Once upon a time, actually, make that over 40 years ago, I wanted to create a picture book about the prophet Jeremiah. I drew the pictures as my babies played by my feet, hoping to make some money from my little book. I wrote a short rhyming story about Jeremiah’s object lessons and proposed it to publishers.
I went to meet one editor in person and also sent my baby book through the mail. The piece was rejected. I was dejected. I gave up after only three submissions. The pictures did find a way to reach people. We used them to teach the prophet’s story in Sunday school and children’s church. Every few years, when a new group of children moved into those classes, Jeremiah made another visit. Then one day something happened…
The next time I went looking for the Jeremiah pictures, they could not be found. I searched high and low, at home and church, on shelves and in file cabinets. I figured they were gone forever. I found a faded black and white Xerox copy along with the rhyming text I had first written years before. I’d taken some classes since the first writing and groaned at my terrible poetry. It was no wonder those first proposals to publishers were rejected. Then I had an idea came to me from a unique place.
Four days per week l do a little sweating to the oldies with friends in the pool and college field house. On one of those days the song “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog” found its way to the playlist we listened to as we lifted weights and walked. It brought back memories of a huge Bullfrog that invaded a drainage system we had for a house we lived in. He created a few ponds in our basement. He was a pest until a member of our church removed him to live in a real pond.
My first Jeremiah story was pretty serious. What if I added a frog to the story for a little humor? I was still missing the original drawings and realized it would take a while to reproduce them from the black and white copies. Would they turn up or did I need to totally redo them?
When the time was right, the pictures reappeared. They were not in any of the places I looked before. Someone asked me to find one of the school musicals I wrote long ago. They wanted a copy of their own. As I searched the stack of musicals, the envelope of Jeremiah illustrations appeared between two of them. Eureka!
The colors were lighter than I remembered. I got out a set of high-quality colored pencils and brightened the drawings. Then I reached for the scissors. It was surgery time. Could I cut up my own drawings? I tend to avoid messing with a good thing, but the old illustrations were in a format with a particular publisher in mind. It was time for a change.
Jeremiah’s object lessons were illustrated, but I needed room on each page for Bullfrog and Koi to say their lines about telling people keep their pond free of trash. Picture books today often have more than one story line and Bullfrog had words to share, even if it was hard to do.
I took my scissors, clamped my teeth, and cut out excess parts from each Jeremiah drawing. I told his story through thought clouds for Koi. With that in mind, I decided to use speech bubbles to the frog and fish, giving the story a graphic feel. Children seem to enjoy speech bubbles for stories like the Elephant and Piggie tales, so I gave it a try for Bullfrog and Koi.
Once I had the story revised into the conversation style, it was time to create drawings of the frog and fish. Sometimes illustrating matched details over and over may become tedious. I made a decision to change that. I’ve used collage in several of my stories. It was time for a little fun. I splashed colors on the background pages. That was a great stress reliever. I did the same thing for my creatures by covering several papers in green and orange. Sprinkles of salt added a great textured look to Bullfrog’s pages. The orange was more subtle, but that worked for my wise fish. It took me a while to add more texture with markers and cut out body parts, but I had fun putting them back together and finding what worked for each page. Then, it was time to send it to the publisher, but I’d made one big mistake.
The formatting requirements had changed, or I’d never paid attention. Did I mention I have the very best publisher in the world? Even though I’d messed up, Tamera Lynn Kraft and her husband Rick, at Mt. Zion Ridge Press, were able to take care of the reformatting. I learned a lesson and apologized. We moved on toward publication by doing revisions until we had a product ready for the world. Then it was time for the not so fun part of writing.
Marketing is one of the hardest things for me to do when I’ve got a new book. Mt. Zion provided me with a great list of things to advertise my new story with a publication date of December 1st. I’m working on them. I’m excited that several people were willing to join my advanced reader group and hope they will all come through with a review. I’m writing blogs and Facebook posts and praying that the right reader will find personal meaning in Jeremiah, Bullfrog, and Koi. Did you know you can review any book on Amazon as long as you’ve bought $50 or more during the year? You just have to acknowledge how you bought or received the book if you didn’t order from them.
This tale would make a great Christmas gift for picture book lovers of all ages to gift to a child during this season. Jeremiah was one of the prophets who predicted the coming Messiah.
I hope you’ve enjoyed my recounting of how it came to be.
Have a blessed celebration of Jesus’ birth.
Bettie Boswell