Eclair - Children's Book Illustration

I haven't been doing much personal illustration because a lot has been going on in my life the past 6 months. Not the least of which is that I'm now illustrating a children's book series by M. Weidenbenner. The first book is called Eclair Goes to Stella's and it's about a little girl whose parents need to leave her and her sister with their grandmother, Stella, for a while. Clair is super-duper, not-at-all psyched about this and tries everything she can to get out of it. But, Grandma's farm has it's perks, so she may yet be swayed.

It's not finished yet, but when it's available on Amazon I will certainly be posting a link.

Happily Ever After Children's Literature Festival

So after a not so profitable (but super fun) day at South Bend's Art Beat last Saturday, I've signed on to be at the Happily Ever After Children's Lit Fest this coming Sunday (August 25, 2-6 in Niles, MI). It's a fundraiser to help local families adopt children with special needs.

I really hope to adopt some day and I've seen how good it can be when families open their hearts to adoptive children, so I'm really excited to be a part of this. The tickets are $7 (kids 4 & under free) and there will be several children's authors there, children's books and children's games. I'll be donating a percentage of my sales to the cause and I'm providing a coloring page too. I'll post it on the blog afterward for people who couldn't be there. It should be a fantastic day, so if you're going to be in the area come on out!

Update: I actually won't be there, I just now realized I double booked myself, but there are still going to be lots of fun things happening and it's still a super good cause, so you should check it out!

Summer Reading

 I'm pretty certain that this girl is walking back from the library with some summer reading in hand. I never technically had summer reading assignments, but I have a little addiction to books and the library is one of the few places my parent's felt comfortable dropping me off for a few hours.

Parents want their kids to enjoy the library, but with all those suspicious librarians around, trying to corral you into the kids or YA section where they can keep an eye on you  it always felt like a form of rebellion, especially with friends. You get past the guards and sneak off into the depths of the library. Nobody knows where you are or what you're doing. You could be reading anything (no, seriously, anything). They don't know. You could meet up with anyone. They don't know. Heck, you don't know.

So in short, it was awesome.

My love affair with the library has waned a little bit since living in Indiana. The towns are smaller and so are the libraries. Worse, you can only get a card for your town. If you live in the city limits. If you don't live within the city limits of any town (a common occurrence here in the corn-field of America) - no books for you.  Should you desire access to other libraries you must pay for a non resident card, which can cost as much as $92 per year. or a PLAC, for the whole state. This year's is $50 - my local library did not advertise this option.

In Ohio you could get a card for any library. Or every library. They didn't care.
My mom had cards for at least four Ohio libraries and one more for a Florida library we went to during vacations every two years!

Indiana, free with guns, stingy with books.