Start Them Young

I'm Storey's creative director, and my husband Mars also works here, as our photo editor and in-house photographer. Our seven-year-old son Xavier has always wanted to work in a natural history museum, helping to save animals from extinction, but recently, he's changed his plans and wants to work as a photographer at Storey, too. Yesterday evening I came home from work, and he had made a how-to book, since that's what he knows that Storey publishes. I thought I'd share his labors with you.

It all started with a little paper project he cooked up a couple of months ago. He drew a picture of a man wearing a vest, holding the hand of a little boy. Feeling inspired by the man's fashion, he decided to cut and fold the paper into the form of a vest, so it's sort of a book in the shape of a vest that opens to a picture.

Here is the vest closed, with removable tape as the clasps.

Here is the vest open, with the picture inside.
(The non sequitur at the bottom is Queen Amidala of Star Wars.)

He's quite proud of his creation and thought others might want to make one also. Hence the how-to book.

Front Cover
The book is titled Xavier's Little Book.

Interior
It reads: "Hi! My name is Xavier. I am in second grade.
This is my paper vest (above). It's one of my best creations.
If you want to do what I do, try this." Then there is a sequence of
how-to illustrations (good boy!). He closes with the feelings of
hope and gratitude I think every author feels: "enjoy! thank you!"

Back Cover
An author bio . . . very important to sales, I've heard:
"I wrote this book because I wanted to share
with the world and so others could have fun.
I was born on Feb. 11, 2002. I lived in
San Francisco in a yellow house. Now goodbye!"

I hope you enjoyed my post! Thank you for reading it!

Alethea Morrison, Creative Director