I stumbled across another review of my book, “Good-bye, Baby Max” over at TheCelebrityCafe.com by Janet Pope :

“Mrs. B’s kindergarten class anxiously awaited the arrival of three baby chicks, which they have already named. But Max, the last one to hatch, doesn’t make it into the world. The next morning, Mrs. B has to break the sad news to the class. The rest of the story, told in rhyming text, shows how the children and the teacher handle their grief. “Silence falls over the room. Liz and Rob begin to cry. ‘Don’t worry,’ says Mrs. B. ‘We’ll find a way to say good-bye.’”

This simple and tender story takes a look at an occurrence that most every child, unfortunately experiences at least once during their childhood - the death of a class pet or a pet of their own. The colorful illustrations by Heather Castles are soft and muted, adding to the seriousness of the subject. The expressions on the faces of the multi-cultural children are precious and touching.

This a a great book for any young child experiencing a loss, especially appropriate for ages 4 through 8. This is a difficult subject to approach with a young child and this book would ease that conversation.”

Another down-to-earth way to be responsible for the products we purchase: Eco-Libris encourages avid book lovers to donate $1 for each book they purchase, which will go towards planting trees to offset the consumed paper. You even get a nifty recycled sticker to put inside your book to boast it’s new green qualities.

While book publishers are starting to print books with more recycled & FSC-certified content, they are still a far cry from making books sustainable, which means the books we purchase & love are still not as “green” as they can be. While many other companies are going paperless, the book publishing industry depends on paper consumption as alternative resources are still too expensive for their bottom line. The more book lovers are concerned & aware of the impact the publishing industry has on their environment, the more pressure it will put on them to make changes towards sustainable books.

So booklovers, think of putting a little something back in the ground for the little something that was taken out to make your book. Check out Eco-Libris and donate to plant trees for each of your favourite books… or go all-out and make your home library greener! Buy a few extra stickers to stick in the books you give to your family & friends.

Illustrators & Authors can take it a step further… consider buying stickers to give out at your next book signing. Or check out Eco-Libris’ Publishers & Authors program to find out how you can print Eco-Libris’ logo on the cover of your upcoming picturebook!

I came across a kind review by S.V. Swamy in India, reviewing our book, Good-bye, Baby Max : “Good-bye, Baby Max is a beautifully written and equally (or more importantly) beautifully illustrated book for children in the suggested age group of 4 to 8 years. For the children in the younger part of this age group, the parents or elder children and other care givers can help in reading and also deal with the emotions that may arise…. The illustrations are beautiful and help to invoke the right feelings. The book tells children some important things about life: Life is a struggle and everyone doesn’t make it. It is OK to cry and mourn those who fail and fall down. But life is about accepting the loss and moving on and seeing the emergence of new life. The children can be encouraged to read, explore and analyze the emotions that well up….”

Diane & Rich Cantrell just passed this review by Ernest Dempsey onto me for our book, “Good-bye, Baby Max:”

“Many children books are printed each month to amuse kids of varying ages. This colorful, hardcover children’s title Good-bye, Baby Max (Bridgeway Books, Texas, 2007) by Diane Cantrell & Heather Castles is special in its purpose of teaching an invaluable lesson: that of properly saying the final farewell to a loved one who is no more. The book tells the story of the unfortunate baby chick Max who doesn’t make it into life while his twins Dora and Spiderman appear healthy out of their shells. The kids, eagerly awaiting the birth of the chicks, are heartbroken over the death of Baby Max and so their teacher uses her wisdom and care to lead them toward the appropriate way of showing their love and expressing their grief.

The importance of involving children in mourning is increasingly being acknowledged by developmental psychologists since children do sense the loss no matter how much they are coaxed into believing that ‘everything is ok.’ By being left out with the ‘mystery’, their wee minds are inclined to conclude that something terribly wrong has happened; something that is not worth speaking. This sows the seeds of fear and detachment in their mental development. Being a Licensed Professional Counselor and former KG teacher, Diane Cantrell has created a very purposeful book for children-one that is at once a story, a poem, and a healthy course of helping children get over grief. The book’s illustrations by Heather Castles are very appealing to a child’s imagination. There is a good deal here in Good-bye, Baby Max to learn for children ages 4 to 8 years and the 32-pages book is a must read for all kids of this age category.”

I just finished painting the last of the illustrations for Tom Krause’s “The Little Boy’s Smile” Not a day too soon as I’m taking some time off for maternity leave tomorrow! I will to leave you in suspense as to how the rest of the illustrations turned out until they are all approved & sent to the printer… but in the mean time, here are a couple of my favourites from the book  :)

Yippee, another one of my children’s books has hit the virtual shelves… The James Family’s “Little Land Adventures” is now available online at Amazon.com! Book 1 features the adventures of Little Bird, Little Iguana, Little Racoon, and Little Pig… four of the many characters that live in Little Land! These illustrations were a lot of fun to do…. illustrated entirely with a plain old HB graphite pencil, then tinted with a little colour in Photoshop (check out my Photoshop tutorial here.)

I was listening to Just One More Book podcast today, in which Jane Ray talked about In The Picture, a project aimed to encourage illustrators, authors & publisher to include disabled children in their books for young readers. As written in their 10 Guiding Principals, “The point is not that disabled children should be the prime focus of stories or pictures: simply they should be there, a natural feature of every child’s landscape.” The program encourages the inclusion of disabled children in children’s stories and picturebooks… it is not aiming to create a seperate strain of books for disabled children, but to acknowledge that disabled people are part of our society.

I appreciated Jane discussing how some illustrators feel unsure of how to portray disabled children in their illustrations in a way that does not offend the disabled children themselves. To help encourage illustrators to include disabled children in their works, the In The Picture website has an Image Bank which has a variety of photographic resources illustrators can draw upon. There is also an Inspiration gallery where illustrators have posted their works of disabled children to inspire & encourage other illustrators to do the same… my favourite childhood illustrator, Quentin Blake, contributed 3 works, one of which is shown above.

Today I finished four of the 12 illustrations for children’s book “Tartan Meets the Queen,” by Charline Crous & Lauren Everton… thought I’d share a sneak peak!

So these illustrations start out as just plain old graphite pencil drawings (above), and I tint them with colour digitally in Photoshop.

I’m LOVING the new paper I’m using for this book, it’s a very smooth, white bristol-type board… much nicer to draw with pencil on than cold-press illustration board.

I also discovered a new favourite tool… the Staedtler “Mars rasor” eraser pencil with brush. It’s one of those hard erasers, and it’s lovely because I can sharpen it to erase those tiny little details that are hard to get crisp with a kneaded or rubber eraser.

To see other posts on “Tartan Meets the Queen,” check out :

• • Tartan Meets the Queen | Sketches
• • Tartan Meets the Queen | Concept Boards

“Tartan Meets the Queen” © Charline Crous & Lauren Everton, Illustrations © Heather Castles

Aw, this really made my day… our book “Spotty & Eddie Learn to Compromise” just had a lovely review over at the Just One More Book podcast! I didn’t even realize my colleague, author Lisa M. Chalifoux, had sent a copy of our book to Mark & Andrea! Funny thing is, I’m still waiting to flip through a hard copy of the book myself… my copies arrive from Canada with my folks when they visit me in Australia for the birth of my first baby in 3 weeks. Anyway, enough rambling, you can click here to read the comments & listen to the podcast at Just One More Book!

Ok, just one more peak, but that’s the last one as I need to knuckle down and finish the last five illustrations this week! The main things I’ve been working on are the greenery, sidewalks, tents, and backgrounds… putting off the hard parts for last, typical me :)

I tried a new trick too… I’ve seen quite a few digital illustrations which which use silhouettes of people, rather than illustrating every detail of the person, clothing, etc. So I thought I’d give it a go, and added in some silhouettes of people in the far background to add more depth & a sense that there are a lot of people in the illustration. Am pleased with the effect, as it was a simple way of adding some interest behind the action in the foreground, without taking the time it would had I gone in with my 0-Paintbrush and tried to illustrate those tiny faces & bodies! I think I’ll use this silhouette technique more often.