Talking with Mark Teague

by Nancy J. Johnson and Cyndi Giorgis

The inspiration for Mark Teague’s imaginative picture books
Dear Mrs. LaRue and
Detective LaRue came from summer-camp experiences and two dogs, one who made food-pilfering his life’s work and another who feigned injury to gain attention until something more interesting (such as a squirrel) foiled his ruse. In
Dear Mrs. LaRue, Teague offers two perspectives on the loyal and misunderstood Ike LaRue, a wirehaired terrier whose pranks prompt his owner to enroll him in “canine academy.” In daily correspondence with Mrs. LaRue, Ike relates the harsh conditions he is subjected to, even though the illustrations convey a very different story. In
Detective LaRue, Ike’s suffering continues as he is falsely accused of “feline foul play” and sentenced to jail, where his letters to Mrs. LaRue reveal his efforts to clear his good name.

Teague’s unconventional path to writing and illustrating came not through years of art school but rather through a job designing signs and window displays for Barnes & Noble, where he was inspired by children’s books. Now the author and illustrator of more than 40 books, including Jane Yolen’s
How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?, Teague recently talked with us about his process of creating clever stories and appealing art.

NJJ & CG: When did you begin writing and illustrating?


TEAGUE: I got into it by accident. As a kid, I was always making up stories and drawing pictures. It never occurred to me that this was a career in the making. When I went to college I studied history, but I didn’t give much thought to what I could do with a history degree. After graduating from the University of California–Santa Cruz, I moved to New York City, where I got a job working at the corporate headquarters of Barnes & Noble. I worked on a freelance basis making signs and window displays. The people who worked there were all graduates of these great New York City illustration schools, and the director of the studio was a really talented artist. She gave me a lot of on-the-job training in different materials, and I loved it.

NJJ & CG: How long did you work at Barnes & Noble?


TEAGUE: About two years. I got to see children’s books for the first time since I was a kid. They’d changed a lot


over the years. I was inspired by people like Chris Van Allsburg and William Joyce—people who were doing big, vibrant, full-color artwork, which was really different from what I remembered from children’s books. It was intriguing to me, so I went home and wrote a story called The Trouble with the Johnsons and began to do the illustrations. I put it all together in the studio where I worked because I had access to equipment that people


didn’t generally have in terms of being able to lay out the type and make the fonts. I made a very professional-looking presentation. Mike Cavanaugh, who was the children’s buyer, was intrigued by what I was doing and since he knew someone at Scholastic, he got me an appointment to show my work. I didn’t know this, but my timing was perfect, because Scholastic was just starting their trade division. I was pretty green, but the trade division


was pretty green too. We had a chance to mature together. I’ve basically been with Scholastic ever since.

NJJ & CG: At what point did you realize that illustrating could be a career?


TEAGUE: When I was young, no one was telling me that I couldn’t do artwork. But I didn’t think of it as a career option. All I knew was that artists starved. I liked artwork, and I knew I was pretty good at it, but I always thought it was just something that I would do for fun. It’s especially shocking to my parents that I am doing this for a living. My dad was from a really poor background. He thought, get a career and make some money, but this wasn’t it.

NJJ & CG: What is the difference between doing a book that you write and illustrate and one like Jane Yolen’s
How


Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?


TEAGUE: It’s not radically different. When I write and illustrate a story, the writing always comes first. I don’t draw my way into a story. Sometimes it’s visual in my mind, but I’m not dealing with the illustrations until after the story is pretty much done. What I like about working with other authors is that they’re coming up with ideas that probably wouldn’t occur to me. So as an illustrator I can extend that.

NJJ & CG: I don’t imagine that Jane Yolen expected human parents in
How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?



TEAGUE: I think that was a surprise to her. In terms of the words, the story doesn’t really tell you what to expect. Jane probably expected a dinosaur family, which was my initial reaction, too. It seemed a lot funnier making the dinosaurs have human parents. I started with one Tyrannosaurus family and the human parents. That carried on for a few pages but it felt like it was slowly waning. I thought bringing in the variety of different creatures was better. So once I started to include the other creatures in the story the whole thing stepped up.

NJJ & CG: Are there more dinosaur books on the way?


TEAGUE: I’m working on one now. It’s about table manners,
How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?

NJJ & CG: When you illustrate for another author like Jane Yolen or Cynthia Rylant, whose Poppleton series you’re


illustrating, at what point do they see your work?


TEAGUE: Everything goes through the editor, but the authors do see the sketches. I share the sketches with the


editor, and she comes back with her comments and their comments. I’ve never met Cynthia face to face. With


Jane, I didn’t meet her until we were doing a book signing together. I assume these two authors have a lot of say in who illustrates their books. I always try to accommodate their vision and try to be a very careful reader. With the Poppleton books, Cynthia had all the characters. I just supplied the vision of what they looked like. I knew they wore clothes because it says so in the series.

NJJ & CG: But not pants.


TEAGUE: Some people are bothered by a pig without pants. But kids don’t care. And a pig’s hind leg is so great to draw.

NJJ & CG: How much research is involved in your work?


TEAGUE: I do virtually no research at all. I had enough of it as a history major. Actually, that’s not true. I had to do research for the dinosaur books. Kids notice everything, so it’s important that you get it right. In fact, you have to get it right. I learned that on my first book.
The Trouble with the Johnsons has these nondescript alligator-looking dinosaurs. Some kids were skeptical about that, asking, What kind of dinosaur is that? I learned my lesson.

NJJ & CG: For you, is writing much harder than the art?


TEAGUE: For me it is. Writing a story that works for young kids is a very disciplined art form. It takes about 15


paragraphs to make a real story. It can be maddening sometimes. When you’ve been trying to get these 15 paragraphs to work for months and it just doesn’t seem to come about. It’s a whole different level of concentration when I’m painting, listening to the radio, and talking to my kids.

NJJ & CG: Why did you decide to tell a story from a dog’s point of view in
Dear Mrs. LaRue?


TEAGUE:
Dear Mrs. LaRue originally started out as a summer-camp story. One of the conventions of summer camp is that children write these mournful letters home. Then the parents visit and find that they’re having a grand old time. That intrigued me. It seemed like a good hook. I’m always looking for a universal experience that kids and parents can remember and identify with. The idea didn’t really get funny until I made the change from letters sent from kids to letters sent from a dog in obedience school. But it wasn’t enough. I didn’t have a plot. I had these letters that were amusing to me, but they weren’t a story. It became the hardest writing experience I’ve had because of writing a whole story in letters. So I had to step back and get another perspective somehow. It started


to work when I used the newspaper clippings. That was funny to me, too, because I live in this little town in upstate New York where we have this completely ridiculous local newspaper. I started writing a parody of the local newspaper. By then the story wasn’t just about this dog, it was about this whole kind of crazy world that was all around him.

NJJ & CG: Were there any other challenges in writing this book?


TEAGUE: One of the challenges with the artwork was making sure that it was really clear what was the dog’s imagination and what was really going on. So the contrast had to work in the art. I don’t know exactly when the inspiration came, but I remembered hearing somewhere that dogs see in black and white, so I tried that. Also, black and white created the mood that goes along with Ike’s vision of himself.

NJJ & CG: Was writing
Detective LaRue easier since you already had Ike’s voice?


TEAGUE: The second one came a lot more quickly. I loved the character, and writing in that voice was so much fun. I’d never done that kind of narrative, and the characters had a lot of possibilities. There were things in the first book that were hinted at, like the conflict with the cats was already set up. So it came together very easily.

NJJ & CG: Do you have a general age in mind for your books?
Dear Mrs. LaRue has even been a hit with middle-


schoolers.


TEAGUE: I don’t, but I do try to be cognizant of age. I don’t want to put anything in a book that’s going to be


inappropriate. But I don’t worry too much about going over kids’ heads because I always feel if the images and the story are intriguing, readers can come to it at a very young age. My youngest daughter likes
Dear Mrs. LaRue even though I don’t think she gets all the humor. At some point when kids are in first or second grade they catch on to the fact that the dog is lying. Then when they’re older, like the middle-school kids, they can also get a kick out of it. That’s a huge success if I can reach them. A big part of my work is that it’s not written for anyone. To be honest, I’m just amusing myself.

Sampling Teague

Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters from Obedience School. 2002. 32p. Scholastic, $15.95 (0-439-20663-4). K–Gr. 3.

Detective LaRue: Letters from the Investigation. 2004. 32p. Scholastic, $15.95 (0-439-45868-4). K–Gr. 3.

Rylant, Cynthia.
The Poppleton series. Illus. by Mark Teague. Scholastic/Blue Sky. Individual books, 56p., $16.95; paper, $3.99. K–Gr. 3.

The Trouble with the Johnsons. 1989. 32p. Scholastic, o.p. K–Gr. 3.

Yolen, Jane.
How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon? Illus. by Mark Teague. 2003. 40p. Scholastic/Blue Sky, $15.95 (0-439-24100-6). Also available in a board-book edition. Preschool–Gr. 1.

Yolen, Jane.
How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? Illus. by Mark Teague. 2000. 40p. Scholastic/Blue Sky, $15.95 (0-590-31681-8). Also available in a board-book edition. Preschool–Gr. 1.

Nancy J. Johnson is a professor of English education at Western Washington University.
Cyndi Giorgis is an associate professor of children’s and young adult literature at the University of Nevada–Las Vegas.