After months of sporadic and spotty productivity as a result of my illness, I'm back to it! This is a rough spread for an early reader dummy I'm working on. This time I've done a little more homework and am confident that I can do a book that will be a good fit for the early reader market.
This book is written at the very early end of the spectrum. One thing I noticed with some of these early reader books is a lack of scale. I think a lot of them are well done, but its as if, because the physical size of the book is small, the spaces in the images have to be small. So I'm trying to make a big world is a small package in this one with lots of full bleed spreads. Vocabulary, word count and physical size doesn't have to limit the scope of the book.
I love it. Have you done any wordless books? My pre-reader loves those because she is also quite imaginative and can fill in her own words for a terrific story with evocative pictures.
ReplyDeleteAs an elementary teacher for 30 years, I applaud that sentiment! LIttle ones need stimulating, inspiring illustrations just as much as older kids do! This is a wonderful drawing you've done!
ReplyDeleteThan you both!
ReplyDeleteAnd Shannon: I have indeed! In fact I recently did a 24 page 4x8 landscape format wordless book that I hand bound and hand sewed. I made 18 of them and sent them out to art directors as a self-promotional piece, and my agent got some good responses. Thus, I'm following up on one of those good responses with a book that will fit more snugly with their catalog.
I LOVE wordless books!
In the future I was thinking about taking that wordless book and combining it with a few other wordless stories and turning it into a digitally printed book or Kickstarter project. Over the years I've sent a number of tri-fold self-promotional postcards out that have sequential action, little mini stories with characters doing things in sequence. So I was thinking about making a little anthology of those. It's not a commercial project, but my hope was to get enough interest to do a small run of them.
That would be "thank you both!"
ReplyDeleteHere's a link to the hand bound books: http://jedalexander.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-hand-bound-book.html
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear you're feeling better, Jed, and happy to see new work! Delightful, as ever.
ReplyDeleteThanks Paul! Just building back up momentum.
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