One of the most fun projects I worked on during 2022 was for the educational unit "FOUNDATIONS OF LITERACY AND CHILDREN'S LITERATURE FOR EARLY READING".

Let's call it EDEN500 for short.

As the longer title explains, EDEN500 was a grounding for students on the successful production of illustrated children's books, and as an exemplar unit, I was asked to go above and beyond our standardised university banners for each week of the course.

Originally the plan was to simply provide examples of artistic styles and narrative themes for each week, but I kept coming back a fun idea: let's tell a different story within each week, using the introductory banner as a kick-off, and touching base through the course work to provide a through-line for the students, a very flexible narrative, so a lot of the fun was piecing the story together using the scant fragments offered through the week's work. 

As an mockup, I created "A Rocketship to Mars" for Week 1...

Produced in a rough, child-like fashion, the initial banner design contained enough elements to be extracted and replicated throughout the week's course work as dividers.

And eventually, at the end of the week's contents, we arrive at the red planet...

This plan was whole-heartedly accepted by staff and academics, and I proceeded to construct new narratives and new artwork (in new styles) for the proceeding weeks.

The story of a balloon, who decides to leave behind the stuffy confines of their old bunch...

... and finds acceptance with a new bunch.

  

An investigation, in the style of Richard Scarry's mid-century anthropomorphised animal Golden Books 

Which ends in friendship and togetherness.

     

What's scarier than looking outside your window to see a dinosaur?

A dinosaur looking inside your window to see you!

    

The story of a kid and their bubble bath, and their amazing knack for impressions...

Followed by their great escape!

And Week Eight told the story of a teddy bear* with a missing eye.

And their attempts...

to find a suitable replacement

Before deciding to just accept who they are.

Of course, I had to have a favourite week.

And I thought I would leave it til the very last.

Here is the story of Week Six.

Once upon a time, there was a little fish, who lived in a school,
surrounded by many, many, many other fish.

If there was one thing that the little fish wanted more than anything else,
it was a quiet little place where he could be all alone.

So one day, the little fish decided he would go for a swim, and see if he could find a quiet, little place, just for him.

He swam and he swam. and then he kept on swimming. Past the rocks and through the coral, the little fish swam, looking for that quiet, little place he could call his own.

Just as he was wondering if he would ever find a place that was quiet and peaceful, and he could be all alone, if came across a little cave. 

It was small, and quiet, and just the right size for the little fish.

So he swam into the little cave, and decided that this was the very place that he had been looking for the whole time.

Finally, he had found his little quiet place, a place where he could finally be all alone.

(rim shot)

and you're welcome.