If you’re a New Yorker subscriber, you’ve probably encountered Jashar Awan’s work: the venerable magazine—and the “Goings on About Town” section in particular—was one of his best clients during his almost two decades as a freelance illustrator in the New York City. But you’re forgiven if you don’t make the connection between the graphic novel realism of those images and the strongly geometric pictures in his debut, What a Lucky Day! (Norton Young Readers), which are modeled on the look of cut paper.
The big departure in style resulted from a confluence of circumstances and influences. Awan and his wife became parents in 2013 and moved from New York to Ohio in 2017 to be closer to her family. The couple met at the Pratt Institute; she’s now a designer at Jo-Ann Stores. Fatherhood inspired Awan to think about the children’s books he had loved as a kid—he cites Crockett Johnson, Ezra Jack Keats, and Marc Simont as visual inspirations—and try his hand at creating one himself.
Awan made two full-fledged books and with advice from another Pratt classmate, Madeline Valentine (I Want That Nut!), shopped them around for representation but didn’t get any bites. He began working on What a Lucky Day! in 2018, when what he saw as “the demonization of large groups of people” seemed to have gripped America.
“I was thinking about my own experience as well,” Awan says. “We were living in a much less diverse area, and I was constantly having to answer the question, ‘No, where are you really from?’ ”
Awan sketched a stork decked out in angling gear and realized he had more to say than, “This character is going fishing.” The result was a story in which a group of animals on a fishing expedition confront their stereotypes and misconceptions of each other.
Awan had a hunch that the book had the kind of substance that would garner interest, and he was right: What a Lucky Day! caught the eye of Kirsten Hall at Catbird Productions, who then passed it on to Erica Rand Silverman at Stimola Literary Studio. After some minor revision, the book was snapped up at auction by Norton for its then year-old Young Readers imprint. Awan’s editor, Simon Boughton—also the imprint’s publishing director—had few changes.
“I think that was part of the appeal—how far along it was,” Awan says of the book. “It was something they could put out quickly.”
“At the time it felt like it took a while,” he adds. “But now I see it really didn’t take long at all.” Awan signed with Rand Silverman at the start of 2019, Norton bought the book that summer, and it hit stores this past October. Thanks to a deal with Brooklyn-based Winter Water Factory, kids’ T-shirts featuring the characters will be appearing soon.
Awan’s second book for Norton—which he describes as being about “an anteater who goes on a sleepover and has to try new things”—is due out in fall 2021. This time, the collaboration with Boughton has been far more extensive, which Awan welcomed. “After making books on my own for so long, it’s fun to work with him on it and have him take it as seriously as I do,” he says. “When the new book was at the thumbnail stage, he drew up a flowchart of the story, and I was so impressed.”
Norton is also working on a third book for which Awan is providing the manuscript only. The illustrator has yet to be chosen. He found the opportunity to focus on the words alone “exciting, sort of freeing,” he says. “The story is more metaphoric and poetic, and I thought someone with a lyrical style would do a better job of it.”
And Awan says he’s enjoying sharing his studio with his seven-year-old son, who is remote learning because of the pandemic. “I’m working and he’s on Zoom calls with his class,” he says with a laugh. “I didn’t think I was going to have a first-grade studio mate, but it’s fun.”
