After only sharing a handful of samples from each book, I’m going back and posting each collection in its entirety for the first time since publication (writing this in 2018). There were three ‘Time and Money’ books (grades 1, 2 & 3) that I did in 1998, and this is the first volume, Grade 1.

This was the first assignment I had for Instructional Fair, a collaboration that would last through 2004 (when the company was gobbled up by a larger corporation). This was a very enjoyable working relationship, mostly with Kate Wheeler, the art director (and sometimes her superior Annette Hollister-Papp). Out of all the work I was doing in these early years, I think some of the cartoons I did for Instructional Fair were some of my best work, and still seem to hold up well twenty years later.

You can definitely see the evolution of my cartooning style from this, the first assignment, through the other books. This first book harkens back to the type of illustrations I was doing for Metro Creative Graphics, Gemini Publications and Metro Detroit Parent over the past five years. The sheer volume and repetition of each of these books served to put me through “cartoon school”, and I felt I came out of the experience with a richer, varied style, for which I am extremely grateful.

Out of the three ‘Time and Money’ books, this one was the most work, although many of the illustrations were on the smaller side. And, as with the other two volumes, I did not draw any of the coins or dollar bills, as these were provided for me by the designer and I was asked to build illustrations around them.