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Island of Whispers

The Brilliance of Emily

Island of Whispers is the first book that I’ve created in collaboration with an illustrator… and I got very, very lucky with my illustrator.

Emily Gravett is an amazing artist, and has won the Kate Greenaway Medal twice. In Island of Whispers she took a very simple range of colours (black, white and moody blue) and created beautiful, atmospheric pictures like this.

Isn’t that gorgeous?

But her ability to create stunning images isn’t the only reason I’m so glad to be working with her. It’s the way her illustrations bring out the heart of the story.

Let me give you an example.

At the start of the story, a teenage girl named Gabrielle has died. Her shoes are brought to the Ferryman by her mother, so that he can look after them. Through the window, the Ferryman’s youngest son Milo can see the distraught mother hurrying away down a white path set aside for the living. But on a grey path laid down for the Dead, he can also glimpse the indistinct figure of the dead girl’s ghost, irresistibly drawn towards the house by the pull of her own shoes…

There are lots of images Emily could have drawn here. She could have shown the Ferryman’s cottage, or Milo peering through the window, or the hazy, eerie image of the ghost girl Gabrielle from Milo’s point of view.

But what Emily actually drew was this:

And as soon as I saw it, I thought… oh. Oh, of course.

The mother is departing along one path, the daughter is arriving by another… which means that the two will pass each other. Gabrielle’s mother has no idea that she has just hurried past her dead daughter, because she can’t see her.

What’s more, she mustn’t see her. If a living person sees a ghost too clearly, that might cause them to sicken and die. So poor Gabrielle can’t risk attracting her mother’s attention. She’s alone, cold and anguished, but she can’t call out to the person that loves her most. All she can do is give her mother a quick, sad, furtive glance as they pass.

That’s the moment Emily decided to capture. It’s a picture that becomes more powerful the longer you think about it.

A good illustrator can create beautiful artwork. But a great illustrator like Emily also knows exactly what to draw.