1. Could you talk about the process by which you create your books? Do you work with some kind of “bookplay” (as in “screenplay”)?

- In case of wordless picture books, there’s a “storyboard” which is equivalent to screenplay as you mentioned. But the difference is that there are no words but images. Some stories come to me as images first. And this visually motivated book starts from an image and ends with image through. For example, the idea of SHADOW comes from the shape of a book and the way book opens.  I came up with the story for Shadow while trying to create a third and last book of the same theme- The Border Trilogy. Once the images are gathered, the story finds its way by itself. If the storyboard flows well and if it is read well, I start working on original illustrations.

2. The three books published in Brazil (“Mirror”, “Wave” and “Shadow”) deal with feelings of discovery and learning. Why these themes are important to you?

Curiosity is the most distinct quality that children innately possess. And the children ferociously live in the present only and enter the border between reality and fantasy with no fear. Naturally, they learn everything by “experiences.” There’s absolutely no way to know unless you go over. Therefore, the girl in WAVE crosses over the border and get into the sea. What seems like a dream to grown-ups may be the moments of pressing reality to completely immersed children. As the child’s clothes in Wave slowly turn blue, the child grows and changes while playing and imagining.

3. In the city I live in, called Curitiba, there’s a beautiful bookstore just for children. The owner once told me that your books (we were talking about “Wave”) became very popular also between architects and designers, inside and outside of colleges. What do you think of that? How would you describe your readership?

All the books of the trilogy are classified “for all ages” -  I’d like to create a book with complex layers that can appeal to various readers. Children read my books as they wish, and I got a quite a number of emails from “grandfathers” who originally bought WAVE for their grandchildren, but found the dazzling sea of their youth in the book. Some people prefer to find more complicated things in my books- I tried to talk about subject of “a book about a book” in my trilogy books. My interest lies in the border as the physical center binding fold of the book, and at the same time, as the border between fantasy and reality. If somebody could appreciate the aesthetics and structure of my picture books, that would be happy for me as an artist.

 4. It seems that a picture book needs a different kind of approach. You don’t read a picture book in the way you read a novel, for example. How do you read a picture book?

When you read picture book, the first thing that grabs your eyes is the picture. You then read the text (if there’s any) or try to figure out the story through images in the wordless picture book. Your mind is busy gathering all the necessary information to assemble the puzzle to make the narrative proceed. You have to open all the senses when you read picture books. The accumulated clues give you the great story as rewards. In a good picture book, a story and the way it is expressed are closely connected like a well-woven suit that its outer cloth and inner cloth cannot be distinguished. In that case, the reader can just enjoy and ‘feel’ the picture books.

5. Do have a theory to explain the tremendous success of “Wave”?

Tremendous success, was it? Thank you.

I don’t know if I can provide a theory, but I can tell you a story. I was invited in Brazil for a book fair by the publisher last year. The publisher got my hotel in Copacabana beach and the next morning when I faced the sea, I thought I found some reasons why WAVE was well accepted in Brazil. The huge but beautiful wave in my book was just my imagination but it was real in Copacabana! Then also I could understand the story that one of my editors told me about his friend’s daughter, who was afraid of big waves. She now loves to visit the seaside and play well with waves, he said, thanks to my book! J

6. Why you make an effort to write the titles of “Shadow” and “Wave” in other languages?

Do you mean that why I did handwriting the title script? If it is the question,

I wanted to express the rolling of the waves in the title script of Wave, so I used my own handwriting. Wave has been translated into many different languages and it was also interesting to match the handwriting to each language. I thought if the title is handwritten, the letter becomes an image as well- a “wave” itself, and it suits well for a wordless picture book.