Unequal Labor

Nothing to do with one book in particular, but a generality that has struck me over the years: There is a lot of really amazing art work in many, many picturebooks that is not matched by an equal story. I find this odd, and know from talking to Carolyn Fisher that the author and illustrator in a paired book usually get paid 50/50. I know for a fact that the illustration for most picturebooks takes a whole year. How can it possibly take a whole year for a writer to write some of these texts?

In this current set of reviews, this started to hit me most when looking at Pam Zagarinski's work on the tiger book. But then it was reversed when I saw her work on Sidman's poems, which I thought probably took an immense amount of labor, and the illustrator didn't put forward the effort to make the illustrations anything but representational. This balance is important, and must be difficult to achieve when its a collaborative project.