Posted by Jake Bourdeau

Melissa Sweet is a well-known children’s book illustrator, and now she is also an author of books for children. Ms. Sweet spoke at the Rotary Meeting on Friday, and she let us peek into her career life by cataloging the process of both writing and illustrating a biography on E.B. White.   

In the beginning of her writing process, she described how the ideas for her books come to her often while walking her dogs, reading the daily newspaper, listening to the radio, or while talking with random people. The day she decided to write a biography on E.B. White, she was visiting with a neighbor and friend from Rockport, Maine. She must like a challenge, because she told us her opinions of biographies are that they are often dry and not too memorable. So up for a challenge, Ms. Sweet began a several-year research project digesting everything she could about E.B. White. There was no magical formula to it. She researched everything from his birth to his death, interviewed family and friends, and she noted any clues on his life that interested her.

Ms. Sweet feels that to be successful as an illustrator or author, one must go to work every day, so she follows that mantra, and we can find her in a separate work space at her home from 8 am to 4 pm. While at work, she spends time writing, illustrating, or looking at picture books. While sometimes it can be rough, Ms. Sweet finds that if she plows through the tough times, something good eventually comes out of the process.

Many of the illustrations in her E.B. White biography are actually photographs of 3-D collages that she built by hand. She explained how much of the art that she creates for books may not even be used in the final product, and that there are new museums and galleries (e.g., such as the University of Minnesota collection) for works like hers. Rather than sell her work, she has more recently started donating some of her unused or old art to these entities. She noted that storing art can be problematic and rather costly. This statement was likely another surprise she taught our club members.  

Ultimately, while teaching us about her creative work ethic and processes, we really learned quite a bit about another interesting author: E.B. White. 

 
(Photo L-R: Bob Martin, President Don Zillman and Melissa Sweet.)