I got the job to illustrate The Brave Little Toaster through my agent. I was lucky to find a rep soon after I became an illustrator; these days, I think it is even more essential for an artist to be represented in the publishing field. Toaster was only my second book, so I was paid very little to illustrate it and no royalties. Unfortunately that's sort of how it works in the business, I think. That changed (improved) for me once I was a full-time illustrator.

My initial thoughts on the book were very positive. I was a collector of old chrome appliances, so the thought of bringing a toaster to life was very appealing and fun. My career headed in that direction after the book...I've always been more interested in bringing humanity and animation to animals and objects than I was in illustrating actual people.

My sources for BLT were a toaster I owned, and for the other characters, pictures I found at the Picture File at NYC Library, which is what we all used before the Internet. I used picture reference of the real objects and animated their personalities as I saw them.

The border may have been inspired by illustrations I liked, but I can't remember. Always inspired by others' work, I was looking at Arthur Rackham and Maurice Sendak, among others, at the time.

As is traditional in the field, I had no contact whatsoever with Mr. Disch. My art director acted as the middle person between the two of us. Mr. Disch was a verbal person; and I, as the illustrator, a visual person. To have him to direct my visual reaction to his story would have been disruptive. The more I grew as an illustrator, the more I understood the wisdom of keeping authors and illustrators of children's books separate during the creative process. I initially read the story and did rough sketches, which I presented to my art director. She most likely contacted Mr. Disch at this point and he may have had an input to her final comments back to me. But they would have been filtered through her to me. It was the art director and I who decided finally which scenes were best illustrated.

Much later, after the book was published, he did contact me to purchase a piece. At least I knew at that point that he appreciated my work!

I was aware of the film, but didn't see it until much later. I liked it very much, I have always been a huge fan of the Disney artists, and of Disney's way with filming stories. Beyond Mr. Disch purchasing one of my pieces, I had no contact with him regarding his feelings for our book. But I'm sure he was extremely pleased that Disney took it on and into another genre altogether.

It's been fun for me to revisit a book I illustrated so long ago.

Karen Lee Schmidt

From an email conversation with the annotator

May 18 and June 4, 2015