The winner of the 2020 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, Dapo Adeola skyrocketed to fame with his award-winning picture book series about a science-mad Black girl, Rocket, who dreams of being an astronaut. His books, including My Dad Is A Grizzly Bear and We’re Going to Find the Monster, often challenge and subvert stereotypes around social issues like race and gender. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, he masterminded a unprecedented picture bookproject featuring 18 Black illustrators. Hey You is “an empowering celebration of growing up Black”, reminding children that they stand on the shoulders of the great Black community that has come before us. In this interview, Dapo spills on everything from his unique creative processes and how the publishing industry mistreats its illustrators, to how he pulled off publishing an 18-illustrator picture book in under a year to the deliciously daring projects he’s got in the pipeline.

Jane: You were studying for a degree in graphic design when you realised, nearing the end, that you’re an illustrator. Why do you love illustration?

DAPO: I love illustration because you can do so much with it. There are many ideas and styles illustration lends itself to. Nothing gives me the opportunity to tell stories in this manner. Authors are going to get a little pissed with me for saying this, but illustration is better than writing because you can communicate so much more. There are graphic styles of illustration, but graphic design can be quite clinical, sometimes, in comparison to illustration. Illustration does things graphic design struggles to do. There are various styles of graphic design, but they all seem to observe set rules. With illustration, even though there are rules, they are there for breaking. Once you know them, you can just do away with them and do what you want. Illustration offers more room for expression as it communicates in all these wonderful, subtle, and sometimes in your face, ways. I absolutely love it.

Jane: In an interview with Creative Lives in Progress, you said: “the appeal of the characters I design tends to be in their personality, rather than their appearance.” Tell me more about the process of designing characters.

DAPO: I keep searching for ways to simplify the process. I’ve managed to boil it down to a series of descriptive words that sum up what the person looks like, what they might be into, and what kind of person they are. My most popular character is Rocket. When I designed her, Nathan—who’s the author of the series—gave me a four-phrase pitch: black girl, big hair, loves space, has glasses. I went away to think about what those words mean, and what kind of personality might fit within them. I based Rocket’s personality on one of my nieces, a very curious young girl. Rather than drawing an illustration that only shows you what a person looks like, like in fashion, I drew her in situ doing different things that express the kind of person she is. For example, there are illustrations of her with a cardboard box cut out into a rocket. There are illustrations of her strapping her little helmet on, about to get on her bike. There are illustrations of her getting into her space onesie. All these illustrations give you an idea of who this person is. That’s why she connected so well: everyone either knew the girl or had been the girl at some point growing up. Remember these drawings went out into the wild with no words. A lot of mums tell me they send pictures of Rocket to their daughters and their little girls relate to her.

Jane: We rarely get girls like her in books. Do you actively set out to change the narrative about us?

DAPO: The brief Nathan gave me was just those four phrases. I had to imagine everything else about Rocket. I asked myself, what would somebody who likes space be like? How does somebody who has big hair move? Then I start thinking about her complexion. There is colourism in our community, whether we want to address it or not. When making a character a certain complexion, I ask myself, why am I choosing to do so? It’s never just for the sake of it. If you look at her and at the other children in my books, I’ve managed to go as far across the spectrum of blackness as I possibly can, and there are still more tones and complexions to explore. That’s a conscious decision because we’re not monolithic in our appearance. Children should be able to see all the different types of black people that exist in this world through the literature they consume.

Rocket wears an orange jumpsuit, but many publishers requested we change it to blue because they didn’t think that the orange jumpsuit was as well known. Mae Jamison was one of the inspirations so I went with the orange one. Subconsciously, I’d also made the character gender-neutral, but I only realised later down the line. It was important for this character to connect with boys and girls, and she has done. The realm of space was, is, dominated by young white boys. To have a little black girl come into that space, she had to connect with everybody. It’s very much a thing I think about now when I’m designing characters. I try to make sure that, whether boy or girl, the colours that they wear are gender-neutral. You’ll never get me doing boys in blue and girls in pink. If I do, it’s a combination. There’s a character in My Dad is a Grizzly Bear who wears blue and pink.

Jane: Your open letter to the BCC on the importance of properly crediting illustrators and other visual artists was endorsed by nearly 1000 people. What are some concrete actions publishing can take to change its practices and give illustrators the credit they are due? 

DAPO: It really is as simple as crediting us. Give us the same amount of space on a cover as your writers, which is something I’ve been fortunate enough to have with nearly every author I’ve worked with. It’s a big deal. It’s absolutely a big deal. If you have a celebrity author, I understand why their name might be massive, but I don’t agree with it. I feel it’s in everyone’s best interest to share that platform equally. I’m working on an anthology featuring 20 black authors and 20 black illustrators. At the beginning of each story, it says written by and illustrated by. I said, how about we remove written by and illustrated by and just say told by? The illustrator is bringing the author’s words to life. Another thing to do is to make sure illustrators are mentioned in industry press, especially if it’s a picture book. No matter how popular the author is or how big their platform, you need to mention the illustrator. Even if it’s just the cover, there’s no harm in mentioning who illustrated the visual you’re sharing! 

That open letter resulted in the BBC introducing a clause into their morning show where if they’re showing anyone’s artwork, they will credit the person. There is a practice in publishing where illustrators are seen as pencils for hire. Your job is to illustrate what you’re told to illustrate. People will deny this to various degrees, but I’ve experienced it a little myself. I think books do better when illustrators are allowed to make contributions towards how the story is shaped. It should be seen as a collaboration. The mistreatment starts before the book is published in terms of how some of the contracts are structured. Some illustrators don’t get royalties for their books. In my eyes, there should never be a situation in which the author gets paid royalties and the illustrator doesn’t. With Hey You, I make sure that everybody who worked on the book receives royalties. That’s 18 illustrators all getting equity in the success of the book.

Jane: Hey You was partly created in response to the events of that BLM summer and features 18 Black illustrators. How did you make such a big project work in such a short span of time?
DAPO: I’m still asking myself the same question. Hey You was such a crazy project. First, the story was very urgent it didn’t take me that long to write (roughly about a month). I had also worked with that Puffin team on two other books previously. When I pitched the idea for Hey You, Joe, who’s my publisher, got it straight away. The first thing we had to do was select the illustrators. Then we broke the text into spreads and allocated each illustrator a spread based on their strengths. I suggested ideas for what the spread might look like, but we let them know we wanted as much of their input as possible. To further open things up, we made sure that the spreads and the characters weren’t gender-specific. We tied it all together and made sure that people are able to recognise who the lead character is in each spread through a sunflower pattern. Whoever is wearing the sunflower pattern in a spread is the main character.

I’m very, very proud of it. Man, it’s more than a book. Not only does it tell a story, but it also promotes the vast range of talent and styles in the diaspora. I’m very big on showing people that we’re not monolithic. I couldn’t possibly tell that story that I was trying to tell about the black experience by myself because that wouldn’t be the black experience, it would be my experience.

Jane: When not illustrating award-winning picture books like Look Up! and Clean Up!, you run workshops to highlight the possibilities of a career in illustration to black youth. What is the most important piece of advice you would give to Black illustrators starting out in this industry?
DAPO: Learn your craft, and I don’t just mean learn how to draw. Learn about what it means, the various things it can be applied to. Learn the industry, learn as much as you can about how things work. When your work goes out into the world, it’s going to be seen by many in places you’ve never been. I ask questions of my publicist, I ask questions of my editor, I ask questions of my designer. I’m constantly asking questions. Every time I learn something, I share it. Learn all these things as it’s in your best interest to learn them. If you’re going to become an illustrator, you’re going to be working for yourself as much as you’ll be working with big brands. You are your own business so learning the business side of things is a massive benefit. Learn about taxes and accounting.

Jane: Hey You is the first book you’ve both illustrated and written. Will you continue to write?

DAPO: Most definitely! Illustration will always be my thing but there are some stories that I really want to tell as an author. So far I’ve written a picture book text and contributed a short story to an anthology but I’d really like to test my abilities as a storyteller by tackling a middle grade series. I’m looking forward to finding out if I’ve got what it takes to tackle a narrative that’s 30K+ words in length.

Not only is writing something I want to do more of, but it’s something I feel you need to learn how to do if you want to be fully respected as a storyteller by publishers in this industry. There’s also a satisfaction to be found in working on your own stories. Hey You was a shared experience, which I don’t regret at all, but I think the next step is for me to experience what it’s like to write and illustrate my own stuff fully. I haven’t been writing for long. I’m more of a reader. I’m nervous because I think there’s going to be a lot of scrutiny around my upcoming novel attempts because of the visibility of my career to date. I’m hoping folks are gentle though because this is my first time writing over 2000 words for anything. I should be allowed to make a terrible book. We should be allowed to make books that don’t do so well.

Not many expected the level of our success in the pre-school sector and now everybody probably expects me to stay there. Going into middle-grade is an unexpected move for someone like me. Not a lot of people in the industry know me that well: they think it’s all rainbows and puppy dogs over here, so what’s coming next will probably surprise quite a few people, especially the readers.

DAPO ADEOLA is an award-winning illustrator and designer who creates characters and images that challenge expectations around race and gender in a fun and upbeat way. He is the co-creator and illustrator of bestselling picture book Look Up!, winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and the number 1 debut picture book of 2019. London born and bred but of Nigerian heritage, when he’s not busy cooking up new characters and adventures, you can find Dapo running illustration and character design workshops with children or organising events to help highlight the possibilities of a career in illustration to underrepresented members of the Black diaspora. Find him on Twitter and Instagram @dapsdraws.

JANE LINK is a master’s student and an editor for Split Lip Magazine, The Publishing Post, and her own beloved bigblackbooks. When not trying to land her first job in publishing, Jane loves to read historical fiction, self-help, and everything by Black voices. She dreams of one day setting up an independent dedicated to publishing those voices. Find her @verybookishjane on Twitter.