Picture book breakdown with David Hohn on May 27!

[Jeremy Ross]

Hi @davidhohn, I did a page turn of Beekle with my wife and daughter to share all the insights and Easter eggs throughout the book and noticed one more!

Check out the little girl with the snake friend and jump rope on the end sheets. Striking resemblance to the unnamed girl in his book Oh No! (Or how my science project destroyed the world) written by Mac Barnett.

Interestingly, the #4 on her shirt in Beekle may reflect the 4 years between publishing Oh No! (2010) and Beekle (2014).

Things that make you go hmmmm. Next time you talk to Dan, you should ask him if it’s the same girl (smile).

Looking forward to the next Picturebook Geek out session.

[xin li]

@LisaF is the session recorded and will be made available for svs subscribers under Jump Into The Studio course? I missed the live session.

[davidhohn]

@Jeremy-Ross Pretty cool man! I always think stuff like this is really fun!

[joosterwijk]

@LisaF Sorry to keep bothering you about this, but will the lecture be added to SVSlearn? I’m keep checking Jump into the Studio but can not find it…

[LisaF]

@xin-li and @joosterwijk sorry for the delay! We actually had some technical issues with recording the livestream, but @davidhohn was gracious enough to re-record it! (Thanks David!!) You can find it now in the Jump into the Studio class in the subscription

And just fyi, he may be doing another one of these soon, stay tuned for details!

[joosterwijk]

Thank you! @davidhohn Really awesome that you re-recorded it for us and the lecture is amazing. I have some thoughts after listening to your analysis, if someone disagrees let me know!
Beekle is Alice and Beekles journey is Alice’s journey. First of all, it is Alice who creates Beekle and draws out his story as you can see on page 34-37, she uses elements of her surrounding to create this fantasy world. The parts of the playground are turned into the island and into the journey (and not the other way round). The crown comes from the pencil box, the rainbow on the island from the rainbow she draws on the paper, etc. The tree is tricky, is the tree with beekle in it the real tree or a reprensentation of the tree Alice did draw ( the leaves have a form of a star…). Secondly, I think that she does not only makes up the story but it is also a story about her self. It is said that she had no friends, and story is about looking for a friend. And is the boy who Beekle thinks of on page 8 not the same boy who she become friends of in the end? The search for a friend in the playground on page 20 is Alice looking for a friend?
Anyway.. super interesting. I’m really curious how he wrote this. Did he start with the story of beekle and than added layers and references over time? This is a fun story for kids and literature for adults all packed in a “simple” picture book! Love it!

[xin li]

@LisaF thank you so much Lisa, and thank you so much @davidhohn

[Oana]

@joosterwijk I just got to watching the picture book breakdown and I loved it, can’t wait for another one. I have a kid and for the last 12 years I have used this as a pretext to read children storybooks in the bookstore I had similar thoughts on the book interpretation, I think it is about the fact that imagination can fill one’s life and can bring people together. Beekle is obviously an imaginary friend, and the title “unimaginary” I think means that products of the imagination can be powerful and real to the ones imagining them, and this is why the story presents the things kind of the other way around, turning the reality of Alice drawing and playing in her mind with Beekle to Beekle looking and finding Alice. And of course the details like the crown and the way the other imaginary friends are depicted are here to discreetly explain to the reader the more tangible part of what is happening - kids imagining stuff inspired by the thing they love and by their life, as you also said. And the end shows that creativity finally helps people connect.

Really beautiful!

[Oana]

@joosterwijk You got me thinking about the tree… that part was indeed interesting, my interpretation is, beacause of the stars, like in the sky at the beggining over the island where the friends are born… the tree I feel is a stilised representation of abstract space in the mind, where the imagination grows it’s magic, and the place where Beekle is born. He can meet Alice only if she creates him in her imagination when she draws him on the piece of paper. That should explain why the tree pages are so flat, as they depict a more abstract place, not the real town, not the imaginary island. Maybe that is the place where the story actually starts, and the pages until then are the story Alice will in continuation imagine for Beekle

[Mariana B.]

I just saw the recorded version of the book breakdown.
It is amazing how much thought Dan puts into every page and your comments were very insightful!
Another thing I liked about this book is how it bends the idea of time. Did Beekle exist before Alice saw him at the playground, or did she created him from the beginning and drew his journey?

Another little easter egg that I noticed is that the color pencil case has beekle’s crown, but not only that, when beekle is born, there is a rainbow right behind him. The rainbow could be a representation of the pencils from Alice pencil case , meaning that in the moment she opened her pencil case to draw, that’s when beekle was created.
Also in that same page with Alice drawing, she is drawing a rainbow on the left side of the page and beekle is on the right side of the page, mirroring the positioning from the first page.
I also love that he made the dogs notice him.

Thank you for doing this book review/explanation!

[KevinTreaccar]

Found a great interview with Dan Santat about his process making Beekle: https://penandoink.com/2014/08/25/a-pen-oink-interview-with-dan-santat-the-making-of-beekle/