By Jessica Rose
The moment you’re introduced to Steve the horse, you can’t help but fall in love with his toothy grin and delightful overconfidence. The star of two picture books and three graphic novels, he’s now a “mane” attraction; however, his beginnings were humble. He was once a goofy doodle created by author-illustrator Kelly Collier to decorate a blank wall.
“I had just moved into a new house, and I didn’t have any art on the walls,” says Collier, who was born in Ottawa and grew up in Toronto. “I couldn’t afford any art, and I had a box of empty frames. So, I drew this little doodle of a horse!” Next, using a gold marker, she drew the gold horn that became Steve’s signature accessory in her first book, A Horse Named Steve. Published by Kids Can Press in 2017, the picture book was named one of the CCBC’s Best Books for Kids & Teens and was an OLA Best Bets.
It was Collier’s twin sister who suggested the newly hung doodle would make an excellent children’s book character. By then, Collier had given up on the idea of publishing a book for kids—something she hoped to do years earlier when she fell in love with children’s literature while an illustration student at Sheridan College. Her sister was right. Steve has gone on to star in a second picture book, 2018’s Team Steve, and three early graphic novels. Most recently, Collier published September’s Steve, Born to Run, in which Steve faces his biggest challenge yet—being a team player. It’s just one of multiple projects hitting bookstores this summer and fall.
Growing up, Collier and her siblings—a twin sister and a brother—weren’t readers; they were artists, “drawing, drawing, drawing” all the time, she says. In fact, she struggled with spelling and grammar in school. “When I went through high school and started thinking about a career, both my parents really encouraged us to get into the arts. I don’t know if they really knew how tough it would be, but they knew we loved it, and so they were encouraging.”
During her third year at Sheridan College, under the guidance of instructor Harvey Chan, Collier found herself immersed in the world of children’s book illustrations.
“I was so attracted to all the different styles that people were doing. I had just never been exposed to what people were doing with children’s books and how creative they were,” she says. “I was just so into it, and I just knew that’s what I wanted to do. And then, it took me 15 years to finally get published.”
In the years before A Horse Named Steve was published, Collier worked in the hospitality industry, as well as commercial illustration, but she kept coming back to the idea of creating a children’s book. A couple of days after her sister suggested Steve might be the perfect protagonist, Collier wrote down her ideas and sent them to a handful of publishers that accepted unsolicited manuscripts. A month later, she received an email that Kids Can Press had rescued her submission from the slush pile.
When asked about Steve’s eccentric, always-amusing personality, Collier calls him a lovable narcissist. “You want to keep him flawed, which is where a lot of the humour comes from,” she says, adding that it’s important that he’s not too annoying. She says kids love seeing how misguided and self-involved he can be, while at his core, he’s kind.
Collier says that the book’s first draft “wasn’t all that funny.” Her editor, Yasemin Uçar, suggested that the text didn’t match the quirkiness of the illustration.
“Just having her say that [made me realize] it can be funny. Of course it can be funny!” recalls Collier. “She made me feel so comfortable.”
This spirit of collaboration has been instrumental to Collier’s career. Following the success of her first book, she has illustrated the work of several prolific children’s book authors, including Caroline Adderson, Cathy Ballou Mealey, and Kari-Lynn Winters.
Collier says her collaboration with Naseem Hrab has been especially meaningful in helping push herself creatively. Together, they're the author/illustrator duo behind Owlkids’ How to Party Like a Snail and How to Staycation Like a Snail, as well as the “Otis & Peanut” series of books about friendship and belonging, which have been compared to Arnold Lobel’s iconic Frog and Toad books. Their third book in the Snail series, How to Be Brave Like a Snail, a sweetly humorous story about finding the courage to share one’s feelings, is out in October.
“Working with Naseem is the best. She’s so funny, and she’s just one of the best people to bounce ideas off. She’ll take one thing I say and then make it this whole, hilarious idea,” says Collier. “She actually helps me a lot with my writing. She’s very generous with her time and talent. It’s so great to work with somebody who can help you get unstuck any time you’re not sure where to take something, or if a joke is funny enough,” she adds, hinting at an upcoming book they’re working on together about a stick bug—a character some readers will be familiar with from the Snail series.
“She’s always pushing the hilarity of things. She’ll say, ‘I get what you’re trying to do here, and it’s so funny, but let’s make it more obvious or more extreme. Let’s push it beyond the basic joke. Let’s make it bigger, make it funnier!’,” says Collier.
Bringing together humour and heart is at the core of Collier’s storytelling. It’s especially apparent in both The Imposter, her 2023 book about a skunk who longs for a family, and her brand-new picture book, Beverley, Bat Your Service. Released by Simon & Schuster Canada in August, Beverley, Bat Your Service introduces readers to a hospitable bat who, with much difficulty, tries to welcome a family of humans to a dilapidated house by filling it with eau de rotten egg (Grandma’s favourite), cooking delicious Bolognese de millipede for dinner, and thoughtfully shredding the clothes the family brought to make comfy nests.
“I think that’s the key to it all—making sure you have [humour and heart] balanced,” says Collier, who both wrote and illustrated The Imposter and Beverley, Bat Your Service. “I have a really hard time being too soft or serious. I can’t do it. I think that comes from drawing,” she says, talking about the quirky and sarcastic expressions of her characters. “But, if your character is not kind or lovable, or there’s not enough heart, it just doesn’t work.”
Beverley, and his quest to be the host with the most, is both lovable and kind. He’s also a loving tribute to Collier’s mom, who passed away in 2023. Collier first drew the character in 2017 but struggled to come up with a story.
“He was in a cave, then he was in a library, then he was a part of a group of bats,” she recalls, adding that she changed formats from a picture book to a graphic novel, back to a picture book. “Then, a couple of years ago, I was watching a BBC show about chateaus in France, and I thought it would be fun to draw, and would be a good setting for my bat.”
Collier says the story stayed “on the back burner” for several years until early 2023, when her mom died.
“I thought about her all the time (still do!). She was such a great hostess; she loved entertaining people. As a matter of fact, some of my earliest memories are of adults chatting around a table after one of her amazing dinner parties,” she recalls. “That’s when the idea to make this bat a lonely but earnest host who wishes for company came to me. And then I decided his name should be Beverley (my mom’s name) and the whole story kind of poured out really quickly.”
Collier says the humour in the story comes from the juxtaposition of what a bat would think is hospitable versus a human family. “My mom never made that mistake obviously, but she had a great sense of humour, and I know she would be so proud of this book,” she says.
One thing that helps Collier when crafting her characters is trying to think like a child, a task that’s become easier now that she’s a mom to a four-year-old.
“It’s funny because when I started, I didn’t have any kids. I would just write something that I would want to read, and I left it up to my editor to tell me if kids would get a joke or not get a joke,” she says. “But now, having done it for a few years, and knowing kids a little better in general, I have them more in mind,” she says, adding that she loves how kids can be so sweet and kind, yet so selfish at the same time. These are traits that her characters, especially Steve, exhibit.
When it comes to her process, Collier says she starts with an illustration before the words come to her. “I draw a character, and then I give that character a personality,” she says. “And then I think, ‘What situation would this character find themselves in?’ And then I work backwards, putting them in a weird scenario. I kind of draw as I write. The writing comes after the drawing, or as I’m drawing.”
Now with several books under her belt, Collier has experience writing and illustrating stand-alone books, as well as the unique opportunity to revisit her characters multiple times in a series. The three books in the Steve graphic novel series allow her to engage slightly older readers than her picture book audience, while providing the same laugh-out-loud antics and character-education lessons on teamwork and inclusiveness.
Unlike the other two books in the graphic novel series, the second instalment, Steve, A Rare Egg, didn’t have a picture book predecessor, meaning Collier needed to create a new adventure for Steve.
“I had this new baby, and I was trying to come up with an idea. I was chatting with my brother, because he’s always full of good ideas. He said, ‘Pull from your own experience. Maybe Steve becomes a parent!’,” she recalls with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Absolutely not! Steve has the maturity of a five-year-old. There’s no way I’m making him a parent!’ But I thought, maybe there is a way I could give him an experience with some responsibilities.” The result is a tender, yet hilarious, story in which Steve finds himself caring for a rare, red egg. Steve knows a lot about caring for eggs. What could possibly go wrong? (Spoiler alert—a lot)!
Collier says she finds writing the Steve graphic novels easier than a one-off picture book. “I think it’s because it’s a character I know. He has such a big personality to me. I just put him in a situation and watch him struggle and make it funny. At least, I find it funny!”
Collier is not the only one laughing at her mischievous brand of humour. One book she illustrated, Izzy’s Dog Days of Summer by Caroline Adderson, recently won the Joan Betty Stuchner Oy Vey! Funniest Children’s Book Award. Presented by the Vancouver Children's Literature Roundtable, it’s given biennially to Canadian authors or illustrators “that had the jury most buckled over with guffaws, incapacitated with giggles, and/or rib-ticklingly, side-splittingly, thigh-slappingly entertained.”
When asked what young readers find funny, Collier is quick to respond. “They love seeing your characters mess up!” she says, using Steve as an example. “They love to see that he’s doing something wrong. They know that he’s doing it, and he’s clueless. I think that’s what they love,” she says, adding that kids love repetition.
“If they’re having a good laugh, it means they’re enjoying it. And if they’re enjoying it, they’ll want to read it again and again and again and again,” she says, something she knows firsthand from reading with her daughter.
From a self-absorbed horse to a snail, a sloth, a long-haired guinea pig, and everything in between, most of Collier’s characters are from the animal world, which is fertile ground for comedic storytelling.
“I think you can get away with a lot more [with animals, simply] because they’re not people. You can put them in really bizarre situations,” she says. “Kids get that animals don’t really have human emotions, but that you can sort of be a little bit sillier with them. I think the absurdity of an animal doing funny things adds to the humour. Kids will be like, ‘A horse can’t do that!’ or ‘A raccoon can’t do that!’ And that’s so funny to them.”
Collier says what she’s learned most about writing for kids is to not underestimate them.
“They’re really, really smart!” she says. “Not that I didn’t think they were smart before, but it’s really amazing how they can empathize with characters, even when you’re making the characters really funny, silly, or sarcastic. They get it, and it just never ceases to amaze me.”
For Collier, writing and illustrating books for children is a dream come true, one that’s keeping her, and her readers, laughing.
“I just hope I get to keep making them,” she says about what she hopes is just the beginning of a long career ahead.
Jessica Rose is a writer, reviewer and editor in Hamilton, Ontario.