Although not a trained artist, Reif felt it was important to draw T.S.’s illustrations himself. With art in his blood—both of Reif’s parents are visual artists—this task wasn’t such a stretch. He collaborated with Ben Gibson,
who, Reif says, “whipped the drawings into shape,” and made them feel more textured.
Photo credit: Elliott Holt
“People will ask, ‘Did you set out to create a book with pictures and break the boundaries of novels?’ and the answer is no. The character informed all the illustrations. I knew the book would take on a weird, field guide feel, but I didn’t know how it would look. I was nearly at the end of a full draft before I realized that in order to understand this kid, we needed to see his maps. His maps are where he’s most comfortable, and most vulnerable.”
Reif Larsen ’98
The pictorial magic of T.S. Spivet means that it doesn’t translate well to Kindle or audiobook. Reif and his publishers at Penguin knew, however, that T.S. Spivet would need its own new-media format. T.S. Spivet’s Web site, which Reif describes as a sort of Joseph Cornell cabinet, is brimming with extra content that opens up new details of each character’s life. “Web sites are a new feature of publishing that we’ll begin to see more. Books will start talking to media in new ways; we’ll begin to see rich dialogue between a book and its Web site, or a book and its
“Web sites are a new feature of publishing that we’ll begin to see more. Books will start talking to media in new ways; we’ll begin to see rich dialogue between a book and its Web site, or a book and its trailer. And while there’s a lot of room for innovation there, the Web offers a challenge for storytellers because it’s 40,000 miles wide and an inch deep.”
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Milton Magazine