Kids Draw the Darnedest Things: Inside the Creepy Art in Hidden Pictures, An Exclusive Guest Post from Jason Rekulak

I love a good haunted house movie, and my favorites always have a variation on the following scene: Mommy and Daddy are fighting in the kitchen while little Sally draws at the table with a box of crayons. Mommy’s been hearing strange sounds at night, and she’s concerned. Daddy insists it’s just the wind (or tree branches, or raccoons). Then Sally exits the kitchen with a mysterious smile, and the camera glides over to the table, revealing her artwork: a stick-figure family portrait awash in blood-red crayon. The word MURDER is misspelled with backward-facing letters. And the heads of Mommy and Daddy have been decapitated! (Cue the ominous music!) 

Every time I see this scene in a movie, I’ll reach for my remote control to pause the film, so I can study the art more carefully. I love weird art drawn by little kids!  There’s something so incredibly creepy about it. And I suppose this interest led me to develop Hidden Pictures – my new novel about a child prone to drawing strange and gruesome illustrations.  

I’d realized that a novel was the perfect vehicle for my story, because I could include the actual drawings in my book, and readers could linger over the pictures for as long as they wanted – no remote control required! And if the story had a mystery, the pictures could offer subtle clues to its solution. This seemed like a really fun challenge and right in my wheelhouse. I’d already been exploring the possibilities of illustrated fiction for many years. I used to be the publisher of an indie press called Quirk Books, where I edited novels like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (illustrated with faux-19^th century engravings) and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (illustrated with found black-and-white photographs). But with Hidden Pictures, I could finally write an illustrated novel of my own.  

I suppose some readers still think of illustrated novels as childish or (even worse!) gimmicky, but I believe they’re an interesting way to engage 21^st century attention spans. After all, you’re reading this blog post on the Internet. My text is probably bracketed by all kinds of colorful and captivating graphics. Why can’t contemporary fiction have some of the same eye candy? 

So without further ado, here are a few of the 50+ drawings that appear in my new thriller Hidden Pictures – with a big tip of the hat to my amazing illustrators, Will Staehle and Doogie Horner. 

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