Emily
Walcker

GDS: How did you come to illustrate the chapters of Harry Potter and not the covers?

EW: In fact, I was illustrating Bama et le blues , a CD book at Gallimard Jeunesse, when Pierre Marchand, the CEO of the group, liking my illustrations for Bama , called me into his office. He said to me: “Do you want to do a cover for a story about witches? You will be paid 3500 francs, the same as the great Sempé, here I pay everyone the same”.

In the end, they didn’t like my cover and they asked, at the same time or after, I don’t know, JC Götting to do it. But Pierre Marchand asked me to do the chapter headings.

GDS: Your wizards ride their brooms “brush forward”, it’s an unusual image; did you draw this idea from a specific source of inspiration?

EW: I had to want to innovate and surprise the reader a little.

GDS: Were you completely free in your drawings or were there instructions from Gallimard? And why did you choose to dress the students in the colors of their house rather than black as in the book?

EW: I did my cover, under the instructions of another art director who asked me especially to use “acidulous” colors. For the rest, I drew everything in my own way with my imagination, without having any knowledge of the Götting cover. And I was the first illustrator to have in my hands the typescript of JKRowling!

GDS Did you always think that you should integrate chapter numbers into your drawings?

EW: As for the mix with the numbers, I don’t really remember how it happened, the artistic direction work had been entrusted to yet another artistic director: Marie Aubelle.

In any case, it was a very nice collaboration with Gallimard, and I was very happy when Pierre Marchand had me write a funny little autobiography at the end of the first two volumes!