In November and December of 1999 I had the second of two full color book assignments for Instructional Fair. I had been doing mostly black and white cartoon work for this client for a couple years, and these two books were a chance to really stretch out and try something a bit more ambitious.

This book was the 2nd of the two, and consisted of two unrelated stories. One about a mystery man who arrives in a vaguely European town and proceeds to pull a number of inexplicable objects from his satchel, and then put them back in. The second story was about a boy who imagines a group of small creatures living in the pipes under his kitchen sink. I got the impression that the main purpose of these books were in introducing specific words to a young reader’s vocabulary, and the stories were sort of cobbled together around this laundry list of words.

I tried to tie the two stories together by including the ‘under the sink creatures’ as a decorative motif at the base of the fountain. Not sure if it was noticeable enough. I certainly seemed to enjoy the challenge of the second half of the book much more than the first half, although in retrospect, the blue and pink were poor color choices for the characters.

Previously, I had only shared a couple sample illustrations from this book, but am going back in 2018 to be a bit more completist, and have shared all the illustrations for the first time since publication.

As a side note, I had given away my free author’s copies of both of these books years ago, and recently tried to find them on eBay. For some reason, this particular title is very hard to find, and copies are going for several hundred dollars (while “Mother Goose News” the other title I did around the same time, is still very reasonable priced as a used book). Guess I’ll keep looking.

Also, as a bonus, here’s an alternate cover illustration that was never used (although it may have been used as a frontispiece for the book, I can’t remember).

One of two ‘Challenge Your Child’ books that I did in the latter part of 1999. I would do two more of these books in the beginning of the following year. This one, like all four books in the series, were very labor intensive, in the neighborhood of 200 illustrations each. This is the first time I’m sharing all the illustrations in the project since publication. (writing this in 2018) – Anyways, here’s all the illustrations for “Grade One”:

 

One of two ‘Challenge Your Child’ workbooks that I would illustrate for Instructional Fair in the fourth quarter of 1999 (I would do two more in the early part of the following year). These were very labor intensive, with hundreds of spot illustrations each, puzzles, games and activities. I’ve shared a few sample illustrations in the past, but am now going back and posting each of the books in its entirety (writing this in 2018). So, for the first time since publication, here’s all the illustrations for “Challenge Your Child Kindergarten”: