FLR: Bailey, with its effective use of humorous thought bubbles, brings to mind your Luke on the Loose from Toon Books. Do you find much difference between creating graphic novels for children and creating picture books? Do you think picture books and early readers incorporating design elements from cartooning and graphic novels as hybrids is a growing trend? Why do you think these types of titles resonate so well with today’s children? Do you have any plans to create more books like Luke on the Loose?

HB: Yes, graphic novels or comics as I refer to them, are considered differently than picture books. Essentially, comics have more visual devices available for storytelling - thought balloons, narrative boxes, panels, graphic icons, etc. Generally, picture books move a bit quicker than comics.

Not sure if there is a trend incorporating comic language into traditional picture books. I only fuse comic sensibilities into my books if it feels necessary to move the story along or develop the characters. I really don’t pay attention to trends. That said – I do feel comics are a terrific way to aid early readers – it worked for me as a kid.

Comic devices in picture books work well because kids enjoy comics. I feel it’s a visceral thing when kids spot a comic from across the room; they’re drawn to the look of the form, to the way the story is broken down, or paced according to the panel time. It’s actually very sophisticated and I’ve often thought of how ridiculous critics of the form sound when they speak disparagingly about, say Tintin, which is a marvelous example of just how complex popular comics can be.

FLR: What was it like for you to see Luke on the Loose performed by Brooklyn school children?

HB: I loved seeing Luke performed. It’s always such a treat to see your stories reach beyond the book format and stretch out to effect as many kids as possible and they did a great job too.

FLR: Bailey is the second children’s book that you wrote and illustrated, though you have been the illustrator for many books by other people. Why did you decide to start writing? Do you start with the story or with the illustrations?

HB: I’ve always been reluctant to write my own children’s book because my agent keeps sending me such great manuscripts from the likes of Sharon Creech, Doreen Cronin, Kate DiCamillo and many others. I had no need to write my own when paired up with this caliber of talent. Regarding Bailey: for may years dogs have appeared in my daily strip ’Bliss’ and fans love the dog I seem to gravitate to visually, a hybrid of an anthropomorphized Labrador and me. So, my agent and David Saylor at Scholastic asked me to develop a dog for a book. Seemed like a no-brainer.

I began Bailey visually first, in pictures and not words and this was the first time I’d worked this way. I did a book with William Steig called Which Would You Rather Be? And for that book I sort of worked visually, but not as much as with Bailey.

FLR: Who is the model for Bailey? Did he start as a recurring character in your adult cartoons? Will there be more adventures with him?

HB: As I’d mentioned, Bailey is a dog I’d developed first in my daily cartoon. I have a dog, Penny and I love dogs, and all animals really, so much of the personality of Bailey comes from Penny…and Woody Allen. I’m currently working on a new Bailey book where Bailey and his schoolmates go on a field trip to the Natural History museum…many bone jokes.

FLR: What is your favorite illustration style out of all that you have worked with: book covers, magazine covers, cartoons, graphic novels, or children’s picture books? Is there a particular audience you would prefer to work for?

HB: I really am fortunate to have different visual venues to work - comics, The New Yorker, children’s books. I enjoy them all. If I don’t feel like drawing my panel one day, I can take a day off and work on a kids’ book or a New Yorker cover…or blow off all the work and sit around the house and watch the Red Sox with Penny.

FLR: How does the job for illustrating a novel go, as you did for Emily Jenkins’s Invisible Inkling? Are you asked to provide a certain number of illustrations, and you then decide which aspects of the story to include and where they are distributed, or are you given the text with picture “slots” already chosen? How does this differ from picture book illustration for a text written by someone else? At what point is the text broken across all the pages and who has the most say over this process?

HB: For Invisible Inkling, I’d specifically asked my terrific editor Donna Bray at Harper to indicate which parts of the manuscript she wanted me to visually enhance - this is the first time I’d asked any editor to do this for me and it made the process much easier…less work for me!

FLR: How did your collaboration with Doreen Cronin on the Diary of… books come about? What have you learned from those experiences?

HB: I first learned of Doreen Cronin when I stumbled across her first book for children Click Clack Moo…this book knocked me out, so clever and well done. I immediately called my agent and told her to look at this book. About a year later I’d met Doreen at a Party in NYC and we discussed working together and a year later we teamed up with the amazing Joanna Cotler at Harper and the rest is, as they say, history. I am very proud of the Bug Diary trilogy. These were books stirrer, roughly at the same time, so this was not a situation where we made a lot of money off the first book and decided to make more. When I signed on for Worm, I signed on for all three books, a seven year project. These books were very thoughtfully considered. We began with a Worm, which digs in the earth, moved to a spider that can catch the wind and finished with a fly which moves about in the atmosphere. We went from the earth to the air and when kids learn about small beings, much like themselves, they begin to respect what they had once taken for granted and this is a wonderful thing. I personally have found a new love for spiders. I have a few large ones in my garage in northern Vermont. Occasionally, I feed the spiders…dead flies, but I swear the flies are already dead when I drop them into the web!

FLR: How do you find inspiration for a daily comic? Did you have a favorite comic strip you always read as you were growing up? Was there a particular cartoonist that greatly inspired you early on in your career? Who are your influences as a writer?

HB: My ideas for my cartoons come from my life. I will hear someone say something say something, like "we look good on paper" and then I’ll think, what kind of paper? Hmmm, is there a female fish at a party talking to her friends about her ex husband and she says " Barry and I looked good on parchment paper…" funny? No, well - I tried. But you see how my process works, no? When I sit down to cartoon I bring all my experiences to the moment, so there is a well of possible ideas to draw from. If this doesn’t work, I simply draw something, a couple out to dinner and then I email this drawing to Kate DiCamillo to write a caption (she’s written a few captions for me, quite good).

I have sooooo many artists and writers who inspire me, too many to name. But a few are: Charles Schulz, Charles Addams, Lucian Freud, Andrew Wyeth, Frank Frazetta, JD Salinger, William Steig, Maurice Sendak, Lautrec, Frankenstein’s monster, Godzilla, Billy Wilder, The film Jaws, any of the Old Wives Tales - all hilarious, Christopher Guest, Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid Newkirk, E.B. White, James Thurber, P.G. Wodehouse, Alice Neel, my dog Penny…wait, she’s not a writer or an artist…sorry.

I always say, if I wasn’t for art, I’d be incarcerated…

FLR: Do you think that coming from a family of artists and illustrators made your career easier or more pressured? If you had been the family “rebel,” would you have chosen a different occupation or form of expression?

HB:I had a great deal of support from my artistic family. Art always seemed like a wonderful way to escape whatever turmoil was in my life, turn it around on paper and invent a new fate for me or whatever. There is great control in creating, and when I was young, I needed control because my life off the drawing table was out of control…I’d elaborate on this more, but I may alienate a few librarians, so…

I’d love, love, love to be a musician. I adore the abstract quality of sound, always have and music really speaks to me creatively. I play drums pretty well, was in a band for a while when I was in my twenties…I’d elaborate on this more but I may alienate more librarians…

FLR: Any hints about upcoming work?

HB: I’m currently working on the next Invisible Inkling book. Emily Jenkins is such a gifted writer and the second book in this series is just great. It’s called Dangerous Pumpkins, due out next year. In addition, I’m working on the next Bailey book for David Saylor at Scholastic and it’s hilarious, dare I say ’genius’? Finally, I’m working with my therapist, Mark on being more open-minded in my relationships, ya know? Like, last week, I was at a supermarket and some woman smashed into me with her cart, didn’t even say she was sorry, and I’d recalled in that moment an incident when I was four or five when my father, no wait, it was my mother who yelled at me and…I’m sorry, I’m getting emotional…do you have a tissue?

Browse our list for Harry Bliss.