Interview with Josh Holinaty

Today we’re speaking with the amazing Josh Holinaty! Josh is an illustrator who has done work for The New York Times, Wired and The Walrus. He’s also illustrated a bunch of children’s books including Liam Takes a Stand by Troy Wilson and A Beginner's Guide to Immortality: From Alchemy to Avatars by Maria Birmingham. And Josh is also the illustrator of Ira Crumb Makes a Pretty Good Friend!!!

Josh is an incredible illustrator. His work is sophisticated, energetic and fun. And it’s also hilarious! Josh has a keen sense of what will appeal the most to kids—Ira Crumb Makes a Pretty Good Friend is packed with little details like adorable boogers and escaping sandwiches.

In this interview, we talk with Josh about what he likes about illustrating books for children, what his favourite books were when he was a child, and which character he identifies the most with in our book. Let’s talk to Josh!

Naseem Hrab:

You’ve done editorial work for The New York Times, Wired and The Walrus and your work has appeared on posters, walls and, most recently, coffee cups! SO COOL. Why illustrate books for kids? What do you like the most about illustrating books for kids?

Josh Holinaty:

It is SO COOL!—and I feel incredibly lucky to be able to do it for a living! During the span of my career as an illustrator, the majority of my work has come in the form of editorial illustration (work for magazines, etc.) or other smaller projects such as posters or, yes, coffee cups. These projects are fun, but they have pretty quick turnarounds and usually last only a couple weeks at most. Kids’ books on the other hand last a few months, so it’s a nice switch of pace compared to the majority of my work. It’s nice to slowly work away on a larger project such as a kids’ book and really flesh it out!

NH:

Who were some of your favourite children’s book writers and illustrators when you were a kid?

JH:

When I was a kid there were a few books that I loved. One of my all-time favourites would be The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, written by Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Lane Smith. The illustrations are rather ’90s in nature when I look back at them, but I love the ’90s, so that means they are timeless in my eyes.

I loved the Robert Munsch books as a kid too—especially David’s Father, illustrated by Michael Martchenko. I also love illustrations that play with a sense of scale, and there’s plenty of it to be seen in David’s Father, a story about a giant.

Oh, and of course I have a huge soft spot for any and all of Hergé’s The Adventures of Tin Tin.

NH:

Ira Crumb Makes a Pretty Good Friend is filled with a ton of hilarious visual gags. One of my favourites is the sandwich who escapes from Ira’s lunch bag. (Phewf! He lives!) What inspires and informs your work specifically when it comes to humour? 

JH:      

It’s hard to dial in where the sense of humour comes from. Sometimes the gags sort of write—err, draw—themselves as I sketch out the book. It can be a pretty random little process and honestly things sort of happen without my full intention. I find that a funny idea can multiply pretty quickly, and I think that’s what happened with the sandwich who escapes Ira’s lunch bag. You wrote a talking sandwich into the manuscript, and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice to see more sandwiches doing their silly sandwichy things?”

NH:

Consider the different characters in Ira Crumb Makes a Pretty Good Friend. Would you describe yourself as being more like Ira, Malcolm, Phillip the Sandwich or the Old Man?

JH:

Haha, these days I think I’m becoming the Old Man. I used to get pretty hung up on things like Ira, but with a bit of life experience under my belt, all I want is that sandwich.

NH:

Fart jokes in children’s literature: Yea or nay?

JH:

200% yea. It’s the real universal language.