Behind the Scenes with Jackie Urbanovic: An Interview with Hannah Crawford

by Hannah Crawford

Welcome back to “Behind the Scenes!” This month, we are very excited to talk to author and illustrator Jackie Urbanovic. Jackie created the pictures of Flo and Mo you can find all over the Rainbow Rumpus website, and has illustrated many of our other stories. She is also the author and illustrator of the New York Times Bestselling Max the Duck books (Duck at the Door, Duck Soup, Duck and Cover, and Sitting Duck). If you haven’t read these fantastic and funny books, you should.

Hi Jackie! You’ve been with Rainbow Rumpus from the very beginning. How did you get involved, and what has your experience been like over the years?

I became involved when Laura Matanah [Rainbow Rumpus founder and publisher] needed an artist to help bring Mo and Flo to life. I really enjoyed helping her create the characters. Her kids helped pick which drawings they thought worked best. It was a riot to do. Dragons are a lot of fun to draw.

I also illustrated a number of other stories during the first few years. I did the art for “Same, Same,” “Grandpa Dragon and My Peach Tree Moms,” “The Boy Who Captured the Moon,” “Zoo Magic,” and a few others.

I enjoy contributing to a web magazine that gives kids a place to see their life reflected back to them. It's a real change to see more literature about LGBT families and Rainbow Rumpus has done a great job.

What’s your favorite thing you’ve drawn for Rainbow Rumpus?

It's definitely Mo and Flo. I recently made myself laugh, illustrating Mo caught in a donut shop, getting jelly donuts stuck on his horn.

You are both an illustrator and an author of a bestselling children’s series. Ack! How do you find time for everything?

Oh, it's not always easy. In between illustrating books for other authors, I spend time working on my own book ideas. I go back and forth between projects. I stay up late some nights and work some weekends.

And then sometimes I just get on my bike and take a day off! But remember, this is what I do for a living, and it's also what I love doing the most. Spending the week drawing funny pictures and thinking up funny story ideas is a great way to spend time.

I’ve heard that you base most of the characters in your books on rescued animals you know. Could you talk a little bit about your inspiration?

My Max the Duck picture books do use animals that I've known. The stories were inspired by a real woman named Irene, who keeps a home full of rescued cats, dogs, and rabbits. When I began writing my stories, I used some of the animals she really rescued, like Brody the Saint Bernard and Scrappy the bull terrier. But I decided to use animals from my life as well. Tawny the poodle is based on my Mom's toy poodle. Dakota was my cat. Bebe was my parrot, as was Joshua the cockatoo. Moosay is my cousin's cat. It makes it easier to have a beginning point in real life for each of the characters. It's also a lot of fun to bring them in from my life. The only animal who isn’t from real life in that series is Max the duck. He came solely from my imagination.

I'm working on other stories now, about other characters, but I always pull ideas from my life: my family, friends, pets, experiences. I feel like we are all walking libraries full of stories waiting to be told.

Thanks for talking with us, Jackie!

Readers, if you’d like to know more about Jackie Urbanovic, check out these interviews from children’s writer Jama Rattigan’s blog Alphabet Soup, here, here, and here, where Jackie goes into detail about how she creates her books and characters and talks about her love of comics and cooking. You can also check out her website, www.jackieurbanovic.com, and see for yourself some of the amazing artwork she’s done for children’s books.