I have two main ideas for children book illustration, that go in different directions.

One is to only create a cover page based on the theme “Book as a bridge to other forms of arts” it can be fictional.

The other is a dino-related one, it will be non-fiction. I already gathered a lot of documentation and knowledge, but there are still work to do to make it appealing to children. I am excited for these challenges!

Therefore, I collected a variety of children books. Some more for their inspiring illustrations, some more for their content. Some for both reasons!

It is a nice experience to look at the books with a focus purpose in mind. And I like the validation about getting inspired by others to create our own universe. Thanks for the course

 

Here is my list of books I selected from the library and the reasons I took them:

 

Title: All in a drop | How Antony van Leeuwenhoek discovered an Invisible World
Author: Lori Alexander
Illustrator: Vivien Mildenberger
Publisher: Clarion Books, 2019

Focus points:

• Non-fiction: biography
• illustration style with watercolor
• how the characters are depicted with their emotions (happiness, wonders, fears,…)
• the way the scientific tools and discoveries are showed
• the story itself (biography of scientific discoveries from a tradesman without scientific background)

 

Title: A green place to be | The creation of Central Park
Author: Ashley Benham Yazdani
Illustrator: Ashley Benham Yazdani
Publisher: Candlewick, 2019

Focus points:

• Non-fiction
• The watercolor / colored pencil style
• Characters style and emotions
• Lots of details in the page, that adds fun touches
• Alternance between page full of illustrations and more simple ones
• Conveying ideas sharing (instead of a speech bubble it’s a drawing bubble)
• As soon as it was mentioned in the lecture, I browsed online to see if my library had it!

 

Title: Pa, me, and our sidewalk pantry

Author: Toni Buzzeo
Illustrator: Zara Gonzalez Hoang
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, 2023

Focus points:

• Fiction
• The watercolor / colored pencil style
• Characters style and emotions
• Vibrant colors, yet soft

 

Title: The good little book

Author: Kyo Maclear
Illustrator: Marion Arbona
Publisher: Tundra Books, 2015

Focus point:

• Fiction
• Theme of the book: book, how it makes the reader travels, it follows them

 

Title: Wild Girl

How to have incredible outdoor adventures

Author: Helen Skelton
Illustrator: Liz Kay

Publisher: Candlewick, 2019

Focus points:

• Hand lettering of the cover page
• Non-fiction: Documentary style
• Layout of the pages: mixed media with pictures, drawings, texts = documentary type

 

Title: A child of books

Author: Oliver Jeffers, Sam Winston
Illustrator: Oliver Jeffers, Sam Winston

Publisher: Candlewick, 2016

Focus points:

• Content: children’s classics, encourage to explore
• Twisting the use of:
  • typography, to draw landscape
  • fore edges of books to illustrate a forest
  • accumulation of letters to create darkness
  • collages of cutout pieces from illustrated books
• Limited color palette (white, grey and brown, some blue for the main character) à a good way to remember her throughout the pages. Colors appeared by the end as fireworks

  

Title: Eraser

Author: Anna Kang
Illustrator: Christopher Weyant

Publisher: Two Lions, 2018

 Focus points:

• Fictional
• Watercolor and colored pencil, gentle atmosphere
• Using objects and make them as humans, with emotions and actions
• Cute drawings: big eyes
• Tackle “figuring out who you are, finding happiness” and embracing mistakes

 

Title: Life savers

Spend a day with real-life emergency service heroes

Author: Eryl Nash

Illustrator: Ana Albero

Publisher: Two Lions, 2018

Focus points:

• Non-fictional
• “Simple” geometrical shapes for the drawings, mostly plain colors, no shades
• Characters cartoony style
• The big pages full of illustrations to show the tools the life savers use

 

Title: Thanksgiving day

Author: Anne Rockwell

Illustrator: Lizzy Rockwell

Publisher: Harper Trophy, 1999

Focus points:

• Fictional to disclose historical non-fictional event
• Colored pencils illustrations
• Playful children (source of inspiration to draw children)

 

 

Thanks again for the course! Looking forward to progress on my projects.