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Picturing a World

Kewpie Votes for Women

After Saturday’s post on Halloween cards, my first search for the illustrators who painted them turned up Rose O’Neill—the inventor of Kewpie! Who knew? (Well, probably lots of historians of material culture, but not me.) It is tempting, tempting, tempting to bring a commercial artist or two into the circle of my new heroine, Mattie—at the risk of bogging down the narrative with too many characters.

At the moment, I have a photographer as an important secondary character. It may not be too late to transform him into a graphic artist. Still I’m one of those writers who tends to feel she discovers her characters rather than invent them. Writers, what about you? Readers, do you think you can tell which writers discover and which writers invent?

For more about Rose O’Neill, click here, here, and here.
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