Long-time commercial illustrator Jeff Drew’s debut picture book, Alfie Explores A to Z, is a seek-and-find marvel, containing hundreds of humorous photo-realistic depictions of animals, food, clothing, and more to discover. Compelling the reader forward is a bespectacled bookworm, Alfie, who traverses a bookshelf alphabetically, venturing through 26 tongue-twisting titles like Kyle’s Kitchen Karaoke and Neighborhood Night Walks, in search of a beloved dust bunny named Betty who he never quite manages to spot before she leaps to the next letter. PW spoke with Drew about the decade-long, list-filled process of creating the book, the joy that results when you can make a living doing what you love, and what’s next in store for Alfie.
Much of your work has been in commercial illustration. What motivated you to do a seek-and-find picture book?
Whenever I’m freelancing or working a day job, I’ve always got a passion project going on in the background. I wanted to make something that could last, and I’ve wanted to do a kids’ book since art school. Back in 1996, I tried to do my first kids’ book, but when I tried to get it published, it was just crickets. Being a freelancer, there’s a lot of struggle just starting out. Nobody really, I think, hits the floor running. So while I’ve been doing this for 30 years, I’ve really been doing it for 10. It took almost 20 years just to get established, but my hobby and my career align. If I wasn’t doing this for a living, this is what I’d be doing for fun.
I got the idea for the book when I started selling prints and posters online. I was just thinking from a sales perspective, what would be cool to have on your wall that you would want to look at a lot? And I thought of old alphabet books that I remember as a kid—like, A is for apple, and C is for cat. I thought, what if you just jammed [a letter illustration] with everything that could possibly go in there. It started off really more as an art project than a book. I wasn’t thinking of a narrative. I just wanted to make cool images. I finished A—I have so many variations of the letter A—and I think I got all the way to C before I thought, “Hey, this might be a good book.”
At that point it wasn’t very kid-friendly. It was more serious. I figured I needed to have a character and so Alfie was the first character. And then came that idea of Where’s Waldo? that it’d be cool if you could find this guy every time, and then maybe he’s doing something that starts with the letter. I was building the plane as I was flying. The book initially was just the illustrations and then a list of words, so you could go through and just find stuff. I went back to the drawing board— “no, this needs a narrative,”—and then the idea of Betty, his pet, getting lost in the alphabet, came, so now there’s two things to find. It gives you a narrative to work through.
When I started writing the first poems, that was as fun as doing the illustrations because of the way I set it up. A lot of artists think constraints are a bad thing. To me, it’s the greatest gift of all. When I started the illustrations, I made a list of nouns that start with that letter—specifically, animals, mythological creatures, anything I could think of. Then I made a list of clothing that starts with that letter, and then food—what are they eating? what’s the location, all that kind of stuff. And it was the same thing with writing the poems. I just started with a list of verbs, adverbs, adjectives. And it was like: these are the toys in your toy box. This is what you get to play with. Working on the whole alphabet, that’s a lot of stuff and after doing it, I realized, gosh, I’ve illustrated every animal. I learned a lot doing it, and that was the other really fun thing. I felt like each letter was preparing a term paper.
Did you work on each letter’s illustration and text sequentially?
I just started at the beginning, and I dreaded X the whole way. I was like, “What am I going to do for X?” There’s only, like, five things in the world that start with X, and so that’s the most bare illustration. But writing the poem was actually really fun, because I could use “ex” words. And then for the back guide, there’s a little illustration talking about all the words that end in “x.” And same thing with Q—all these letters that I thought were really going to be trouble ended up being the more fun ones to work on.
Did you read a lot of seek-and-find books when you were a kid?
My seek-and-find experience was Mad Magazine, because so many of those illustrations were just packed to the gills. That’s the stuff that I would tear out of the magazine and hang on my wall when I was a kid, because every time I looked at it, it was like, “Oh, that’s new.” I have always been a fan of that kind of artwork. I’m from a small town where the library was our best place, so I feel like, as far as kids' lit growing up, it was comic books for me—comic books and Mad.
How would you describe your artistic style, and what are some of your favorite illustration details in the book?
I think because I spent so much time on A, I love my alien in an argyle sweater. One thing that was fun that I figured out later was changing up styles a little bit. Working as an illustrator all these years, and in animation, I was asked a lot to work on different styles. It’s kind of like learning a different language. For instance, I made the letter V into a video game, and it’s a big departure from my normal style, because everything’s kind of like eight-bit graphics, but it was so fun to change it up. And for Q, the whole thing is laid out like a quilt. I’m always looking for a bit of a challenge, and those things take you out of your comfort zone, but they still end up coming back like you somehow. I don’t know how that magic works.
Did you map out the illustrations before doing them?
Yes. At some point, I’ll have to make a page on my website that shares all my handwritten lists. As I’m doing the lists, I’m doing little doodles, so I have an idea of how many characters need to populate the place. The biggest place to start for me was the landscape they were in. So, for P they’re in a public park, and I knew I wanted to add pyramids and a pool. And then I just think of my characters like action figures. Everything’s on layers in Photoshop, so I can always move things around—nothing starts or ends the way it started. I do a lot of sketching, but collage is also a great way to get something started. I would love to know my Google image search count—it’s probably in the hundreds of thousands.
How did your experience with animation influence the way you approached the scenes?
I was getting towards the end of the first round, and I decided making a book trailer would be cool, just to help sell it. And, what [the trailer] really did was it put me in a narrative headspace that I wasn’t in before, because now I’m doing this animation explaining it, and it’s like, “Oh, the explanation is pretty funny—you should make that part of the book.” Doing the animation led me back to doing the whole book again. It unclogged some new ideas for me.
The project took shape over a decade. Do you have any advice you would go back and give yourself at the start?
No, because I did all I could do. When I say it’s over the course of a decade, it’s not like I worked on it 10 years straight. There were maybe a couple years where I hardly touched it because I was so busy freelancing, which is a good thing, but it was hard bouncing back and forth.
All my illustrations have humor in them, but sometimes it’s serious stuff, and then to go back into fun time, it took a little bit. I feel like the consistency of my next book will be better, only because it’s all I’m doing. I’m really 100% morning to night obsessed with it, and I don’t have to think about anything else. So that’s a luxury I’ve never been afforded before.
The artwork is jam-packed with objects, creatures, and everything, as we’ve been discussing. How did you decide when each scene was finished?
Ha, well, that’s why I did it, like, three or four times. Even today I look at it, and I’m like, “Oh, I could do that better,” but at some point you just have to let it go. That’s something I’ve gotten better at with age. I get a certain feeling when something’s done, and that feeling lasts for that amount of time, and then it’s over, and it’s on to the next thing.
You mentioned you’re onto a new project. Can you say something about it? Is there anything next for Alfie and Betty?
I don’t know if I’m supposed to say or not, but the next book has to do with history—basically, time travel—with Alfie in a lot of different time periods, and that’s all I’ll say. There’s a little mythology thrown in there, too. I think it’s the plan to do at least three Alfie books, if not more than that. I have a couple other ideas I really want to do as well that are completely devoid of Alfie and a lot less illustration. I have a couple quick ones that I want to do. I hope to be busy for the rest of my life. I know it’s rare for someone to really be able to do that cross-section of “this is what I love to do, and I can make a living at it.” That’s been the goal all along. Really the whole reason for freelancing was just avoiding working in an office, ever. It’s that freedom thing.
Do you think you’ll stay with print as opposed to animation?
I would love to. I could see how Alfie could be a show—how each letter of the alphabet could almost be an episode of a show. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Alfie Explores A to Z: A Seek-and-Find Adventure by Jeff Drew. Random House, $21.95 Nov. 5 ISBN 978-0-593-81311-9
