Well, I'll admit, this is stumping me

[conuly]

You'd think a middle grade portal fantasy with multiple color illustrations - but not a graphic novel! - would be easy to find.

Comments

[grav_ity]

it is SO HARD to convince publishing to let you do portal fantasy. I definitely can't think of any illustrated ones. I can't remember if The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland has pictures.

[conuly]

The only middle grade books I can think of that were printed in their main edition - not a special edition of some sort - with full color illustrations are the ones by Grace Lin. And those aren't portal fantasies!

The Girl Who... might have illustrations, but what it does not have is two kids slipping through the portal together, and that's another one of the conditions of the OP. (They said a brother and a sister, but that's more likely to be an error than the fact that there's more than one child.)

Normal black-and-white illustrations are finally coming back into fashion for middle grade and YA books, but I've noticed they're rarely full-page. Instead, novels are trending in the direction of "hybrid graphic novels", though where the line is between a novel with a lot of inset illustrations and a hybrid graphic novel is unclear to me.

[grav_ity]

Margaret Owen has illustrations in her YA fantasy Little Thieves. I had a backseat to the design process, and it was COSTLY, which is why even black and white is a stretch. GNs are printed on different paper, so they get colour more easily, but there's almost nothing in the middle. Like, all that comes to mind are the High Republic MG novels, which are definitely not portal fantasy either.

[conuly]

Indeed, aren't full color illustrations in regular novels printed on that more high quality paper as in graphic novels? You can feel the difference even just thumbing through them, and the books will often open directly on those pages even the first time you read them.

[viggorlijah]

Wouldn’t the very first Narnia print series with the original illustrations count? I remember looking at the wood between the world’s illustration for ages while reading the Magician’s Nephew. They were black and white sketches on the same page as the text, not separate prints.

[conuly]

I strongly doubt that this is the Narnia series for the same reason that it's never, ever Ender's Game - it's just too well known. People don't forget the title.

[grav_ity]

More or less, yes. Paper is a really complicated issue in publishing right now, as we have been in a shortage for a few years, and it's a mess.

[conuly]

Is this another pandemic shortage, or is it wholly unrelated?

[grav_ity]

Kind of! Paper comes from trees and so do houses, and we are in a housing crisis, so

[jessie_c]

Summer in Orcus?

[hafnia]

If it wasn't middle grade I'd almost guess Abarat.

[conuly]

Does that book have full color illustrations in the print edition?

[conuly]

It seems like it ought to be easy, doesn't it?

[jessie_c]

No, darn it; they're greyscale, as though they're pencil sketches.
(Worth a read though.)