Emailing Kimberly Palombo

My mentor had given me the email of a woman Kimberly Palombo, my mentor said Kim has a lot of knowledge on the subject of how illustrations relate to the text, and aid the text for childeren. When I first emailed her I told her about me and my project in the WISE program, I explained the story line and the age group targeted(6-7). 

She replied with:

"For this age group, I think it is best to reiterate the story in the pictures.  In other words, the reader should be able to have a pretty close understanding of the story from doing a "picture walk".  A "picture walk" is when we teach young children to look at the pictures before they read a book to preview it and get an idea about what the story will be about.  For this story, I see a young boy who is living impoverished (you can show this through physical characteristics and his begging) at the market.  Then the pictures should show the fisherman (again, use physical characteristics to show the reader it is a fisherman, maybe with bright yellow overalls and a hat and fishing rod, etc.) watching the boy.  Maybe have some type of image that conveys the fisherman having an idea (a thought bubble with a picture of the boy putting fish on a family table or something).  And then continue to connect the pictures to the story in this way." 

This was VERY helpful in that I was having a hard time clarifying my illustrations. This may mean I'll have to go back and fix some illustrations, but it will be for the better.