Goodies and other fun things

Thanks to Alicia for sending her book, The Wish Trees, to me and my chickens. We enjoyed it very much and the artwork inside is adorable!

Other tidbits:
-Sarah at Spadazzle teaches English class in Japan with my book, The Penguin's Perfect Picnic! There are so many more cute penguin drawings from the kids. I hear a kid did a penguin manga, now this I have to see!

-Zime is doing something called Pay It Forward, in which you send a handmade gift to 3 blogger friends, and in return they do the same to 3 other blogger friends. I love the idea! I will do this too except I think I will make the gifts first, then post about it. (I owe at least 2 people some ATCs, so I am very backed up right now!)

Thats it for now. Stay cool in this heat, everyone.

My New favorite Children's books!

Last weekend, I went browsing at the Kinokuniya bookstore...checking out all the Re-Ment Miniatures and resisting the temptation to buy any...then only to discover these books instead- they are now my new favorite! I can't read Japanese ( I guess the Japanese I learned from watching anime isn't going to help me now) but after some research, I found out they are a popular series called "Bam & Kero" by Yuka Shimada.
Although I can't read the text, I can tell what is going on just by the pictures. They have a cute yet off-beat quirkiness and humor about them; my favorite combination.
Oh yes, and the illustrations are to die for. Yes, I want to live in that world. (I know this sounds really dramatic, but I am definitely in love with the art!)

I only bought two of the books but now I am tempted to buy the whole series. They are that wonderful!

Whats Up in the Coop

Its been too hot to blog! I've been:

READING:
-Giant Robot magazine with cover art and interview with James Jean. Good stuff.

-Computer Arts magazine: I splurged (import from the UK, comes with a disk. I spend $17, ouch!) mainly for the article/tutorial about creating textures with vectors. Haven't gone through the tutorial yet, I'll let you all know how that goes.

MAKING:
-Some cards for a friend who just graduated, and wanted to have custom cards to send to her professors.

THANKING:
Lisa, Tracy, Jenn and Mike for awarding me! I feel like the most popular chicken shack in town! ;-)

The rules for accepting the award are as follows:

1. Add the logo of the award to my site

2. Add a link to the person who awarded you

3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs

4. Add links to those blogs on your site

5. Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs

AWARDING:
Linda, Crystal, Sherry, Zime, Pati, Roz, Ellen

Stay cool, everyone!

Ben and Ruby Character Sketches

Thank you for all the comments on the I'm Reading Now series! Working on a big series like this, the most important thing is to have the character sketches down pat when I start. I got a short character description of the whole family, and here is what I came up with. Here, the main characters Ben and Ruby:

Ben is suppose to be 5 years old and Ruby is 4. Here they look a bit too old. Try again!

Better here. But what's up with the Elvis hair on Ben? And I was told the dress on Ruby was a bit too old fashioned (Hey, I would wear that cherry dress at 4!)

Perfect!

Ok, actually there were many more rounds back and forth with the art director and editors before I got it just right. But its better to get it right in the beginning than later.

And last but not least, a BIG shout out to Alicia Padrón's kids for their fantastic critique of my tree entry for The Wish Trees giveway! It was a gift in itself listening to their reaction (I've never heard directly from my audience before) and it truly confirms I am in the right profession! It was so gratifying and made me all warm and fuzzy inside!!! So thank you, Gabriel and Alexandra. And kudos for everyone who entered, I had alot of fun looking at everything!

I'm Reading Now! Series

I'm so excited to show these books after working on them for over a year. They are a series for Scholastic called I'm Reading Now! There are 4 sets to be published throughout the year, with the first set (shown here) coming out in September. Available through Scholastic Book Clubs.
Each set comes with 8 books, about the adventures of a 5 and 4 year old named Ben and Ruby.

I just recently finished the last set; it was sad to see Ben and Ruby go. But it was very rewarding to see the printed books for these- I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Happy July 4th to the folks in the US!