The Seven Chairs

Illustrated children’s book, 2020

I created this book as a collaboration with my niece, Amelia. She wrote the story in January 2020 for a school project where she was given a title “The Seven Chairs” and one sentence of the story: “The fifth one ended up in France.” Her job was to come up with the rest of the story. She chose three dogs to be the stars of her mystery: Chester, Leo and Lucy, which happen to be the same names as three of my beloved former dogs. Since my dogs were the ones having the adventures, I asked her if I could make the illustrations to go along with her story. I invited a bunch of other pets belonging to family and friends to come and be the party guests, so you’ll also get to meet Jack, Oscar, Binx, Cheetah, Boule, Penny and Pike. You can see a photo of Amelia’s original story on the “about the author and illustrator” page at the end of the book.

Every page is a hand-cut paper illustration made from colored, patterned and painted paper. You’ll even see bits of hand-made and hand-marbled paper and lots of textural details. I scanned each illustration and assembled the book digitally to add text. It was printed as an 8×10 inch paperback.