From the November/December 2012 issue of The Horn Book Magazine:

Reviewer Ashley Waring asks Ed Young, illustrator of Nighttime Ninja, about the inspiration for his mixed-media artwork. Read the full review of Nighttime Ninja here.

Ashley Waring: When preparing your collages, do you start with an idea for a scene and find the right materials for it? Or are the materials the source of your inspiration?

Ed Young: First is the story. The story determines the medium, the style, the colors used, the size of the book, whether it’s vertical or horizontal, the sequence of scenes, and the page proportions. It even chooses the artist, which happened to be me. Nighttime Ninja went through many stages: first it came in pencil, then charcoal, then pastel, and then I used ink markers, and finally I completed the whole thing with collage. So it’s more correct to say we discovered each other in the story.