Birthday by Susan L.

  My granddaughter's third birthday is coming up soon. For my grandson's third I wrote and illustrated a little book. I'd like to do the same for her but where to start? I've a couple of children's stories already written like the one about the cat's paw print in the brick. It 's a true story, the actual brick is near the front door at the centre.
  Let's think about this for a minute. The illustrations for that one are perhaps a bit more than I want to tackle. Hmmm, they could be simple black and white linear drawings with a pop of colour on each page. That would work.
  I'd need to do some research on brickmaking in the early twentieth century. There's the clothing the workers would wear that would need to be checked out at as well. Good thing for the internet.
  Pumpkin could serve as cat model although the cat in the story is female and someone recently told me there's no such thing as a ginger girl cat. If the image is black and white it wouldn't matter.
  The story itself has passed quality control. I read it to my grandson a while ago and he enjoyed it even without the pictures.
  I should talk to my daughter. She uses Shutterfly to do a calendar for us every year. I've seen wedding photo books done by the same company. It wouldn't be too difficult to scan and upload the pictures and text. Or I could do like I did for my grandson's book: colour photocopy the pages, laminate it and bind it with the plastic spine thingy.
  It wouldn't hurt to do a layout of the book with some thumbnail sketches of ideas. Planning has never been my strong point but it would help break this somewhat daunting task into manageable pieces.
  There was a medium sized sketch book in my stocking this year. It's paper with some stone in it that would be ideal for doing pen and ink final drawings. It's a nice size to work with.
  Now, where did I put that story?
  "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." Mat 6:34