What Stays With You

How does one create a visual or described image that lands?

A snapshot is not easy to make, because it asks you to take something complex and reduce it to a single moment without losing its weight. A large part of that comes from instinct, but instinct is built over time. It grows out of what you’ve seen, what you’ve studied, and how you’ve come to understand people and the world around you.

Over time, you start to recognize what holds attention and what gets ignored. What draws someone in, and what causes them to move on. Those decisions don’t come from formulas. They come from observation, repetition, and an awareness of what you’re trying to capture in that moment.

For me, that moment has to carry something.

Not by telling someone what to feel, but by giving them something to respond to. If it’s working, it holds their attention long enough for them to consider it.

That’s where writing and illustration begin to meet.

I’ve always seen words as shaping thought. They create rhythm, structure, and meaning over time. Images move differently, but they require the same level of care. They build across the book, each one influenced by what came before and what follows. Each image has its own identity, but it still has to serve the larger message.

Piece by piece, the book is constructed. Each spread depends on the last and sets up the next. Once the book is bound, it reads as a whole. You’re not thinking about how it was built. You’re moving through it, the way you would move through a gallery, except the pages do the work for you.

You can stay with one spread, or move forward and feel how everything connects.

It’s similar to language. A single word has weight, but it gains meaning in a sentence. A sentence builds strength in a paragraph. A paragraph becomes something larger on the page. Each part matters, but its full impact comes from how it works with everything around it.

The same thing happens visually. A single color can hold attention, but it changes through relationship. Blue shifts when it sits against orange, when texture is introduced, when light and dark are pushed against each other.

That’s when it starts to feel complete.

When I read Black Hands: Builders of Our Nation by Carole Boston Weatherford (Crown Books for Young Readers), it brought together the elements I look for when considering a children’s book.

Character, emotion, environment, and a sense of movement through the pages.

The writing moves through history in a way that feels lived rather than explained. It moves from labor to creation, from daily work to moments that shaped larger change. The range is there, but it holds together.

There’s a flow to it. One moment leads into the next without forcing transitions. That structure shaped how I approached the visuals.

Each spread needed variation in color, composition, and rhythm. Not repetition, but continuity. Something that keeps the world consistent while still giving the reader a reason to stay engaged as they move forward.

That sense of movement mattered while working on the book.

The goal wasn’t to fix each moment in place, but to let the images move with the text and build across the pages.

That’s what made the process meaningful.

R. Gregory Christie has illustrated more than sixty books for young adults and children, including the Caldecott Honor Book Freedom in Congo Square by Carole Boston Weatherford and Nana’s New Soul Food. He has also received two New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book of the Year Awards, one Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award, six Coretta Scott King Honors for illustration, the NAACP Image Award, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award. In addition, Greg has designed John Coltrane album covers and animated films on Netflix, and he operates his online store of autographed children’s books, GAS-ART Gifts. He lives and works in the Atlanta area.

GIVEAWAY INFORMATION: You can win a 20-minute virtual author visit and a copy of Black Hands: Builders of Our Nation by Carole Boston Weatherford and R. Gregory Christie, donated by Crown Books for Young Readers. To enter the giveaway, leave a comment about this post by Wed., May 13, at 6:00 p.m. EDT. The winner will be randomly selected by Stacey Shubitz and announced at the bottom of the preview post by Monday, May 18. You must have a U.S. mailing address and provide a valid e-mail address when you post your comment. If you win, Stacey will email you for your mailing address. She will choose a new winner if you do not respond with your mailing address within five days.