I’m coming to you live from my car! I’m actually doing Veterinary surgery today—it’s a spay day at my old job for the OKP project which is the orphan kitty project through UC-Davis. It says I’m live so hopefully just give me like a thumbs up if you can actually see me. I want to be out of the clinic otherwise you wouldn’t be able to hear me you just hear a lot of meow-ing and people talking and everything.
So I just like taking my mask off in my car eating lunch I apologize this is my lunch break between surgeries so if I have food in my teeth, my bad my bad. So I wanted to give you guys an update. Since this is on my phone and I’m in my car I can’t look at my notes just for things that I want to remember but I just wanted to give a shout out to all the people who did my homework. Yay for you guys!
My homework was to tell me your favorite children’s book and then give me a reason why. Because there’s a lot of different things that people like and I want to make sure I can incorporate some of those main things that attract people to my children’s book. I’m continually writing a new books in this Veterinary children’s book series and I take your advice to heart.
But I also want to know I always liked taking in more knowledge about different children’s books and what’s beneficial to have in my own children’s books series. So thank you to Rachel thank you doll! And thank you to Charlotte! Thank you Anthony my husband, and Cheryl Barber for giving me some of your favorite books. I’m definitely going to check them out and do curbside library pick up and then check them out.
I’ll see if I can get any ideas to help facilitate more writing. So far I have about three books now that I’ve kind of written first drafts for. They’re somewhat related but I’m not sure yet which one I want to like, break out with so I’m still kind of working on it. I also last week that I am focusing on illustration now because it is a huge part of picture books. Illustrations are a huge part of “show me the story”. They are key if the kid is not at the level at where they can understand the words or the content. As you know veterinary content can sometimes be challenging. You know, talking about medications, you know about medication, like all those pills. Aren’t those like candies mommy?
So what I’ve gotten is a few ideas for book ideas from a couple people—shout out to Jenny and Matt. We had a really good break out session for talking about the book and future things so I have some pretty big ideas. Going to try to rein them in at this point and let me see what it would be like in big print.
So I’m leaning toward digital maybe some vector-based illustrations but I’ve seen some really talented artists. Artistic watercolor and traditional medium kind of things. Now if that is completely confusing you and you have no idea what I’m talking about, I was there like two or three days ago. You don’t realize how much is involved in art and picking an illustrator even.
Like, hey, do I just want to character development or do I want to character plus a background. Will I have rights to this character? I know I want to make a Veterinary children’s book series so do I want the right to use this for future books later. Certain characters that, you know, I own or do I want to negotiate something where I exclusively own all the illustrations which can be very difficult for an illustrator an artist who wants to show off their portfolio or get more get more offers for those.
Definitely crazy and then you think about the medium and styles. And I do want to pick what I want to represent and for kids to be attracted to it. Which would be great. It’s fancy for me but will kids be like, you know, “it’s not very colorful?” I don’t know it’s a little too overwhelming for me since”. So if you have kids please tell me your favorite children’s book or your favorite children’s… but maybe you can check out those illustrations and you can tell me what your kids especially gravitated to.
Thank you so much for reading and for supporting this project!
This is in addition to the “Paw-some Tier” quarterly video where Dr. Johnson will be sharing updates and what is happening behind the scenes for her book series.
DISCLOSURE: as this is not an official veterinary appointment, content provided by Dr. JaCiara Johnson cannot be treated as official veterinary advice.
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Receive Patreon-exclusive access to our website for Early Bird-level access to downloadable content, coloring pages, videos, and our BabyVetLoves Chocolate ebook!
FREE BabyVet MERCH! Every 3 months you stay with us we’ll send you one complimentary MERCH item from our Patreon platform, including but not limited to a BabyVet mug, poster of BabyVet to hang in your room, a BabyVetBooks organic tote bag, or a BabyVet Loves Chocolate character t-shirt!
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