< 'I Don't Care' is a book about what matters in friendship, illustrated by best friends

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Here's a sentence we've all uttered at one point in our lives - I don't care. But now "I Don't Care" is also the title of a new children's book by Julie Fogliano.

JULIE FOGLIANO: "I Don't Care" is about all of the things that are and are not important to a kid when they're looking for a friend.

SIMON: She's written, (reading) I really don't care what you think of my hair or my eyes or my toes or my nose.

FOGLIANO: So the beginning of the book is kind of like all of the things they don't care about. They don't care what their hair is like or what their lunch is like. And then the second part of the book is about all the things they really do care about.

SIMON: (Reading) I care if you wish, I care if you sing and I care if you like to lean back when you swing.

FOGLIANO: I feel like when kids are little, they really genuinely don't care about a lot of things. They don't care what they look like. They don't care what they're wearing. They're not judgey in that same way that we are now. I liked being able to capture that little moment in time when they didn't care what people thought of them.

SIMON: Julie Fogliano's story about two best friends ended up on the desk of illustrator Molly Idle.

MOLLY IDLE: When I first read that first line that Julie was talking about, I really don't care what you think of my hair or my eyes or my toes or my nose, you know, I heard I and you, and I thought it's a conversation between two people who are on the surface may be seemingly very different, but at their cores are very, very similar. And I thought, oh, my gosh, that's just like me and Juana.

SIMON: And that would be Juana Martinez-Neal. Molly and Juana met 16 years ago. They started out as critique partners. They ended up best friends. And Molly decided to volunteer Juana as her co-illustrator on this project.

JUANA MARTINEZ-NEAL: I was nervous and confused and did not want to say no, because I love Molly and she's my best friend. I mean, how could I say no?

SIMON: For our children's book series, Picture This, we talked to Juana Martinez-Neal, Molly Idle and Julie Fogliano about their picture book, "I Don't Care."

FOGLIANO: When I wrote the book, I really, first of all, didn't know I was writing a book. I was just, like, kind of writing. And I didn't know who was talking. I didn't know who they were speaking to. I didn't know how many people were there. I kind of just, like, wrote these words. And when Molly first read it, like she was saying, she read it as two voices. That totally rearranged my whole thinking about the book. And so I was kind of like, oh, do it how you see it. Because my book would have been boring with one kid just talking to who knows who.

IDLE: When we started work on the manuscript, Juana and I lived about a half hour away from each other, both in Arizona. And so we thought, well, gosh, this will be relatively easy. Some days we'll work at Juana's studio. Some days we'll work at my studio. And then Juana's family ended up relocating to Connecticut. But we knew we could figure it out. Like, if we could figure out, like, our friendship long distance, figuring out how to pass the art back and forth long distance shouldn't be too big a deal.

But it did - it definitely influenced the way in which we wanted to make the art because we knew that we had to use mediums and color palettes that we could keep consistent despite distance and despite having to ship the art back and forth.

MARTINEZ-NEAL: We were going to use graphite. And then we used two colors. And we said, OK, let's go with our favorite colors. My favorite color is yellow. Molly's was teal. And then when they overlap with printmaking, then we will get green.

And I was hoping that the work will have more of a classic feel. With that in mind, I was thinking, OK, so paper color was an important choice. It could not be just white. We needed the paper to have a particular tone of cream or warmer tone. So I find a list of - I don't know - 12 to 20 papers, different sizes, different colors, and then give that same list to Molly. So we both order it. It gets to our houses, and now we have to make test drawings on each one of the papers to find our favorite ones.

IDLE: We wanted to make it sort of like a blind taste test, like a blind drawing test. And so we had each, like, created our own...

MARTINEZ-NEAL: Code.

IDLE: ...Numerical system...

MARTINEZ-NEAL: Yeah.

IDLE: ...For, like, marking these papers, not knowing what brand they were or, like, what the name of them was - we didn't want to be unduly influenced - and then agreed, like, we'll give ourselves a week, then we'll convene, and we'll swap our list of our top three papers, and then we will compare notes and see if we can't find a happy medium. And our top three papers were exactly the same top three papers out of all those papers, and our No. 1 choice...

MARTINEZ-NEAL: Was the same one.

IDLE: ...Was the same one.

MARTINEZ-NEAL: So it was an easy choice.

IDLE: (Laughter) We were so pleasantly surprised because we were prepared for, like, "Thunderdome" but with paper and...

(LAUGHTER)

IDLE: ...And it just turned out to be the nicest thing.

MARTINEZ-NEAL: It just confirmed the fact that we - that's why we're friends.

IDLE: That's it. Art nerds unite (laughter).

MARTINEZ-NEAL: Now, Molly and I both have very distinctive styles. We couldn't use texture because I love texture and Molly doesn't. And I use brushstrokes, heavy brushstrokes. And Molly's work is very smooth - seamless, almost. So we had to figure out a way to make the book where we'd level the playing field. And we decided, OK, each one of us will sketch our own character, and then we swap. And when we looked at each other's work, we tried to put us together in one page, in Photoshop, actually. We are traditional artists, but we were trying to compare how the work will look next to each other. And for that we used Photoshop.

IDLE: It was like this wonderful creative exercise, figuring out, like, wow, I draw necks twice as thick as you draw necks, so let's meet in the middle. Or you draw heads bigger than I draw heads. So you decrease your head size by 20%, and I'll increase mine by 20%. For me, that was the most fun when we were making the art was when I would open this package, and there was Juana's artwork. And then to, like - it feels very strange to touch somebody else's artwork when you are used to illustrating on your own. And we made this first swap, and then we got on the phone, and we realized that neither one of us had worked for, like, two weeks because we were just so afraid to touch the other person's artwork. Like, oh, gosh - so we were both just like, we just have to do it. As soon as we did that, it was like that fear left. Like, OK, we can do this.

MARTINEZ-NEAL: And I think it looks seamless when you look at the work. It looks seamless, but at the same time, you see we still have Molly and Juana within the drawings. It's just a little tweaked.

FOGLIANO: I'm not a visual person. When I write, I hear the words, I don't see anything. So it's always such a thrill to see the finished product, to see the characters finally. I always have this feeling of like, oh, there you are. Like, I've been waiting to meet you. And these two, the two girls that they created, it just gave it more depth, I think, to have the relationship between the two kids and knowing, like, the personal connection between the two of them and, like, the kind of love and, you know, everything that they share as friends in actual real life. It just gave it more personal perspective, I guess.

IDLE: I totally agree. And, like, Juana and I have talked about how the more personal a story is, somehow the more universal it usually is too - like, the connections. When we read the manuscript, Juana and I said, (gasping) it's just like us.

MARTINEZ-NEAL: It's us.

IDLE: But of course you didn't write it for us. And I could only imagine that kids are going to read it and think... (gasping)

MARTINEZ-NEAL: That's us.

IDLE: ...That's us. And that's the best thing, when it comes from someplace so deep that it's coming from a place that resonates on a universal level.

SIMON: Molly Idle, Julie Fogliano and Juana Martinez-Neal talking about their children's book, "I Don't Care." Our series Picture This is produced by Samantha Balaban.

Copyright © 2022 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.