Welcome to the Q&A and giveaway for the April edition of my Bartography Express newsletter (which you can sign up for here).

My Q&A this month is with Raúl the Third, the illustrator of the Lowriders graphic novels (written by Cathy Camper) and now a creator of picture books.

Raúl’s first book as author and illustrator, ¡Vamos! Let’s Go to the Market!, was published yesterday by Versify/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He now lives in Boston, but the book evokes Raúl’s childhood in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

¡Vamos! has received four starred reviews, including one from the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books that says the book’s “grab bag of bilingual terms embedded in dialogue, signage, and stray scraps of text invite[s] all readers to have a grand time latching onto what they know and figuring out what they don’t.”

I’m giving away one copy of ¡Vamos! to a Bartography Express subscriber with a US mailing address. If you want that winner to be you, please let me know (in the comments below or by emailing me) before midnight on April 30, and I’ll enter you in the drawing.

In the meantime, please enjoy my two-question Q&A with Raúl the Third.

Chris: After illustrating the three Lowriders graphic novels, what were the biggest surprises in making your first picture book?

Raúl: I would say that the biggest surprise was how many more books I would complete if I was only making picture books! We are nearly done with the second ¡Vamos! book.

I really enjoyed the entire process and being able to recreate a slice of my border town was a truly magical experience.

Chris: The title page for ¡Vamos! has a credit that may be familiar to graphic-novel readers, but one that I don’t think I’ve seen before in a picture book: “Colors by.”

For the uninitiated, what does a colorist do, and for this picture book where did your work leave off and her work begin?

Raúl: Elaine Bay is the colorist for ¡Vamos! Let’s go to the Market! I am so incredibly lucky to be working with her on this series as the colors have the feel of the border town we were both raised in.

As the illustrator, I am turning over black and white line art to Elaine Bay that she then colors using a wide array of media. She has a library filled with stains and marks, and using a Cintiq she colors the book both digitally and traditionally.

I love exploring the different marks, patterns and textures she has been using.