Emma Quay: Okay, do we have perhaps another question?

Student: How did you work together?

Lisa Shanahan: Well, when I first wrote the story of ‘Bear and Chook’ I sent that story off to my agent who then would send it to the publisher, to the editor there. And when I sent that to the editor, Mark Macleod, he decided that he really liked the story and that he wanted to do it and he said to me ‘I think this story would really suit Emma Quay, she’s a fairly new illustrator you know in Australia, you know fairly early in her career like you and we think that you know they’d be an ideal match.’ And Mark showed me some pictures that Emma had done for other books and I could see that they were just beautiful and I said ‘Well, I really would like Emma to be the illustrator for the story.’ And so they sent you know the manuscript, the story off to Emma for her to read. And at that point Emma could have said ‘No, the story doesn’t suit me because you know it’s not my cup of tea.’ But fortunately for me when Emma received the story she also really liked it. But I never at that point spoke to Emma at all, I was only speaking to Mark Macleod, the editor. And I guess sometimes the editor they act as the person that you know works with both you, the writer and the illustrator in order to make the book the best possible book that it can be. So, what happened after you got my story Emma?

Emma: Well, it came in the post because this was a long time ago, was it nine years ago or something like that when I first got Lisa’s story. And I read it and I thought it was lovely. I was a bit worried it was going to be too cute but it wasn’t. And I really loved it and I decided to illustrate it. And it was interesting that we didn’t speak at all during that book but I probably enjoyed working on the second book better ‘Bear & Chook by the Sea’ because by then we were friends. And Lisa and I are close friends and we speak all the time on the phone about books and our lives and things like that and that made a big, big difference to working on the second book together because we could talk about what we were doing every stage of the way. And Lisa was shown my pencil drawings because everything is planned out in pencil first and then she was shown more detailed pencil drawings and I showed her the paintings when they were only half way done and we could talk about that. And I think that makes it a better book.

Lisa: Yes, do you know and even by that stage by the time, this was our third book together and by the time we worked on this book together, Emma was also talking to me about the text. And one day we were talking about the last line for ‘Bear & Chook by the Sea’ because on the last line where in the book at the moment it says ‘Oh, Bear,’ said Chook ‘of course you could.’ Originally when I wrote that story I said ‘Oh, Bear,’ said Chook ‘I love you.’ And when my editor at the time said to me ‘I think maybe that line, we might need to think about that line whether it would really work.’ Emma was talking to me and she said ‘Do you know it would be terrible if that line was not read well.’ I decided that I needed to go away and change that line so that all of the feeling was in the line that the words themselves weren’t exactly that. And so that was you know a different way of working because now Emma was talking to me about the text and in the same way sometimes I would speak to Emma directly about the illustrations too.

Emma: And of course when I hear that my illustrations aren’t perfect yet, it’s difficult to hear it, you know when you’ve worked really hard on something and then someone says it’s not quite there yet and it’s not as great as you thought it was. I get told that a lot too and sometimes I need to just listen to that and change my pictures because I do want the book to be as good as it can be. So, I’m quite happy to hear that. It’s too late to change things when the book looks like this. So, I’d rather change it when it’s a pencil drawing.

Lisa: So, from the very beginning we had a book, this one and we never spoke to each other at all. And then by the end when we were working on our third book together we were talking to each other, you know very many days through that process.