It's Bath Time- Highlights Hello

I received these tiny books! They are the smallest format I have ever illustrated and so darn cute! Pages are really sturdy and since they are so small these books will fit wonderfully in toddlers' hands.

This is my favorite spread. I thought at brushing time, bunny should be brushing ducky too. :o)

Sometimes with board books there is not so much room to tell a parallel story with the illustrations as there is with Picture Books for example. Board books are very straight forward, usually with a few simple and easy to read images that little ones can really recognize. But I find there is always a way to make things interesting for little ones reading the book. I decided to give baby bunny a favorite toy, rubber ducky. So kids can look for ducky on every page, find him and look forward to the next page where they will look for him again.

Another great thing about illustrating books is that sometimes the power of an image can make the text change. For example, on this page, the text initially was "dry everywhere".

I decided instead of have dad dry bunny with a towel like on the left, it would be fun to have bunny shaking his little tail. I mean, what a better way to dry all over and fast right? Hehe.. Plus I just knew kids would really like that page. Luckily Highlights agreed with me, they really loved that illustration and decided to work the text around it.

So, never doubt sending your initial ideas of how you think a book should go. Send them your best possible interpretation of the book. These are sketches and they will go through a lot of eyes in the publishing house and a lot of revisions. People can't really guess what you have in mind. The best way to tell them is to show them your vision.

There is something so especial about creating books for babies. It's a book in it's simplest form. The thought of catching babies' attention and just thinking of baby snuggling with mom/dad looking with wonder at the book... It's a privilege to do this.

It's Bath Time is a delightful little book part of a set of books published by Highlights and goes along beautifully with their new magazine Highlights Hello. :o)