Birthday Book, part one

For my birthday two years ago, my then-almost-five-year-old nephew made me a book. It's been on our coffee table ever since, but the colors are fading rapidly, because he drew it using those "Color Wonder" markers that only work on certain kinds of paper. Good for avoiding messes; bad for archival purposes. Since the book is too precious to lose, we decided to make a digital copy, which means I can now share the book with all of you. The husband scanned it and then I increased the contrast to bring out the many different colors, an important element of the artwork (notice how many times he switched markers!). That's also why the paper looks so blotchy and yellow, by the way.

So, this is the cover -- click to see it bigger.


The artist explained it all to me at the time. I believe that's an octopus up top -- note the suckers on his many legs. There's a very detailed "X-ray fish" in the center, and a jellyfish (with a sideways smile) in the bottom left corner. He also wrote his address here on the first page, so either that's the title or he's combined the title and copyright pages. (I scribbled out the street number to protect his privacy, but I can tell you at least one of the digits is backward.) As for the part in blue, my sister told me he asked her, "Mom, how do you spell 'to'?" And then, before she could answer, he said, "...Oh, 'two'!" And so he wrote "2MOLLIE," Prince-style.

Stay tuned for the next page... And in the meantime, you can visit the Mother Load blog for more of Connor's excellent work.