the blue-eared fox
Authored and illustrated “The Blue-Eared Fox,” an unpublished, 42-page children’s book project for Scholastic’s Mentorship Program (2021). Through this book, I learned the basics of storyboarding for trade books and the concept-to-published creative team processes within Scholastic.
This fast-paced program also required character design sheets, value studies of each spread, and compositional variations between text and illustration. The purpose of this project was to serve the story through effective, dynamic illustrations and to complement the text without interfering with readability.
The Blue-Eared Fox script:
Fish is a blue-eared fox who has a hard time accepting herself. Her favorite meal is blue damsel fish and she loves wearing yellow. But every morning, she pours orange paint over her ears and paws, dawns an orange backpack, and snacks only on carrots and tangerines. She leaves all her favorite things at home because the only acceptable color in her outside world is orange.
One day at school, a big, mean fox named Copper charged at Fish, throwing her across the floor. Large traces of orange paint marked her trail and everyone in class froze with their mouths agape. Someone whispered. "Is that.. blue?" Fish, with tears in her eyes, covered her ears with her front paws and ran all the way home. She gently washed off her paint and quietly crawled into bed.
The next morning, she sat up on her little tree stump to reach the mirror. Fish gave her reflection a long, hard stare, looking at her orange paint and back at her ears. She was done. She tossed the paint, put on her yellow backpack, packed some blue damsel fish for lunch, and confidently marched to school.
When Fish arrived, Apricot, one of Fish's friends, pulled her aside. Fish quirked her head as Apricot shakily pulled a handkerchief from her bag and wiped it across her cheeks. There was a blue spot on her face! Fish then looked around to see everyone in class with yellow spots, blue patches, and red fur! A paw touched Fish's shoulder from behind. It was Copper, fully draped in blue fur. Copper looked down with glassy eyes. Fish sighed, reached out for his paws, and hugged him.
Ever since that day, Fish and her friends chose to live colorful lives and build a colorful world together. And she never stopped snacking on blue damsel fish ever again.
The book is still being illustrated. Publishing information is TBA.