Julie Morstad is an author and illustrator of numerous children’s books, including House of Dreams: The Life of L.M. Montgomery, Bloom: A Story of Fashion Designer Elsa Schiaparelli, and When I Was Small. The Vancouver-based creator won the 2022 Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award for her solo project Time Is a Flower, which was also a finalist for the 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award for Young People’s Literature. Her latest picture book, A Face Is a Poem (Tundra Books, out now), explores Morstad’s fascination with faces.  

What sparked your interest in illustration?
When I was about 12 years old, my aunt and uncle gave me The Art of Illustration for Advertising for Christmas, which depicted art nouveau. I was like, “illustration, wow, that’s an amazing thing to do.” Around the same time, my little cousin was born, and I had illustrated The Child’s Garden of Verses for her as a Christmas present. My dad had it laminated. So, I feel that was kind of when I started to think about illustration as something you can do. When I had my first child, it was a way for me to stay connected with art even while I was raising a kid. I was a single mother with this little kid, and I was going to art school, so our biggest entertainment was going to the library. We would often get books from the discard pile, and there were always so many good mid-century works, like books by Margaret Wise Brown and Maurice Sendak. That introduced me to a lot of illustrators and writers that I probably saw as a kid but didn’t remember. I got really interested in the history of illustration and children’s books, and, of course, just enjoying them with my son informed a lot of what I did at art school. Even though I wasn’t necessarily making books, a lot of my art was sort of fairy-tale inspired. 

It sounds like from the outset a part of you always knew you wanted to illustrate children’s books. 
I always wanted to be in art and design. I thought I might be a fashion designer. Actually, in art school I did a textile degree, and I would make one-off pieces on the side, which I sold to shops across Canada. I had a few different interests, but illustration and figurative drawing anchored all of it. 

Who or what has been a major influence on your illustrating style?
It’s definitely been a mixture of different things. A lot of 20th-century art forms my foundation, such as Gyo Fujikawa, Maurice Sendak, Leonard Weisgard – there’s really so many. 

As an author/illustrator, what comes first, the story or the art?
When I’m working on my own books, I start with an idea more than images, which is interesting because I’m usually an image-based person. But when I think about ideas I’d like to illustrate, it tends to be more like a concept I want to investigate and invite a child to investigate with me. The images tend to come quickly afterwards. 

Do you recall what inspired A Face Is a Poem?
I just love people’s faces. I’m sort of obsessed to the point people think I’m staring, but I just love looking at human faces and animal faces, but human faces in particular. I love seeing how a mother, a parent, or siblings look like each other. It fascinates me, and I think it’s something so important to us as humans because it’s how we see each other. And it’s also such an everyday thing. I’m interested in ideas that are right in front of you, but you want to take a deeper look.

What is your medium of choice?
I really like watercolour and ink, and I usually have a strong line in my work whether it’s with pencil or ink. I do tend to mix up the way I work from book to book. I don’t have a specific set of tools that I use; it’s more an exploration, depending on what I think the book wants. With A Face Is a Poem, because there’s so much difference and variety in faces, it made sense to have a variety of ways to draw or handle them.  

What do you do to nurture your passion for illustration?
I read a lot. I like to have something on the go that’s creative aside from my illustration practice. So, last year, I started learning how to knit, and I’m trying to relearn some dyeing techniques that I learned a bit in art school. 

Have any of the things you’ve done on the side found their way into your books? 
I started making watercolour paints a couple years ago, mixing the paint and making palettes. I would make palettes for my friends, naming the colours so they had a specific meaning for each person’s personality. I really got into making so much paint that I used it in my drawings, paintings, and illustrations. 

What do you hope young readers will take away from A Face Is a Poem?
It’s an invitation to look closer and to notice. Notice things that you love. I prefer my books to be more of an invitation to think about things rather than a message to take home. I think noticing is probably one of the most important things we can do, and it’s a big part of being a creative person, being a caring person. 

If you could illustrate any classic children’s book, which would it be, and why?
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland would be so fun because there’s so much you could do!

Read Q+As with Salini Perera and Bridget George.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Correction, October 28: This story has been updated to reflect Morstad was referring to Gyo Fujikawa not Fujikasa Satoko.