Behind the Scenes of Drawn Onward with Daniel Nayeri and Matt Rockefeller
This is a behind-the-scenes look at Drawn Onward a picture book by me (Daniel Nayeri) and the brilliantly talented Matt Rockefeller. It involves years of back-and-forth discussions, visions and revisions, a powerhouse super-agent in Joanna Volpe who conducted the whole thing like an orchestra, and an editor Andrew Arnold, who gently asked all the right questions, generously managed all our requests, and set a table for us within the publishing house worthy of the Michelin committee.
Already, it feels like an epic, and we haven’t even introduced it to the world yet. Here’s hoping you like it. And here’s the story so far…
In May of 2020, I got a note from Matt Rockefeller saying he’d be willing to work on a project I’d been dreaming up for years before that. A picture book told as a palindrome…but more than that, a story that demanded a reverse structure.
It begins with a little boy, sitting with his dad in their living room. Over them hangs a family portrait from a time when his mother was still alive. The young boy is despondent. His father goes to make dinner, a recipe his wife used to make.
When the father asks the boy to gather a few of the ingredients from their garden, the boy is overcome with his emotions and rushes out of the house. Soon, he finds himself in the dark woods, lonely and afraid. So begins the adventure into several enchanting worlds, the underground mines of the dwarves, a sunken city, a desert of fairies, and finally, a ruined castle where he meets his mother and asks the question his heart has been longing to know.
This is the pivotal center of the book’s V-shaped structure. From here, the boy is renewed by his mother’s answer and returns back up through those worlds, now able to help the denizens, as he undertakes a journey for his own healing.
That was the story and it began as a script for a wordless picture book.
The plot of a heroic adventure and the theme of grief all made sense for the palindromic structure. But it would require someone who could deliver a lush fantasy world with detailed backgrounds with some rather complicated limitations, given all the symmetry required.
When Matt came aboard, one of the first thoughts was, what if there was palindromic text as well?
I worked on that, while Matt delivered early character studies.
Before long my inbox was a treasure trove of early sketches. We wanted the story to feel unencumbered by time or place. The style of the art progressed, but the tender-hearted boy stayed largely the same.
Around this time, we were lucky enough to have Andrew Arnold and the wonderful team at Harper Alley join, and none too soon, because the story structure and the art were about to have their biggest struggle.
The text had too much going on. A normal 32-page picture book made up of mostly spreads and vignettes wasn’t enough to express all the actions involved.
Thankfully, Andrew and co., being experts in the sequential art of comics, and what with Matt having made several graphic novels, the notion (which now seems obvious, but I assure you was not at the time) presented itself: Why not a picture book with panel frames? A 40-page early comic of sorts? Perhaps, for some young readers, the first foray into the form?
We put away the early spreads and Matt returned to the drawing board. Of course, this meant that every panel he drew going down one side of the V-structure, he would have to mirror on the way back up. No sweat.
Matt delivered the first of what would be MANY symmetrical sketches.
These sketches became, over the years, my favorite collaborative experience I’ve ever had as a writer. I would print them out and pore over every detail. This is how Matt began to work out the puzzle of mirroring the visual frames. And this is how I began to finally work out the text. A reverse poem.
Matt began to incorporate the text into the refined sketches.
Years went by. Some of us moved houses. We sent each other pictures of toddlers on the beach and welcomed a new baby together. Adventures were everywhere.
Soon, the sketches started to come in color.
I was agog. I was delirious. I was too nervous to clap too loudly, lest I wake myself up from the dream. And that was even before I saw the finals.
The little boy’s story had formed over the long four years in what seems like endless iterations. We went back and forth over the V-structure. We told ourselves the story of grief and hope, back and forth. To ourselves, and now, hopefully, to our readers.
Thanks for reading.
About the Creators
Daniel Nayeri likes to read things backward even when it doesn't make sense to do so. He is the author of Everything Sad Is Untrue (A True Story), winner of the Printz Award, the Christopher Medal, and the Middle Eastern Book Award. He loves letter-unit palindromes, like "toot" and "God's dog," and word-unit palindromes, like "Never say never" and "Fall leaves after leaves fall," and if he didn't say how much he likes and loves his wife and son, he wouldn't be Daniel Nayeri.
Matt Rockefeller is a visual storyteller inspired by adventuring in the mountains, interpretive dancing with friends, and pondering the many wonders of the universe. In addition to drawing and writing comics, he creates artwork for TV and film animation. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his family including a little dog that may or may not be a fox.