Horse Magic
Children’s books have always been something I would like to do. My grandmother wrote a book which I never found (learned about that before the days of internet and have since forgotten the title, sigh) When I was in the fifth grade I wrote and illustrated a book about an African Lion who was nearsighted and couldn’t see danger approaching. As a little background, let’s just say everyone in my family wore eyeglasses, and there was a good bit of this said, “Hey Jean, what’s that sign say…Hey Jean what kind of bird is that up there.” I felt like a scout. My eyes didn’t stay sharp but I felt it effected how I wrote the book. The lion needed help from the giraffe, the birds, the monkeys to help sound the alarm for the pride and territory of incoming danger. The lion didn’t want to ruin his image by wearing eyeglasses. Eventually he was persuaded to get fitted for eyeglasses and everyone still loved him. Imagine! I don’t have any pictures of the book which was a full 11×14 with colored pencil drawings. My dad put it in storage and then it flooded. I remembered all this when a friend forwarded this youtube video about Jarrett J. Krosocs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIzSYH8taQw&feature=youtube_gdata_player
So for my friend’s daughter’s birthday I wanted to do a coloring book of her favorite things. Holly’s favorite thing is horses. At first I was thinking of an alphabet book of all the horse breeds. But, her dad is an artist and that idea lacks magic and imagination. Sigh. Then I remembered my favorite book from KG or first grade. Susan Jeffers is the illustrator. Her bio link is here… http://www.susanjeffers-art.com/BioFrameset.html
The book “Pretty Horses” copyright 1974 is about a little girl who falls asleep and dreams of horses. The words are the lullaby lyrics “All the pretty horses”. As an example of how attached I am to the book, it is still on my shelf. Sigh.
So my ideas are going in the direction of something concrete in origin like realistic illustrations and then morphing into a fanciful direction full of whimsy. It needs to have some humor and be appealing to a two year old. Tall order. I’ll keep you posted over the next several weeks how it develops.
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- A is for Appaloosa
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- B is for Belgian