Why I make kids books

I started when covid began in early 2020

During my recent illness with Covid I've thought a lot about hope, love and community, how we create the world together. I have long approached my art making as if I'm making a gift for a friend. I will pick a person in my life and make a painting or 3d artist book “for" them - even if I don't tell the person that I did so and the finished art goes to one of my commercial galleries for exhibit and sale to someone else.

In early 2020 when the world had shut down, as covid ran rampant, a friend texted me worrying aloud about getting her 2 year old twin grandchildren new books to read. Since my professional background is graphic design, fine art and writing I thought “well I can do something about my friends desire for a new book for her grandkids”. Just days before getting the text from my friend I had gotten an email from a print on demand company I had done business with in the past asking me if I had anything at all they could print. They were practicing social distancing standards at the company and were struggling to maintain…

So over the next weeks I wrote a poem and illustrated it with the idea of helping both my friend and a printer I've worked with in the past.

It was one of the fastest art projects I've ever done. The world felt dire, people were dying, so stressing and worrying over the “properness” of my artwork felt superfluous. Of course I did my best to write and draw well, I just ceased to be concerned about “my career" and how self-publishing a children’s book in this manner might appear within the context of whatever work I wanted to do in the future. After all in early 2020 death seemed ever present and even probable. Having had in very recent weeks, in the year 2023, my first personal bout of Covid and knowing how rough that's been on me even after having had all of the vaccines and boosters, I shudder anew to think of those conditions in early 2020.

Anyhoo, over a few weeks in March and April 2020 I created the 26 artworks for my alphabet book “Alphapets” by hand using ink and gouache, scanned all of the artwork, typed in the poem I had written and uploaded everything digitally to Blurb.com self-publishing it on April 26 2020. Once I had the link to my finished book Alphapets set up in a way that it could be ordered online and a newly printed book shipped directly to someone (remember these were the days of no-contact quarantine in 2020) I texted my friend about the printed book and shared the link so she could order it and have it shipped to her grandkids.

After contacting my friend I thought “that's that” and turned off all of my devices so that my wife and I could have dinner and see a movie together. After the movie was over I turned on my smartphone. To my surprise I had about a dozen notifications; emails, texts, direct messages on Instagram and Facebook and just about every other way a person can be contacted these digital days. All of these notifications were from Storyberries, a children's book publishing distribution company I'd never heard of, asking me to please contact them because they wanted to distribute an ebook version of my new book Alphapets.

Long story short I researched Storyberries - they distribute free ebooks for kids of all ages - and decided to go for it. Below is a screenshot of Alphapets on Storyberries.com link here.

The rest, as they say, is history - as of this writing, June 2023, I've now created 20 books (search on the Storyberries site for my name) all of which are freely available via Storyberries.com They're all gifts from me to people I love. Each book was born of hope, hope we'll all make it through these difficult times together. This is is why I make kids books - why I make everything really - because of hope and love.

Anyhoo, my book Alphapets is where my kids book creation began! You can see all of Alphapets for free here on Storyberries. You can also preview the entire printed book version here (you can order a print copy here too).

Creativity is a gift. Community is a gift. Love is a gift. Life is a gift. And the very existence of these gifts is what makes me hopeful.

True, art supplies cost money and I can't afford to give away all of my work for free because if I did then I wouldn't be able to make more art. Financial support does matter but I don't think we have to be ruthlessly mercenary about it we can instead be communally minded. We can choose to be gifts to each other and mutual support for each other. I'm very aware as I recover from covid how very much community support means to me - thank you, dear friends and family who have offered to porch drop groceries, flowers, mowed our lawn and who have otherwise checked on us. Thank you to the subscribers who upgraded their subscription to paid in order to support and encourage me during this time. Thank you so much!!

If you're one of my paid subscribers you can download, from the button below the paywall, an ebook version of Alphapets to have on your own device to share with people you love. Thank you for all of your support - we are indeed creating the world together. And I love it!!

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