Excerpts from: Caldecott Medal Acceptance Speech for The Polar Express
Chris Van Allsburg, 1986

When I began thinking about what became The Polar Express, I had a single image in mind: a young boy sees a train standing still in front of his house one night. The boy and I took different trips on that train, but we did not, in a figurative sense, go anywhere. Then I headed north, and I got the feeling that this time I’d picked the right direction, because the train kept rolling all the way to the North Pole. At that point the story seemed literally to present itself. Who lives at the North Pole? Santa. When would the perfect time for a visit be? Christmas Eve. What happens on Christmas Eve at the North Pole? Undoubtedly a ceremony of some kind, a ceremony requiring a child, delivered by a train that would have to be named the Polar Express.

These stray elements are, of course, merely events. A good story uses the description of events to reveal some kind of moral or psychological premise. I am not aware, as I develop a story, what the premise is. When I started The Polar Express, I thought I was writing about a train trip, but the story was actually about faith and the desire to believe in something. It’s an intriguing process. I know if I’d set out with the goal of writing about that, I’d still be holding a pencil over a blank sheet of paper….

I do not find that illustrating a story has the same quality of discovery as writing it. As I consider a story, I see it quite clearly. Illustrating is simply a matter of drawing something I’ve already experienced in my mind’s eye. Because I see the story unfold as if it were on film, the challenge is deciding precisely which moment should be illustrated and from which point of view.

There are disadvantages to seeing the images so clearly. The actual execution can seem redundant. And the finished work is always disappointing because my imagination exceeds the limits of my skills…. Conceiving of something is only part of the creative process. Giving life to the conception is the other half. The struggle to master a medium, whether it’s words, notes, paint, or marble, is the heroic part of making art….

Source: http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/authors/vanallsburg/calpolar.shtml
(Accessed 11-09-2003).

 

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