Into the Dangerous World is the type of vivid story that legitimately makes you see the world just as the narrator does. In this case you slip into the mind of an artist – Ror, who has to decide just what kind of artist she wants to be when she ends up in a homeless residence, and the 130 vivid drawings included in the book add a whole new dimension to experiencing her reality. Today, author Julie Chibbaro and illustrator JM Superville Sovak are here to share 8 of their favorite drawings in the book and why!

Julie: 

Working together, JM and I were not always of the same mind. We had our own ideas of what the characters looked like, and what the drawings would represent. It was a blessed moment when we finally could agree. Here are eight drawings from the 130 that make up Into the Dangerous World – four that I love, and four that he loves, and why.

Julie: This comes early on in the book, and is one of the first “Dado Dialogues” Ror has with her father, who died in a fire. It always feels to me like he’s teaching her to see, while at the same time looking at her.

Julie: A portrait of Ror’s mother, which I think captures perfectly the pain and vulnerability she is experiencing.

Julie: It was impossible to reproduce Ror painting on trains, but here you get to see what her final painting looked like to her.

Julie: This comes toward the end of the book, when Ror and Trey have been through hell, and their soreness really hits me when I look at this.

JM: This drawing was born out of a real struggle – I really didn’t know where it was going and I couldn’t control it. The tearing of the paper, especially, surprised me.

JM: I see a lot of my favorite artists in this figure of Trey, especially Jean-Michel Basquiat.

JM: Probably one of the first drawings I did for the book. I loved getting lost in the power and the hypnotic effect of the smoke and flames.

JM: This came out of some strange symbolic algebra of Ror’s mind. It can mean so many things.

Start reading Into the Dangerous World here!