About a month ago we spent a week explaining to our readers why we decided to embark on this crazy journey of starting a bilingual publishing company. We spent much of the Making of Bilingual Readers Week talking about how we came up with the idea for each one of our launch products and why we think they’ll be useful for bilingual families, libraries and classrooms alike. We posted about how children’s books are made to give you  insight into the complex world of children’s book publishing and explain how an intangible idea can be turned into a really cool physical book. We received such a positive response from those posts that we decided to make the “Making of” a regular feature for all new books in our catalogue. So welcome to The Making of Marina and the Little Green Boy/Marina y el niño verde!!!

Many of you know that our first bilingual picture book, Marina and the Little Green Boy/Marina y el niño verde, will be making its way onto the shelves of bookstores all over Spain  this week. This fun little book is the first title in a series about a little girl named Marina who becomes friends with an alien boy who appears in her attic one night. The little green boy knows nothing of Marina’s world so she gets to teach him all about his new home. Yet Marina and her family will also learn a lot from the little green boy in the process.

Picture books are a staple of most children’s book publishers and Bilingual Readers is no exception. This traditional format is a great way of showcasing the classic formula: a well told story + awesome illustrations = an amazing kid’s book. But, like usual, what on the surface appears to be a simple, clear cut and easy to make product is actually the fruit of a lot of hard work and planning involving a team of authors, illustrators, editors and graphic designers.

Like all children’s books, the Marina series started with a fairly simple idea. When we envisioned our first line of products, we knew we wanted to develop a series of characters small children could relate to. Our target audience is just beginning to discover the world, so we thought it would be cool for them to share their first experiences with characters who were having similar experiences at the same time. Because these books were always meant to be a series, the general lines of the entire story would need to be drawn up from the very beginning. We would need a long term commitment from the author and illustrator of this series, which is not always an easy task.

Our first step in making this series a reality was to contact illustrator Miguel Ordóñez. We really love his distinctive style and had been hoping to entice him to get involved with Bilingual Readers for a while. We met over coffee to pitch our idea and were thrilled to see his ethusiasm for the project. The next step was to find an author to develop the story line and Miguel was quick to suggest one of the authors we already had in mind for this project, Antonio Vicente. The relationship between author and illustrator in a long term project like this can be very delicate, so it was especially comforting for us to know that Miguel and Antonio had worked well together previously for other publishers. They also happen to be childhood friends, which seemed especially fitting for a series of books about friendship!

Antonio sent us a draft of the first book and an outline for the entire series, with all sorts of hilarious scenes in which the little green boy learns about life on Earth. We were especially impressed by the underlying themes of tolerance and social integration in this book. It’s amazing what small children are able to understand if it is explained to them in a clear and simple way, and Antonio has a true gift for explaining how easy and fun it can be to make friends with someone who is different from you.

Miguel also sent us sketches of the main characters and a few scenes from the book, and it was amazing to see how well his illustrations made the story come alive. He spent several months developing the characters and mapping out each scene from the book one by one. Miguel is also doing the graphic design and layout for this series, so when he sent us the first drafts of the full book layout Marina and the Little Green Boy/Marina y el niño verde already looked much like it does today. During the translation and editing process we read and reread the text time and time again in both languages. We read to ourselves, out loud to others, did all the voices and slashed and tweaked the text here and there. The finished product is a really cool book we hope you’ll love as much as we do!