Monday, January 3, 2011

Celebrating my new Scholastic Lift-the-Flap Book: What Does Cow Say?

I hope you'll join me in celebrating my new rhyming lift-the-large-flap board book from Scholastic/Cartwheel Books, What Does Cow Say?



Story scoop: These farm animals have big mouths! When the sun came up, Duck went Quack which woke his neighbor, Cow, who went MOO, which woke Rooster who went Cock-a-doodle-doo. . . As each animal awakens, totz can guess what it says and open its big-flap beak, snout, or mouth to read its signature sound. The final spread shows a child waking up--with open arms and a final HOORAY! to welcome the day!

Art scoop: Instead of a manuscript, I submitted this 2-page dummy to Scholastic/Cartwheel for consideration. All the mouths had working flaps taped over them, so they'd lift to reveal the animal sound below. A lot goes into creating these seemingly uncomplicated books. For instance, the title and some of the text changed during the editing process. And as you can see, artist Jannie Ho made the book way cuter than my proposal.












Lucky me to have Jannie illustrate this book! She studied illustration at Parsons School of Design in NYC, and was a designer at Nickelodeon, Scholastic, and associate art director at TIME Magazine for Kids before becoming a full-time illustrator. Wow!

~ Joan Holub

What Does Cow Say?
Author: Joan Holub
Illustrator: Jannie Ho
Scholastic, Cartwheel Books, January 2011

8 comments:

Nina Crittenden said...

Looks delightful! Congratulations!!!

Joan Holub said...

Thanks, Nina!

Unknown said...

Congrats on the new book!!!! Love the idea and I love Jannie's work!!!

Ellen M. Tsagaris said...

Congratulations; this is a grest series!

Dr. E

Joan Holub said...

Thanks, Diana. I love Jannie's work, too. I'm 'following' your blog now. Your work is lovely!

Joan Holub said...

Dr. E! I'm a fan of vintage dolls, too. I enjoyed your blog.

I'm glad you're enjoying the Goddess Girls! Thanks for stopping by.

Tracy said...

Adorable...I'm a huge fan of Jannie's work, too! Thanks for posting your 'dummy' book for us to see your ideas before and after. :)

Joan Holub said...

Thanks for stopping by, Tracy. I was just over at your blog. Your illustrations are so cute. Lucky kindergarteners in your class!