But I digress! My second piece of exciting news is that I participated in an Independent Publishing project with a really awesome couple named Danny and Kim Adlerman, who run their Independent Publishing company, "The Kids at our House." They have a number of great children's books out, all of which you can check out on their website. In the past, some of their books have later been picked up by Charlesbridge, and Lee and Low recently picked up their game Compound It All! Their latest, A Toucan Can, Can You? is the book I had the privilege of being in. The project was unique, as each spread was illustrated by a different artist, so it really was a collective effort. Two illustrators from the book I had the honor of knowing already: Leeza Hernandez (through NJ SCBWI) and Pat Cummings (my favorite teacher and mentor from Pratt), so I was thrilled to be included.
Each spread is a tougue-twister. Mine was, "How much bow could a bow tie tie if a bow tie could Tae Bo?" It was a lot of fun to do:
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| The color is actually coming off a little too saturated in this image, but Photoshop can only do so much when you have a little HP scanner. Don't worry, I mailed them the original art, and their scanned image for the book is WORLDS better. |
The sketch I submitted to them was originally this (it was actually through an SCBWI NJ contest that I was selected):
And these were their corrections:
Here is the final comp with color added. We wound up making just a plain red border (all the spreads have a border to unify them). Also, God help me, they loved the idea of a rainbow ribbon! Just kidding, it wasn't so bad...
So check out this awesome book! You can also Like Danny and Kim on their Facebook Page!
