-ordering it.
[12:31]So we kind of pushed up the publishing
[12:33]by a couple of months
[12:34]so that when the book finally came out, yeah.
[12:36]It went pretty big at the time, it was amazing.
[12:38]It was a really strange experience.
[12:40]I mean, you must have just been over the moon.
[12:42]That's like the coolest thing to have it happen like that.
[12:45]Yeah, yeah, it was really fun.
[12:46]It was really fun and it was funny
[12:48]and it was weird and it was strange to see,
[12:50]I mean, I just remember, yeah, the feeling
[12:52]of watching the book climbing up
[12:54]like kind of battling between,
[12:55]I think it was Tina Fey's bossy pants
[12:57]at the time was like number one and weird number two.
[12:59]I was like, I can't believe this book.
[13:01]It's right next to that book.
[13:03]Like how small of an idea, you know,
[13:05]it was when it started and yeah,
[13:07]I've been became, you know, a known thing.
[13:10]I also, I feel like that book started
[13:13]some like a whole new level of honesty
[13:16]that parents shared with each other.
[13:17]Like I just feel like, you know,
[13:19]it just said it had at such the right time
[13:22]for people who were just frustrated
[13:24]and felt like you couldn't really talk about it.
[13:26]And now there was this fantastic funny book
[13:29]and I don't know, it's great, it was great.
[13:32]So what are you excited to do in the future?
[13:34]Do you have any dream collaborations
[13:36]or books you were hoping to work on
[13:39]or anything you're particularly excited about right now?
[13:41]Oh, wow, collaborations.
[13:43]Oh, I'm sure there are collaborations in my head.
[13:46]Yeah, maybe I would love to do another book with Jamaica.
[13:49]We've kind of talked a little bit about some ideas
[13:51]and that ever happens, that would be really fun.
[13:53]My next book that I'm working on right now is that,
[13:55]so actually I mentioned that my first book
[13:58]was that children's book about marijuana was very strange.
[14:00]But after that, I did a picture book
[14:03]for maybe high school and up for adults
[14:05]about the history of the cosy plant
[14:07]and about the cocoa plant,
[14:08]which what cocaine is made out of.
[14:10]And it turned into a history of the Coca-Cola company
[14:12]and this history of the business
[14:14]of the Coca-Cola company.
[14:15]It was this whole political history.
[14:16]But when that came out,
[14:18]I realized that I've been doing these books about plants
[14:20]and a trilogy of plants.
[14:21]In fact, that it now, my next children's book
[14:24]I have a book about tomatoes.
[14:25]It's kind of a tongue in cheek,
[14:26]die-tried against tomatoes,
[14:28]but I kind of find very silly and very ridiculous.
[14:31]It's basically tomatoes are the most evil thing
[14:34]and they do make you do bad things.
[14:36]So yeah, that's the next thing that I'm working on right now.
[14:39]I'm illustrating in a watercolor.
[14:41]It looks very different from my last projects,
[14:43]which I've done a lot of books and pencil.
[14:45]They're very finely detailed and this is a little bit looser.
[14:48]So yeah, it's the next best in each project I'm working on.
[14:52]So what do you think it takes to appeal to kids?
[14:56]I mean, you're obviously a brilliant artist in your own right,
[14:58]but you have found a way to really connect with kids
[15:02]and grown-ups through, I mean,
[15:03]because the other book is sort of not a kid's book, really.
[15:06]I mean, I try to keep it away from my kids.
[15:08]But do you think kids look at things in a different way
[15:11]and need a different type of illustration?
[15:13]Or am I just being too analytical
[15:15]about it and it's just more a field type thing?
[15:18]Yeah, that's a great question that I wrestle with myself
[15:20]and think about myself.
[15:21]I mean, I think I'm an artist and as a kid,
[15:25]I was very visual and I love picture books
[15:27]and I just think about what I love to the kid.
[15:30]I love looking at picture books
[15:32]and I love the details of things.
[15:34]So that's one of my styles I think that in picture books,
[15:37]I love just making things that I think kids will have fun
[15:40]looking at and looking at over and over
[15:42]and marbling into that's aesthetically
[15:45]and visually of just making things
[15:47]that are interesting to look at.
[15:49]And then content-wise, that's even a greater mystery
[15:51]of how what is going to be engaging to a kid.
[15:55]To a certain extent, I think it is something
[15:56]like what is engaging to myself.
[15:59]I'm going to understand it on a different level
[16:01]but as a kid would and it's not always for everybody.
[16:04]I think party, I've really had a lot of fun reading party
[16:08]to a lot of people and even before the story came out,
[16:11]I would tell people the story
[16:12]and I had a lot of adult friends who were like,
[16:15]that story, what?
[16:17]That's the worst story, I don't know if I heard.
[16:19]That makes no sense, it makes no sense.
[16:23]And obviously there was something about that thing
[16:25]making no sense is what grabbed me
[16:27]and what I really enjoyed but I also know
[16:29]that a lot of people aren't going to like this book.
[16:31]And in fact, I pitched this book out
[16:33]to several publishers that were not interested
[16:36]and I was really shocked.
[16:37]That was a great a second.
[16:39]This is to make a kid.
[16:41]Do you all know that?
[16:43]This is to make a kid and this is going to be a children's book
[16:45]and it's going to be gorgeous and it's weird.
[16:48]I know it's weird but like don't you see the vision?
[16:50]And yeah, obviously there's a lot of people
[16:53]that even in the state of this and now it doesn't click.
[16:58]But for me, the strangeness of it
[17:01]and how it didn't fit into the formula.
[17:03]Most children's books make sense
[17:04]and at the end is maybe even a lesson
[17:07]or maybe there's a moral.
[17:08]And in this one that it was kind of the opposite of that
[17:11]that it left you on shore,
[17:12]I think I really liked the idea of,
[17:14]I think there were certain books or certain movies
[17:17]or certain stories that as a child,
[17:19]when I got through them was like wait,
[17:21]you can do that in a story too.
[17:23]I thought like a story had to be like this
[17:26]but because I read this book that was just weird
[17:30]and broke the fourth wall or laid it out in different way,
[17:34]that it opens up the imagination of what is possible
[17:37]and storytelling.
[17:38]And I really like the idea of sharing that with kids
[17:41]that they can see like, oh, like anything can happen
[17:45]in a book, this book kind of leaves me
[17:48]not knowing what even happens
[17:49]and I didn't even need to know you could do that.
[17:50]So that's something that I think I like playing with as well.
[17:53]Totally, well thank you so much for sharing
[17:56]all your insights into party and all your other work
[17:59]and for creating such great books for everybody to enjoy
[18:02]and really that you really unite everybody in a way
[18:05]as well.
[18:06]All right, all right now, thanks so much.
[18:08]Yeah, really, it was fun talking about it.
[18:10]All right, well thanks have a great day.
[18:13]Okay, take care.
[18:13]Okay, bye bye.
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