Bo Lu – Picture Book Author & Illustrator

Kara and T are huge fans of Bo Lu's debut picture book, Bao's Doll and we're honored to talk to her all about her work, creative process, and lifelong relationship with drawing. We also loved hearing from Bo's daughter Nora, who is herself a book creator! 

After moving to Kansas from Taipei, Taiwan when she was 7, drawing became a way for Bo to express her emotions and feel more at home. Her books are influenced by her life and experiences, a chance to tell her story.

It was also fascinating to hear how many versions of a book there can be and how Bo puts a book together. Don't miss this fascinating, thoughtful discussion – a window into the heart and mind of an incredible creative spirit. 

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Tree House Together is an Elm Place production.
It was created by Jean and Kara Brodgesell.
Podcast episodes feature Kara along with her kid, T.

Episode art and delightful ukelele ditties were created by Jean Brodgesell.
Episode was edited by Kara Brodgesell.

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For a summary of the episode and links that we've mentioned, check out the episode notes in our Tree House Together Episode Guide.

Follow along with us on Instagram to get episode updates, picture book recommendations, activity prompts and more!

And feel free to browse our Bookshop.org account to see all of the books we've recommended over the episodes. Purchases there will support independent bookstores.

Chapters

• 0:27 Introducing the author & illustrator Bo Lu
• 2:24 Meeting Bo & Nora, creative processes in making books
• 5:53 Ren's Pencil, Bo's young life, using drawing as a lifeline
• 10:44 Bao's Doll and Bo telling her story in her books
• 16:37 Dummies, drafts, and believing in yourself
• 23:22 Being inspired to read and write books

Transcript

Hi friends, I'm Kara and this is T.

Hi.

And we're here in the Tree House Together.

Today we're so excited to take you along to visit a new friend of ours, Bo Lu.

Bo is a picture book author and an illustrator.

T, you wanna remind us what that means?

To be an author and an illustrator, it means that you write like, you write the words and draw the pictures in a book.

Exactly.

She writes picture books.

She comes up with the story and thinks of the right words to explain it, and she creates the pictures for them.

That's really impressive.

We read a lot of books in our house, chapter books, picture books, board books. We've got them all. Friends, I'm sure you've read lots of picture books too.

They're especially fun because they often have pictures on every page that go along with the words.

Bo's first picture book was called Bao's Doll, and she has another one coming out next year called Ren's Pencil.

There is so much good work and fun work that goes into making picture books, and you'll hear Bo talk about how she figures out her stories, as well as some of the people she works with on them like her editor.

Someone that helps her figure out which parts of the story to keep or change, how to make it even a little better, before it's published by a company.

Which is a big group of people who help get it printed and sent out to bookstores and libraries, where we can all find them.

We love picture books so much and we loved Bao's Doll.

So we're honored that Bo agreed to answer some of our questions about how she makes them.

Come along friends.

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So here we are with our new friends, author and illustrator Bo Lu and her daughter Nora.

Hi Bo.

Hi.

Thank you so much for having us.

Thank you for coming.

We're so excited to have you.

We're very excited to be here and you might hear, we have two little daughters who are in the background right now reading and building forts and doing a variety of other things, which means there might be a little chatter in the background.

Or a lot.

Or a lot.

And this is Bo's daughter, Nora.

Hi.

And of course, here's T.

Hi.

And Nora, you told us that you're also a writer and an illustrator, right?

I make books by myself.

You do.

Are you working?

I don't like coloring my drawings that much.

That's okay, right?

It's your art.

I'm really inspired by her creativity and the freedom that she has when she's drawing.

She'll pick up anything and start drawing and she can concentrate for like a long time.

Whereas sometimes I think I'm too busy to draw and I don't have time for it.

And I have to be very intentional.

But this seems to be just something that she picks up really easily.

She's so much faster than I am.

And I feel like I have to keep up with her.

And I'm really fast at, like, I'm good at making books.

Because it usually takes more than one hour to make my own comic book.

But the picture books, I made a lot of them in one day.

It's like I feel special when I make books because like, I don't even plan the story first.

I draw a picture and then I draw more pictures, then I turn it into a story.

Oh, that's so interesting.

And that's called a creative process, right?

Like, how do you get all these things to come together?

And I think each artist has their own way.

And that's your way.

Yeah.

Fascinating.

Bo, do you also feel special when you've finished a book?

I do.

I feel very special when I get to finish a book because it's such a marathon for me.

Not in one hour.

Yes.

Sadly, probably a little longer.

Yes.

It takes about two years sometimes.

Does it really?

Yeah.

When I sign a contract with a book to when it comes out, it takes about two years.

Wow. And have you probably been thinking about that story even more longer than that? Because if you're signing the contract, you've told someone about it and they've agreed that it would be a good book.

Yes.

The marinating of the story, it can be anywhere from three months to a year or even more.

Wow.

They all come at different speeds and have different personalities.

But I think the first one was in really emotional response for me. So it came out really fast. For the second book, I signed the contract and I knew I was going to make a second book with the same publisher.

But because there was the pressure, I felt a little bit frozen, like I didn't know what to do.

So that one took a lot longer in terms of like coming up with the idea, but also diving into it with somebody to approve it, I think gave me the scaries.

So Bo, will you tell us more about what your second book is about?

The one that's going to come out next year?

So Ren's Pencil is based on my experience moving from Taiwan to Kansas.

So it's about a little girl who moves from the east to the west and away from her favorite person, her grandmother.

And she feels a little bit lost without knowing the language and without knowing the environment.

So without knowing the language, she gets really confused one day. She's at the hair salon where they ask if she wants her hair short and they cut it all off. So her long locks fall away and she feels really sad and lost.

And then sort of enters this magical place with a large yellow cat, kind of like the one in Totoro, but also kind of like the one in Alice in Wonderland.

So this cat takes her all over and they run into a princess in a tower and the princess is stuck and needs help.

And then Ren discovers that the pencil that Puo Puo give her, that's her grandmother, is magical.

And she starts to draw a bridge for the princess to come down.

And she realizes that through her pencil, she's able to express herself.

And so like Ren, I also felt like without knowing English, drawing was my way to really express my emotions and eventually, yeah, feel more at home.

That sounds very special. Not everyone is able to process the world that way. Have you done that all throughout your life?

Yeah, I find photos of me drawing as a kid.

But I think after moving to the States, it was a bit more like a survival mechanism because my first three English words were apple, banana and so-so. So I was good with fruits and expressing ambivalence.

I think drawing became my way of feeling special.

If you're open to sharing, I would love to understand more about your early life experience because you moved to the state of Kansas from the country of Taiwan, which was very far away, where you spoke a different language. What was that like?

That was a very challenging experience for me because I grew up with actually my aunt and uncle and my two cousins.

So I hadn't even met my mom and dad until I was seven when I moved to America. So not only it was like a new language, but it was also a completely new family. So I felt alone at times and scared. And I think we were all trying to figure out how to be a family.

And it kind of feels like learning to swim. But at the deep end of the pool, you have to figure it out really fast.

Yeah, because there was no going back, right? Like this was your new home. This was your new life.

Yes.

In Taiwan, we just had a lot more family around. So it always felt like we were never alone.

But when we got to Kansas, my parents were working a lot at the Chinese restaurant.

And even when we were together, it was usually them running the kitchen and the restaurant and us sitting in the booths of the Chinese restaurant.

I remember drawing on the place map. If you've been to Chinese restaurants that have them, they like have the zodiac place maps, I would always turn it over and draw it.

And usually of dolls and girls, and I would like imprint the edges very hard with the pen and tear it out and make paper dolls.

Kids will be creative anywhere. It's kind of amazing. You found a way still to create in that environment.

Yes, because we didn't have a lot of things as an immigrant family. So I think that was one of the reason why I resorted to creativity and made my own paper dolls.

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It's really special, I think, how personal your books seem, that you are not only writing the stories, creating the drawings with your own hands, but also putting your story into it.

Can you tell us more about what it's been like for you to make them?

Making picture books has been a way for me to understand my emotions, because I've been diving a lot back into experiences as a child, and I don't think I've always known my feelings or have processed them.

But in making them, I'm understanding my younger self, my inner child more.

And in the first book, even helped me to understand my mother more and build empathy towards her.

Oh, Bao's Doll is a really beautiful book.

And T and I really enjoyed reading it together.

We were struck by how your story shows the difficulty between Bao and Mama, both in the words and also in the pictures.

T, did you have a question about that?

Why are there like colors, different colors for Bao and Mama?

The colors, they mean like when something happy or not so happy or not, that understanding happens, it appears.

Like it always appears when a bunch of feelings come together to a not so good feeling or a so good feeling.

A strong feeling maybe, whether or not it's a happy or sad.

T, I wanted to have the colors represent the characters and how separate they might feel. So the blue and the yellow were very distinct in the beginning.

And as the story goes on and they start to understand each other more, they are more blended and turn into purple.

My mom told me that also that in the beginning, she made about orange.

Oh, like when she was first starting to do it?

Yeah.

And mama, a dark purple, like darker purple.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think she was also yellow before.

At one point.

Yellow before she was orange and then orange before she was red.

And do you know why they ended up being the colors they are?

I started looking at pictures of me as a kid and I was always in red because my aunties believed the red was lucky color.

It was.

It is.

It is the lucky color.

Yeah.

In Chinese culture, it's very lucky color.

So I decided that Bao was going to be red and a very contrasting color was blue and blue happens to be colder too.

Which makes sense because the mother, Mama seems like she feels distant to Bao or a little bit less warm and loving.

That is was your debut picture book.

Yes.

And you are the author, which means the writer of the words and the illustrator, the maker of the pictures, which is incredible and is not always the case when people are making picture books.

Sometimes people do just the words or just the drawings.

Yes.

It seems like because drawing was such an important thing to you, it was always going to be those two things.

Was there ever a world in which you were just going to draw or did you always want to shape the whole story?

So part of what is important for me in making children's books is the opportunity to tell my own story.

So from that perspective, I felt it was important for me to write my stories, but I don't always trust my ability to express myself through words.

So I love to also draw, which adds to the story. And the words usually expresses what is happening, and the pictures usually express how it feels.

Hmm.

And I could very much see that in Bao's Doll because you have that big boulder that sits between them. And I feel like that visually shows so much that is actually emotional.

Yeah, that page was initially just Bao and her mom sitting at the opposite of the page, but nothing in between.

Really?

And my editor actually said, maybe they shouldn't just be floating, which ended up being a good note for me.

And I thought about, okay, maybe it's not just white space. What is the space in between them feel like?

And it feels hard and it feels not opaque or they can't see each other.

Yeah, it felt very like insurmountable. Like it's going to be very hard to get past something that big and heavy.

Yes.

Yeah.

But then they do kind of.

Yes.

They find their way to understand each other a little bit more. And is that part of your story as well?

I will say that I was scared to give the book to my mom. I didn't even tell her that I was working on it until the book was already published. And when I gave it to her, she didn't say anything.

But a couple of days later, she did text me and said that this is simple, but it says it all.

Wow.

Yeah.

Which is very big moment for us.

I'm hoping that she also felt seen in her own experience. So I think it created a small window for us to see each other.

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This is my mom's picture book dummy.

Wait, a dummy?

Yeah.

What's a dummy?

So a dummy is what I make when I'm at the very beginning stages of making a book, and it's a very easy and fast way for me to see what the book can look like.

So I'll draw and write in a tiny book that I folded and cut and stapled, and we call it a dummy, and I have no idea why.

Maybe the word is saying like, you know what? It's not the end one. It's not perfect. It's just going to be like a little dummy.

Just like, yeah, you're working on it. It's a little dummy.

This is actually a lot of.

Yeah.

Maybe it takes the pressure off.

Yeah, exactly.

It's just a little dummy like this is not the end of the book. It's just a problem of the book.

I was wondering how many versions of Bao's Doll were there before the final one that we've all read from the bookstore.

There was like a lot of versions.

I think there's probably like 20 or something like that.

Very close.

I think it was like even maybe close to 30 if I'm counting.

29. It was 29.

Yeah, let's say 29.

That is a lot. So I feel like that shows me that sometimes you work on things a little bit, and it's not always going to be perfect on the first try. And that's okay.

Yeah, it's lots of revisions.

How old were you when your book got published?

I think I was 42.

41.

41 or 42.

It's definitely 41.

Definitely 41.

Okay.

How did you make that hard cover?

The publishers, so the company printed it, but there was an art director that I worked with that we went back and forth on what the cover should look like.

And that was like maybe 20 rounds.

Wow.

If you were in your early 40s when you did your first picture book, you first had it out in the world, you've been a grown up for a little while, and maybe you've had some other jobs.

So I was curious what made you make the change, what inspired you to say, you know what, no, I'm going to try to do this for my job, not just for fun, but to be something that I'm going to really put out in the world.

Yeah.

I think I always had a fantasy of making children's books, but I think from a designer's perspective that translated to probably alphabet, ABC books.

But since having Nora in reading all the children's book together, I think it reignited my love for children's books.

But also I was so surprised by the capacity it had for big emotions and the beauty of it.

And it just really moved me and I was just so drawn to it and it felt like I had to.

I wanted to make one, too.

It took a leap of faith for me to quit my job and do children's book full time.

And I've heard someone say it takes a lot of patience, it takes a lot of time, but also it takes a lot of faith.

Faith in just knowing that the story will come out how it's meant to be.

And a lot of time, it's me letting go of control and let it become what it's meant to be.

So it's a practice of faith.

Mama, can we play dress up?

Oh, kids are really good at finding just the right thoughtful moment to ask a question.

I don't think I've been really religious in my life, but this feels like my practice of faith is learning to trust the process and learning to trust myself.

I feel like I've grown from every book, you know, and I feel like every book has taught me something that I am applying to the next one.

And it's also nice to see my own growth throughout all these projects and all these books.

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It was such an honor to talk to Bo and Nora and to hear all about the creative processes.

Friends, I'm so inspired. What about you? Let's go read some books. Let's go write some books.

Do you have any books you'd recommend to us? We'd love to hear about them.

We actually asked Bo if she had any picture books that she loved.

I love Asian picture books. I think they're just like allowed to be weird and wild. There's a book series that's called Detective Butt. And his face is literally a butt.

And so he solves…

I've seen that one.

You've seen that one.

He solves stuff, and he's a detective butt, and his face is a butt, and he still has eyes.

Oh my god.

And one time he farted on bad guys! 

I love thinking about ideas for picture books.

Friends, what do you think you'd like to make one about?

And T, you recently learned about a writing process, didn't you?

There are five steps for making a book.

The first one is pre-write. Pre-write is when you get a piece of paper and just write down, not the whole story, and not even a part, but just some of your ideas for a story.

Then, after that, then you draft. It's like writing a book.

And then, then it is revise. Number three, you take out all the ideas that you don't want and maybe add a bit, and maybe add like a bit more ideas.

Edit is the fourth step. And how you edit is like, you go back and check if all the words are correct and that you can read it.

And then step five is published. It's like you celebrate your work and you might go on a gallery walk in your classroom if you made a book in your classroom with your classmates.

Thank you for sharing that. It's really helpful.

It just takes an idea to start, and then you can work on it and change things up, just like we learned that Bo does.

At the end of our episodes, we usually say you should check out our website elmplace.co for more info.

And this time, you especially should, because we'll link to Bo's book, Bao's Doll.

You can also see if your local library has it, and if they don't, ask them to get it!

Bo Lu can be found online on her website, bolu.studio, where you should keep an eye out for upcoming events she'll be at, and for the release of Ren's Pencil in February 2026.

And for her future books, we will have them all on our bookshelf.

Thanks for joining us in the Tree House Together.

It was so much fun meeting the author and illustrator, Bo Lu, and learning from her with you today.

Come back soon.

Oh, wait, one more thing.

Group sing along. Yay!

You can find this episode and more on our website elmplace.com.