Designing the cover is my final step in creating a picture book. It’s only after spending so much time in the interior of the book—realizing the characters and their world—that I can stand back and consider what one picture would best sum up the experience of the story.
Elementary students love series titles. They enjoy the comfort of familiar characters, settings, and structures. This is especially true for emergent and newly independent readers, whose reading success with these titles encourages them to seek similar books. (Me personally, I learned to read thanks to Matt Christopher’s sports books.)