The book -- that arrangement of pages whose power we have been exploring is not something that simply happens, of course. It is something that is made. Eventually, as has already been noted, the book needs a publisher to order its format, arrange its printing; and the publisher needs a distribution network, bookstores, to ensure that it is sold (if it is not sold how will it ever get into the hands of its readers, how will it do its job?). The making begins, however, far away from all that -- quietly in the mind and heart and spirit of someone who is prepared to form the pictures, set down the words.
But who are these "someones" -- our writers and illustrators, book magicians? What sort of people will pick up a newspaper, as Monica Hughes did, and wonder about a boy in an article and out of the wondering create a planet called Isis for a girl to live on; will spin a saga of disaster from the hatred of a snowsuit, as Robert Munsch did; or like Daniel Sernine, author of Ludovic, grow characters, events and places for whole new adventures out of some totally other reading? Where do they come from, these dreamers and shapers who will focus their attention not on adults but on kids?
In a way, the answers to these questions are as many and various as the names of our authors and illustrators themselves (and the list is a long one now). Ginette Anfousse, creator of Mon ami Pichou, has suggested that there is a writer lying in wait within each reader. Certainly, it is true that many children's writers will describe themselves as being avid devourers of books from early youth. But then there are also those like Ann Blades who said in a letter to exhibition researchers: "I was a tomboy and loved being outside. I think my parents found it hard to get me to sit still long enough to read."
Often it has been asserted that authors and artists are "born". The story of Suzanne Martel and Monique Corriveau lying in bed as children and inventing their "family in the wall", filling scribbler after scribbler, or of Suzanne Duranceau taking up anything and everything (even the cardboard shirt stiffeners) for her drawings, would serve to substantiate this theory. So would the miracle of Gordon Korman's grade seven creative writing assignment. Except . . . that we can search among the photos and find Tony German, author of the Tom Penny series, and know he was close to retirement and needed a suggestion from his own children to get him to set his stories down.
There are common denominators, however, only they lie deeper. The first is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by that story of the newspaper article and the planet Isis. It is also there in the making of Ludovic and Thomas' Snowsuit as well as in Cécile Gagnon's contention that a children's writer must be willing to lie and watch the ants. This common denominator involves a certain awareness of possibilities, an attention to the minutiae of what is happening, a very particular intensity of interest in the life that is around.
 
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