On the simplest level my intent is to tell a story with colorfully rendered, very finished pictures. I have a story and characters in my mind, but no writing talent or skill, nor any desire to write the story. I do have very strong visuals in my head and a clear understanding of what happens and why. Do good stories need to come from writers? Maybe; I can’t be sure; you see I’m too prejudiced in favor of picture makers. My motivation though is more than just not wanting to write or answer to a writer’s commands.
I can see the images printed nicely and distributed in a folder rather than a bound book. There could be blank matching sheets for writing longer form stories, some pages with spot drawings on them. It could be a nice little package. Kids could read my story and see the drawings in the order I placed them, but they could also re-order the images, add others from a small collection of alternatives included in the set, or they could eliminate ones not relevant. In the end, they create their story using my pictures. Pre schoolers could even use the opportunity to tell the story to their parents at bed time. First though, instead of releasing the printed images as my story, I’d like to make them available as a digital download so families or K-6 teachers could print them. Hopefully the images could provide a creative teaching and learning moment.
Last spring, as I drank lots of Inglebean coffee and walked around Millheim sketching locations for the illustrations that need a “place”, I imagined that local images might have a strong effect on kids who are familiar with the locations and would recognize the places in the illustrations. We’ll see. I need to finish them first. I’m figuring around 28 images in my story and a few extras to prompt other tales. I regret only posting this explanation now; I’d mentioned it on Facebook, but since that went away, this stuff seems much too arbitrary. Thanks. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, the mouse images are categorized as “A Mouse in Millheim” as is this post. If you click the category, all of the posts should be listed.
