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Little Johnny Brown could not touch the ground, but he will go to Beijing and try to get published.

The time has come for Becky and I to head off on our Summer travels. The weather is so darn hot here in Zhejiang province that we have decided to head north and look for cooler climes, and some book deals. Our first stop is Beijing where are very happy to be meeting with some publishers to see if any are interested in publishing all of our Moo-Cow Fan Club work to date (all 16 issues of the magazines and the two books). While there I’ve also decided to pitch my two new picture book ideas to them. The image above is a concept illustration from one called Little Johnny Brown Could Not Touch the Ground. 

Regardless of how the pitches go, I’m very excited to get an inside look at the way the publishing industry here works (we’re getting some tours too). As with everything in China, it is growing extremely fast as anyone who has been to a mega-bookstore in a major city here can tell. You walk into one of these stores and it’s like someone’s made a high-rise by stacking a Barnes and Noble, Borders and Books-A-Million on top of each other. SO - MANY- BOOKS!

Here is a Airport sized bookstore in Nanjing. Photo Credit: John Meckley

The major problem with the industry here is not that people are not reading (there are more literate Chinese people now then ever before in history) it’s the seemingly futile struggle against piracy. Downloading whatever you want for free is just how everyone gets pretty much everything in China. Even official government organizations will just download software, movies, books, etc. The biggest web company in China, Baidu, actually offers a place for people to download books that have been uploaded by users. There have been a lot of recent moves against this kind of thing lately, even Han Han, China’s biggest and most influential blogger and writer, has gotten involved, but it will be a long time before piracy is not the norm here for all entertainment industries. 

Luckily for us, all over the world kids books are something to be physically held and read by the child, so I’m not so worried about all of that. 

The kids are alright. Photo Credit: Stian

So, our first stop is Beijing and then it’s off to Inner Mongolia! I’ll keep you updated and share some pictures throughout our journey. 

I’m sitting here doing thumbnails for a picture book and I’m realizing that once again I’m complicating things. It’s an extremely bad habit of mine. You can see by these first thumbnails that I’ve envisioned one cluttered picture book. 

So, I went looking around the internet for some inspiration for simplification. I came across a very interesting blog about children’s book art and design called The Apple and the Egg. Honestly, for me it is a little bit too weighted towards the hipper-than-thou books made to delight us designers and artists than books I actually believe would appeal to modern children, but it also has a lot of wonderful finds and excellent sketchbook peeks. 

There are some entire books featured too! Among those I found one of my new favorite bedtime books, and a book that couldn’t be more simplified yet complete, Dinosaur vs. Bedtime!

This book is so perfect in its execution that it just puts a big old smile on my face. Also, it remains hip and “designy” without throwing that in your face and knocking away the smile. I’m glad to find out about this author (apparently I’m out of the loop a bit since he seems to be quite popular and this is from 2008). 

By the way, if anyone else out there is doing thumbnails / storyboards for a picture book (or anything sequential in nature) you would be remiss not to check out this excellent tutorial by picture book master Uri Shulevitz.