How we made a million stars

Anna Milbourne

Anna writes: Before we decided to write the book How Big is a Million? we had to check that it was physically possible to show a million of something in a book.

We made a printout of a million dots - and it filled 16 picture book pages! The million dots were passed around and taken home for everyone's children to marvel at. By the time the printout was returned to me, at least a hundred or so dots had been obliterated by grubby fingers and torn edges.

It was clear that the idea of being able to see an actual million of something was a fascinating one - and not just to children!

The story

Now I had to think of a storyline. I kept looking at the million dots and thinking how they reminded me of staring into the night sky. I really liked the idea of linking the million with the enormity of the universe, so I decided to make them a million stars in the sky.

It's difficult to grasp the enormity of a million, so I wanted Pipkin to be a very determined little character. I decided it was best for him to discover small numbers first, and build up to a whole million.

Printing a million

To make the million dots into stars with Pip and his mama looking up at them, we needed more space than on the original printout. So we increased the size to 24 picture book pages. The production department searched the world for a printing house that had a large enough machine to print a piece of paper that size in one go. I was afraid that if we stuck two or more sheets together, then the tiniest inaccuracy would result in us losing hundreds of stars.

Crashing the computer

One of the designers, Laura Parker, had the task of creating the million stars. Working on a computer, she divided the poster into smaller squares, then designed a pattern of 420 tiny stars. One evening, she was busy creating the million by repeating this pattern again and again very, very carefully, turning it this way and that to fill the area with no gaps or overlapping stars. She'd made it to half a million when her computer crashed. It was simply too much information for the computer to handle! She had to start all over again the next day - only this time she used the most powerful computer in the building.

Star by star

In the corner of the poster, we wanted the stars to peter out gently towards Pip and his mama. Because it wasn't a regular pattern, Laura had to hand-arrange them. I was absolutely terrified that one would go missing, so I insisted that we count the individually arranged section star by star. There were 12,580 stars. I counted them three times and another editor checked them too - the number was exactly right. Laura also left a margin around the sky so we could be sure that none of the stars could fall off the edges of the poster in the printing.