If the artist believes in a talking slice of toast, it is likely that a child will too. This kind of irrational conviction is an important ingredient in the process of injecting life into the most unlikely of inanimate objects.
It is hard to think of an illustrator better equipped to tackle the anarchic text of Jon Scieszka than the wonderful Lane Smith. Among the characters Smith was required to visualize are Rock, Paper and scissors; Straw and Matches; Piece of Toast and Froot Loops; Beefsnakstick; and Hand, Foot and Tongue. The illustrator rises to the challenge superbly with various ingenious visual tricks. The arrangement of the Froot Loops in the cereal bowl is just enough to give us the self-satisfied face of the character who is bragging about his nutritional content. In Rock, Paper and Scissors, the scissors are cutting into the paper to give Paper his scowling mouth shape.
Occasionally, arms and legs are added to anchor the character and to allow a little more in the way of gesture and body language.
Generally speaking, if done with sufficient conviction, almost any inanimate object can be given life in picture books. If the character appears in a sequence, and therefore has to be seen from various angles, plenty of preliminary drawings will be needed to ensure that it will work successfully as a two-dimensional rendering of a three-dimensional object.