In honor of Banned Books Week, I've illustrated one of my favorite Judy Blume quotes:
"Having the freedom to read and the freedom to choose is one of the best gifts my parents ever gave me."
I was lucky that way, too. My father used to take the whole family to our local public library every week, and we kids could choose whatever books we wanted. My parents never questioned my choices, and I will always be grateful to them for that trust.
You can download a free, print-ready poster here.
Also see my Print-Ready Archives as well as my Illustrating Judy Blume resource.
Above: I love teacher Colby Sharp's enthusiasm for reading and how he shares it with his students. "READING IS AWESOME!"
Thanks to Colby for letting me use his classroom as photo reference for some of the illustrations I did for the Judy Blume chapter books. He and my teacher friend Allison Durno were kind enough to share reference photos with me during the process.
Here's how my illustration for pg 7 of THE ONE IN THE MIDDLE IS THE GREEN KANGAROO (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster, 2014) began:
Then it became this:
Then I referred to a couple of stills from a short video that Colby sent me:
Video still courtesy Colby Sharp, reposted with permission.
Video still courtesy Colby Sharp, reposted with permission.
and the illustration became this:
Then Simon & Schuster art director Lauren Rille worked her magic and here's the final page layout:
In thanks for the photo ref, I put Colby in the auditorium crowd near the end of the book:
So fun!
Anyway, do check out Colby's SharpRead blog and the Nerdy Book Club, which he co-founded.
Read more about how Simon & Schuster's Lauren Rille and I created a new look for Judy Blume classics at the Nerdy Book Club.
To find out more about the Judy Blume books I illustrated, see my Illustrating Judy Blume page. I'll also be talking about the process during a panel discussion at the INSPIRE! Toronto Book Fair on Sunday, November 16th on the Spark Stage at 1 pm.
"Do not let anyone discourage you. If they try: get determined, not depressed." - Judy Blume
I'm delighted and honoured to be a Sharp-Schu Trifecta guest today. Please do go visit their blogs today to find out more about how I helped create the new look for Judy Blume classics like Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret and Freckle Juice.
On the Mr. Schu Reads blog, K-5 teacher-librarian John Schu congratulates new book releases and then explains the Sharp-Schu Trifecta, with links to my Nerdy Book Club guest post and Colby Sharp's interview with me about the Judy Blue project. He also provides some wonderful Judy Blume videos, quotes and resources. Do read to the end of his blog post, where you'll find a great anecdote about meeting Ms. Blume for the first time.
On the Nerdy Book Club blog, I wrote a guest post with help from my Judy Blume project art director Lauren Rille. Find out why I was terror-stricken as well as ecstatic when I found out I was going to be a Judy Blume illustrator, how the new covers got created, samples of my early sketches, insights from Lauren Rille about the process, a request from Ms. Blume about cultural diversity.
On Sharpread, Colby Sharp does a 5,4,3,2,1 interview with me, which means he gave me five questions which I need to answer with 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 sentence. :-D I had a lot of fun with this.
Thanks so much to Colby Sharp and John Schu for inviting me to be part of their Trifecta today, and to Cindy Minnich for her help with my Nerdy Book Club guest post!
