Hey folks, here is newsletter issue #001. It’s just a little update on what I’m working on over the summer. Hope everyone is doing O K out there?
Somewhere in the depths of the last two years, I wrote and released a new book, When Cloud Became a Cloud, with Rise books. It is the first science book I’ve written and something I wanted to work on for a little while.
After working on three fiction picture books before that, I felt like taking a bit of a left turn. I knew I wanted to work on something non fiction and I’ve always loved the weird and interesting intersection of science/folklore. I like it when nature and imagination get a little mixed up.
So, first we wrote the text, which for me included lots of science research (I got to pretend I was an important person who might wear a lab coat [I did not wear lab coat]) and then try to weave it into a narrative where everything was living and breathing (and floating and raining).
Turning difficult ideas into simple visuals is one of my favourite things to try to do. How in the world do you draw the wind? Stuff like that.
The book takes a really interesting format too. We kind of envisioned it as a graphic novel for preschoolers. That meant we could take the practical story devices of graphic novels and also the big beautiful full page artworks of picture books.
I’m really pleased with what we managed to create with that book, and to land on an interesting format and a way of doing a science book that has a heart. So, to loop neatly back around the the beginning of the newsletter, this Summer I’ve been working on a kind of companion book to Cloud, all about 🥁🥁🥁🥁 the Moon!
I’m currently in the middle of the artwork and we finished the text in the Spring. It’s going to be a really, really, really cool book. There was way more research needed for this one because some of the concepts are super difficult to wrap your head around, and we’re going right the way back to the formation of Moon (which I’m not totally sure has been done before in a kids book?).
When Moon Became The Moon should be out next Summer, just in time for a bunch of new space missions to go back there. Anyhow, consider yourselves updated! I’ve been working on another book recently too, which is super fun, but I’ll save that for another time. Over and out for now.