![]() ![]() ![]() Though Myers and Barney had never worked together, “we had been trying to find a project,” Barney said. Barney and Myers enjoy monthly teas together and during one of them in 2012, the illustrator mentioned his admiration for Copeland. ![]() First of all, it was Myers who suggested doing a book with Copeland to his good friend Stacey Barney, senior editor at Putnam. Myers and Copeland were brought together, as is most often the case, by an editor, but their collaboration was hardly typical of the standard picture-book process. For Copeland, those struggles centered on her race, a childhood of poverty, and her late discovery of the art form. Like Ballerina Swan (Holiday House, 2012), which was written by ballerina Allegra Kent and illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully, Firebird, by American Ballet Theatre soloist Misty Copeland, illustrated by Christopher Myers, draws on a ballerina’s real-life early struggles to tell a story of inspiration and encouragement. Two artists collaborating on a picture book is hardly news, but in the case of Firebird, which Putnam is publishing this month, the creative team is slightly unusual: it consists of an illustrator and a ballerina. ![]()
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