Pavonis Giron on A RAINBOW IN BROWN

Let's celebrate a debut book with a debut interview series!

Happy book birthday to A RAINBOW IN BROWN, my wonderful client Pavonis Giron's publishing debut! To celebrate, Pav and I hopped on a call to look back on their submission journey, how tie-dye inspired this story and the technique they used to create the illustrations, and lots more.

I originally intended for this interview to be around 15 minutes, but I have no interview skills (yet??), and time flies talking to Pav, so it wound up being twice that long! What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

You can also listen to the full, uncut recording of our call in the voiceover.

I hope you enjoy this chat as much as I did!

The creator and their debut book! [credit: Ira Erickson]

Jessica Saint Jean: Hi Pav! Thank you so much for joining me to talk about A RAINBOW IN BROWN. I'm so excited that this book is out in the world.

This is my first time ever interviewing someone, and one of my first posts for the new substack. And A RAINBOW IN BROWN is your first book! 

Pavonis Giron: This is also my first interview! So it'll be a learning thing for both of us.

Jessica: We'll figure it out as we go along. I really appreciate you joining me on my new substack adventure.

Pavonis: Thank you for having me.

Jessica: To start, do you want to give us an elevator pitch for A RAINBOW IN BROWN? 

Pavonis: A RAINBOW IN BROWN follows a young girl, Jo, as she searches for her favorite color in art class – but she can't decide. She's got all these colors on her palette and every single one of them seems to be her favorite. Right up until the moment where she finds out she doesn't really have to choose at all. They can all become one color that shows a lot of nuance and kind of encapsulates everything that she loves all in one. It's about finding something that you love through experimentation and potentially mistakes, and enjoying that process and the outcome as well.

Jessica: I also love that this book is celebrating a color that I think a lot of kids maybe have some negative feelings about. I love that you flip the script on that and show that some things we don't think of as nice are actually really beautiful if we think about them in a slightly different way.

Pavonis: Yeah, that was a huge motivator in wanting to pursue this story. Because I do think brown is a really beautiful color.

Jessica: I do too! All right. Let's talk a little bit about your submission journey to kick us off. It's been a couple of years since we were on sub for this book and I'm curious about how you reflect on that time now. And the way that this book sold isn't really the typical submission narrative. So I think maybe some other people will be interested to hear how it all came together.

I'll summarize it briefly: the first story we sent out was actually another book you wrote called ANGEL DISCOVERS HIS ART. It was on submission for about nine months. And in that time you did two R&Rs – which means "revise and resubmit" – that's when an editor really likes a story but wants the author to make some changes before they continue to bring it through the acquisitions process. And you also did a really smart thing, and you wrote another story, A RAINBOW IN BROWN. We shared RAINBOW with a select group of editors… and you ended up doing an R&R for that book, too. So in the course of this crazy nine months – your first time on submission – you're doing all these revise and resubmits.

The editor who worked with you on the R&R for RAINBOW was so lovely and gave you really good notes, but it didn't end up coming together with her. Of course, the story ends happily because ultimately we wound up selling RAINBOW, ANGEL, and a third untitled book to Jess Harold at Holt Macmillan. Jess was a huge fan of your work from the moment she saw it. So I think it all came together beautifully. 

But I wonder how you were feeling throughout the course of that nine months when you look back on it now? To me, outwardly, you seemed cool as a cucumber. You're rolling with everything, you're flexible, you're optimistic. But I'm wondering if you could walk us through your emotions during that time.

Pavonis: This is such a memory blast because I feel like this journey started in 2020 in pandemic lockdown. I was working on the untitled book and I felt really passionate about that one. And as you were saying, that one got revised, and then I was working on ANGEL DISCOVERS HIS ART which also went back into revisions. But I think starting with that untitled one and then having to pivot into ANGEL was the first step in realizing this is going to be a little bit more of a process than I might have expected originally. 

And this wasn't my first time trying to dip my toes into authoring and illustrating a children's book. I had tried a few years in the past and didn't really know exactly how to reach out to even an agent at that time. So there was also a little bit of patience involved in that too. I feel like that was the biggest takeaway, patience. 

I remember early on in our relationship you had said ‘don't quit your day job’ because it's probably going to be some time before you even get to the point of making books your day job. 

Jessica: Yeah.

Pavonis: So I had a day job! And then I started going back to school as well. I had both of these things to keep my mind occupied while I was working on this. You kind of switch gears during that waiting period, so that anxiety of, Do they like it? Are we going to progress with this? Is someone going to pick this up? That is alleviated. If I didn't have either of those things, I do think that it would have been a bit different as far as my emotional state goes.

Jessica: I guess one of the positive things about doing all of those R&Rs is that you are in perpetual motion. Glass half empty is, Here we go again. But glass half full is, I'm getting more feedback. I have another action step to move this forward. It feels tangible. It's concrete. And I think you also created that momentum for yourself when you started working on another story. ANGEL was out of our control while we were waiting for feedback, but you manifested something for yourself. You were like, Okay, on to the next thing. I'm going to work on the next book.

I think that you actually strengthened your pitch when we had both of these really lovely stories together. Getting a three book deal is pretty tough in the market right now, and you were able to do that. And I wonder if that's because seeing both RAINBOW and ANGEL helped editors view the long relationship that they could have with you as a creator.

Pavonis: Yeah, I do feel like the three stories really evolved hand in hand and it wasn't quite the expectation. I thought that A RAINBOW IN BROWN was going to go in a completely different direction from my first inception of the idea. So I do think that being able to bounce between those – especially the third untitled story – did help inform it to a degree.

Jessica: That's a really excellent segue, because one of the questions I wanted to ask you was if you thought the process of developing the other books – ANGEL and the untitled book that we worked on first – informed you creating RAINBOW and revising it during the course of those R&Rs that we did.

Pavonis: Originally the start of RAINBOW was almost like a scavenger hunt. It was a character that’s out exploring, and the environment is the storytelling factor and the draw. And it was starting off from that point of what we had mentioned earlier – of calling attention to the beautiful things that surround us that are brown. And sometimes how we overlook them.

You hear the saying brown is beautiful. And we use that when we talk about people primarily. Our hair, our skin, our eye color. Being brunette and having brown eyes, that was something that I experienced my entire life. 

But we don't think about it as much when it comes to the things that are around us. Animals or gemstones or parts of the natural world. And I think that that's something that's really important when we think about brown in another context. I wanted to encourage people to embrace that mentality. It's not just beautiful in one instance, it's beautiful in all of them. And there's so much nuance and so much that you can enjoy in that.

So working on the other books and the feedback from you and everyone that we had spoken to throughout this process really helped RAINBOW evolve from something that was environmentally based to something that was a lot more personal.

I remembered seeing kids trying paint and making the color brown over and over again. That was something that clicked in my mind and all of a sudden these two ideas – kids working with the color brown, and seeing it out in your environment – they just came together. It was magnetic. So I think that that really helped push the story of A RAINBOW IN BROWN forward.

Jessica: I love that. You've mentioned to me that real-life inspiration from teaching art to kids and how it inspired A RAINBOW IN BROWN. And I think that's probably why the story feels so authentic to kid-logic and kid-behavior.

Pavonis: My time teaching art to kids was at a summer camp. I was helping to facilitate activities that the kids would do while they were at camp. So it wasn't always about the art teaching process as much as it was doing a fun and engaging activity that kids could really find enjoyment in. And then at the end of their trip have something that they could cherish and enjoy that has all their memories in it. And one of the things that’s big I'm sure across all camps is tie-dye.

Every single session of camp, every single week and sometimes on the weekends, we would be doing tie-dye with kids. And especially with the younger kids, they've got a bottle of every single color in front of them.

The breathtaking illustration for the jackett/case cover of A RAINBOW IN BROWN. Could this illustration be my favorite of the favorites?!

Jessica: Maximalist tie-dye design.

Pavonis: Yes! There was a little bit of encouragement that you were to limit yourself to only a couple of colors, because you didn't want the children to experience when they unfurled their beautiful tie-dye T-shirt, these muddy colors. 

And I remember that myself and a couple of the other staff members were the most excited by the ones where all the kids went wild with all the colors. Where they could just not stop themselves from grabbing every single one and pairing the green with the orange and the purple with the yellow. And if you're not familiar with color theory, once you read this book, maybe it will help you out, but those colors make brown. And on tie-dye you get to see all of these nuances in the color. So it's not just like you've got a solid dyed brown shirt. You've got all of these mottled, beautiful shades. It's like looking at a forest floor. Being able to pick out a leaf that has a reddish tone in it versus a piece of moss that's a little bit more green but still has the natural neutral brown tones.

So I thought that those shirts were so beautiful, and it felt like a shame to try to encourage kids to limit that in order for them to have these solid bright colors. When it was a little bit more fun to find where those colors mixed and became something that was really interesting to look at and really nuanced. And I thought that it was nicer to encourage the kids to see that and appreciate what we might otherwise call flaws in their work. To be able to appreciate that and be able to see that this is something that is completely unique to what you've created. And look at how much beauty there is in all of these areas where these colors have overlapped.

Jessica: Did you find that the kids themselves would be driving a little bit of disappointment in that mottled brown, or do you think that was more us as adults projecting? Because one of the things I love is that in your book, Josephine herself is the one who discovers that she loves the brown after the paint palette incident.

Pavonis: I do not remember a single instance of a child being really upset with the colors that they had come out with. So I think that it was for the most part on the staff and that is kind of why I wanted this to be Jo's journey. I wanted her to be the one to make those decisions and to have the freedom to explore what she did and didn’t like. I didn't want to have a lot of external input for her muddying that.

Jessica: Let's talk a little bit about the technique that you used to illustrate the book. Because before you started working on RAINBOW, your children's portfolio was mostly illustrations that you created digitally. But you decided to go in a different direction for this book. Can you tell us a little bit about your process and the technique that you used for the illustrations? And why you decided to push yourself in that direction when you're creating the art for RAINBOW? 

Pavonis: Yeah, so the answer to this is pretty multifaceted. There was a part of me that was not as interested in the idea of sitting in front of my computer and not being able to look at the piece in different lighting and just kind of like being very stationary –

Jessica: Such a 2021 mood…

Pavonis: Yeah, and also there was a part of it that was really technical where I was like, my tablet that I used for digital art is about six by four inches. And I wanted to be illustrating a little bit larger than that. So didn't really want to be sitting at a computer and working on my tablet so much.

And I was also at the same time revisiting a lot of the books that I really enjoyed growing up, or a lot of the books that I would see on the shelves going into bookstores. And the things that I'm finding that really have stayed with me from my childhood, and the things that I’m most excited about when I'm seeing them on the shelves that are being published currently, are books that are done in traditional art mediums. And I feel like that has really grown a lot. I have a couple of books on my shelves now that are made with plasticine clay and photographs which is amazing to me. Or little shadow cutouts and stuff like that. There's so much that people are doing, but especially looking at the work of David Kirk who had done Miss Spider’s Tea Party and being able to see a nuance and color and this tactile quality to the work. I didn't want to lose that. And while I felt I could recreate some of those textures digitally, it felt like, if I'm going through all of this effort, why not paint?

Specifically for A RAINBOW IN BROWN, it was gouache and a little bit of watercolor and oil pastels. And that also kind of brings me to the next part of this: as I was playing around for more personal illustration purposes, I was doing a lot of gouache and acrylic with oil pastels being layered over at the top of them. And I was finding that the oil pastels, if you applied one color and then went over in another color you could see better than painting or sometimes even with colored pencil, the little flecks of the previous color used. 

And that reminded me of the tie-dye process where you're seeing all of these little eddies of color that you could use, but from a distance it's creating all of these new colors that you can see and enjoy. And I thought that thematically went really well with what was being discussed in the book.

Jessica: Absolutely. Yeah, I think that's the real stroke of genius with the technique that you used for this book. Especially when you get into the latter pages where Jo is combining purple and yellow to make brown for example – in that illustration that looks brown, you do see little flecks of yellow and purple. It looks brown, but it brings those colors through. And I think it will connect the dots for kids, as well as just being very beautiful and multi-dimensional, which is what the whole book is about, like you said.

I have another question for you. Do you have any favorite little moments or hidden Easter egg type details in the book? I have one that I'm wondering if it’s something I'm imagining or if it's real. Are these little figures Angel’s parents from ANGEL DISCOVERS HIS ART?

A cameo from characters in Pavonis’s forthcoming picture book?!

Pavonis: Oh my goodness. I was doing a lot of character design at the same time between the two books. So I don't know if it was intentional! Yes. I do like it there.

Jessica: Maybe it's a subconscious cameo.

Pavonis: Probably a little bit of a subconscious thing because I'm designing these background characters for BROWN, and at the same time I am working on the stuff for ANGEL. So It would make sense.

Jessica: Well tell me, what are your favorite details? There must be some little elements in the story that mean something to you that maybe readers won't pick up on unless you point them out to us. Is there anything?

Pavonis: The illustration that I'm most excited about, especially when I come back and look at it now that it's all printed and nice, is primarily the food page. That for me is my favorite. I guess that's my Easter egg – these are foods that I really love. There's a pumpkin pie in there, and I'm learning Spanish, but pan de muerto is one of the breads that's in there. It's a bread that's specific to The Day of the Dead, and it's this really soft loaf and it's got this cross on top that's made of other pieces of bread. And you can pull those off and eat those, and sometimes there's a little sugar coating on top.

I'm not a big fan of bread for the most part, but pan dulce especially, that was something that I feel very fondly towards. So I think that there is actually multiple pieces of pan dulce in there. But those in specific are ones that I'm really pleased with the way that they look illustrated – I think that the texture is just fantastic on those if I may toot my own horn on that. But also they're pieces that are really cherished by me because cultural identity is something that I wanted to embrace in this in  a way that’s recognizable for my audience but not too heavy-handed.

Jessica: Yeah. It's incidental. If it relates to readers' lives, they're going to pick up on it, but for everyone else it's just a beautiful spread of food.

Pavonis: And maybe if they see it out in the world in a grocery store or at a bakery, then it's like, I've seen that before! And now maybe I'm a little bit more curious about trying that. So that's something that I was really excited about. It's such a recognizable loaf.

Jessica: As a big snacker. I really love that your favorite part of this book is food. I relate to that.

For my last question, I was inspired by one of my favorite podcasts, Pop Culture Happy Hour. At the end of each episode all the panelists do a rapid fire list of random things that are making them happy this week. And it's one of my favorite things. So I wondered if we could do a quick variation of that, and if you could share something that's inspiring you right now. It could be inspiring your creative life; it could be inspiring you in any aspect of your life. What's something that is speaking to you right now?

Pavonis: This might be a little bit silly…

Jessica: Bring it on!

Pavonis: I'm sure that my partner is sick of me bring home rocks, but I've been really interested in specifically pieces of chert. And there are a lot of fossilized little pieces of crinoids that wash up on the shores of Lake Michigan, and that's really close by. So I'm always on the shoreline picking up these pieces of chert and pieces of little fossil things. So I'm really excited about those. I'm excited about chert in specific. Chert is related to agates and jasper and calcedony and flint. They're all pretty much the same material. And here’s a little science fact to whoever might be listening to this, but they're all made up of basically what creates sand. Which is little diatom skeletons. And diatoms are these tiny little plankton that live in the waterways and their skeletons are made out of silica. So it's the same thing that makes glass. And as the geological processes happen and the water permeates this it becomes what is called a siliceous ooze.

Jessica: “Siliceous ooze” is incredible.

Pavonis: And then forms these rocks. They're varying levels of precious stones, to functional objects with flint, and that's what I'm really excited about.

Jessica: Amazing, you're going to have to send me a photo of some of your chert so that I can include it at the bottom of the post, I'm very curious now. And I bet everyone who just heard you describe a siliceous ooze needs to see it as well.

Pavonis: Will do. I'll send you some pictures of my favorite rocks.

Some of Pav’s chert. It IS really cool!

Jessica: Thank you again so much, Pav, for joining me on my brand new baby substack. It's been so wonderful to chat with you. And happy book birthday again to A RAINBOW IN BROWN! I hope it really makes an impact with readers. It's such a lovely book.

Pavonis: Thank you! Happy birthday to A RAINBOW IN BROWN!

Purchase your own copy of A RAINBOW IN BROWN here, or check it out from your local library. Both are great way to support Pavonis's work!