Sneak Peek: Cool Stuff!

Heya Kiddos!

Miss Melanie has been a busy bee and she has been making some neat things to help promote my book!

Firstly, she has come up with something called Little Water Heroes, a water fan club of sorts that encourages kids to make the right choices to help conserve water! It's still a new thing, and it is a bit of a surprise for the author, Mr H., who may or may not have caught on by now... hee hee! He'll be sure to find out soon enough, when she visits the class in June! (Or if he's reading about it now? SURPRISE!!!!)

Melanie has also designed bookmarks and neat buttons to promote Little Water Heroes and ME, Little Raindrop! It's a great idea to get kids excited about preserving, protecting, and promoting clean water!

She sent me a few snapshots of her projects, and she's been sharing them on Twitter, too!

bookmark design ©2012 Melanie Linden Chan

button design ©2012 Melanie Linden Chan

I wonder what else that clever artist has up her sleeve?! We'll just have to wait and see! Until then, take the Little Water Hero pledge, and become a Little Water Hero!

See ya 'round the water cycle!
-LR

Updated Cover Art!

Hullo! 

You've seen a sample of the cover art before, but here's what it looks like now!

Art © 2012 Melanie Linden Chan

You might have heard that our book dummy has grown to be a whole TWO chapters now! I am getting advice from friends and family, artists and writers, parents and teachers, and even kids on what they think of the book so far. 

Mr. H brought the book dummy to his classroom of third graders (we call them The Pro's) today, and he is videotaping their reactions to the book! He will be sending me the DVD by the end of the week, and I can't WAIT to hear what everyone has to say about Little Raindrop's story so far! I'm super excited!!!

I also have some GOOD NEWS to share with you, and a SURPRISE, too! But I'm not quite ready to tell you just yet... well, I am, but I'm not about to ruin the surprise!

I'll be back to let you know how The Pro's like the book!

Don't let the the sprinkler run for too long!

~Miss Melanie

Character Art: Little Raindrop's New Friends!

Hi There!


I've been working on new character designs this week! Little Raindrop will be meeting lots of new friends on his travels, and I've been sketching up all kinds of water drops to see what I come up with! Here is the whole gang, as I have been drawing them so far:

There will be more, and I'll keep you updated, as always! Until then, keep checking my sketchbook to see if anything new pops up!


Thanks for visiting!
~Miss Melanie

Mr. H's Class to the Rescue!

Hello, Readers!


A part of my job as illustrator is to not just draw the pictures, but to also draw them again and again! An illustrator does multiple sketches for each illustration to test out layouts and different ideas. Sometimes it is very hard to decide which idea to follow through with, and the artist will get feedback from friends, family, and other art professionals.


Lucky for me, I have Mr. H's class to help me when I need some feedback!


This happened recently, when I could not decide between three different layout designs. I sent my designs to Mr. H and he took a vote from the class:

    

The group decided which layout they liked best... and they even wrote to tell me why!

Thanks for all your help, kids!


To learn more about how a book is made, check out "How A Book is Made" by Aliki! It looks like this:

 Have a great week!
~Miss Melanie

New Activity Page: Predator Pairs and Crabby Cumulonimbus!

Hi Kids!


I've just about finished sketching up all of Chapter One in Little Raindrop's chapter book. And the cool thing about that is... at the end of each chapter is a fun Activity Page! Woo hoo!

Here is a sample of what it will look like:

Mr. H and I wanted to test out the activity pages on his class of third-graders. They are EXPERTS on activity pages! Here is some of what they did:

Mr. H also drew up an activity page to help the kids understand the water cycle a bit more. This is what it looks like:

And this is what some of the kids did with their pages:

GREAT JOB, Everybody!!! 


It looks like we're on the right track with these activities! I plan to make them less sketchy looking and more official looking, and you'll be able to view and print them from the main Activities page when they are complete! Although, I won't be able to share ALL of the activities from Little Raindrop's book... you'll have to wait and see once the book is finished!


Thanks for reading!
~Miss Melanie

Sneak Peek: The Art of Pages 2 & 3!

The text is TOP SECRET! So we erased it before sharing the art!

To learn more about how this page was made, click here!

My #NY12SCBWI Adventure!

Hiya Little Water Heroes!

Boy oh boy, did I have an AMAZING weekend! I went with my illustrator Melanie to the SCBWI conference in New York City! If you wonder why it rained... well, golly, that was me and my rain buddies! But Melanie was kind enough to carry me around in her water bottle, so I could meet lots of neat new people.

And you know what else she did? Melanie brought with her a partial Book Dummy of my story to display next to her portfolio in the Portfolio Showcase! We learned that about 300 professionals from the children's book industry got to see it! What's a Book Dummy? Well it's a rough copy of what the book will look like when it's done. It isn't the finished product, but it's still a great sample to share with friends!

This is what it looks like right now:

Isn't that neat?!?! I think so too!

Do you know what else is neat? You can be a Water Hero by asking your parents to fix that leaky faucet! Lots and lots of gallons of fresh drinking water can be saved by just doing that one little thing. Clean drinking water is very special and important to protect, so keep up the good work!

Later, alligator!

~LR