An epiphany (of sorts)

I often tell authors of picture books to leave room in their manuscript for the illustrator to tell an equal part of the story (and perhaps even add more), and in turn, I tell illustrators to not just illustrate exactly what's happening in the text. Out of the blue today, a great example of this came to me (and perhaps it's really obvious, but it felt genius to me): commercials, epecially pharmaceutical commercials.

You know how they tell this amazing story of running through fields and being in side-to-side bathtubs with your partner and being attractive but not intimidatingly so, and you are captivated by it and start to get convinced that that drug would give you that kind of life, even though you don't even need that drug and even though you're very aware that the announcer is telling all these horrible side effects at the same time? Talk about successful synergy. That's kind of like what a picture book should be like--the illustrations should add to the story, and make it even fuller, and it's not up to the text to tell the whole story, because then it's not as moving.

Now, I'm not saying you should have a horrible, depressing text or that your picture book should be used to manipulate people (no offense to anyone in the advertising and/or pharm industries), but I still like my example. And yes, maybe it could work with any commercial or even a movie, but I just think those sneaky pharm ads are so darn smart in achieving their goals. What do you think?

- L'Editrice