A Children’s Book for Christmas: Little Lamb

Happy holiday season! I hope you’re enjoying December and the festive cheer that comes with it. It’s been snowing more than usual here in Durham, and the fluffy flakes and coating of white gives everything such a beautiful Christmassy feel!

It’s the perfect time to share another project that I completed recently — Little Lamb: The First Christmas, a children’s book written by Lisa Diffenbaugh. It tells the story of the first Christmas from the viewpoint of one of the lambs who accompanied the shepherds in the Christmas story. It’s written in verse, and Lisa did such a good job of creating simple, short stanzas that tell the whole story. The book is all full-spread illustrations, so it was a great opportunity to create big landscapes with lots of detail. The night-time setting of the story was fun to illustrate, using lots of blues and greens and starlight. It was also surprisingly enjoyable drawing all of the sheep, because sheep have become near and dear to me as such a common part of the landscape around me. Here are some of my favorite spreads from the book:

This was also my first foray into working with a self-publishing author, which was a lovely experience as Lisa was a very easy client to work with. Self-publishing seems to be more and more popular and mainstream these days, with so many affordable digital printing options and online distribution systems. Amazon is of course the leader in this category, and that is where you can buy a hard-cover copy of the book in the US, here! You can still order it in time for Christmas, and it would be the perfect book to bring out and read to little ones every year before the holidays.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned as I have one more book project to share soon! Ho ho ho!