Monthly Archives: January 2014

The Second Book

As you may know, I have been working feverishly on my second book in the Miss Klickitat StoryImage series. I’m not sure what the title of this second book is yet. I’ll just keep referring to it as “second book” or “the next story” for now.

Everybody’s favorite characters from Pretzel are in the new story: Miss Klickitat, Cash, Addie, and a new character, Crosby. Crosby is the main character of this second book.  His adventures begin when he receives a Valentine’s Day gift from Miss Klickitat.

This second book will be quite different from Pretzel. For one, it isn’t about baking. Secondly, the illustrations will be more prominent, larger with more color. Thirdly, it will be written at a lower grade level (probably).

Don’t panic Pretzel fans! This second book isn’t about baking but that doesn’t mean that Miss Klickitat doesn’t have more baking adventures in store.

What’s Up With Miss Klickitat’s Pink Hair?

What’s Up with Miss Klickitat’s Pink Hair?

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If you know me or have seen my picture you may notice a strong resemblance between myself and the Miss Klickitat character from Pretzel, A Miss Klickitat Story.  When I first created Miss Klickitat that wasn’t the case at all. But as I kept drawing she started to look more and more like me. After my book was published, a lot of people asked me, “What’s up with the pink hair?” Or when I ran into friends they were actually surprised that my hair wasn’t dyed pink!

It is true that Miss Klickitat is a character based on me, an alter ego: “a fictional character whose behavior, speech or thoughts intentionally represent those of the author.”(Wikipedia) Pretzel is based on a true story. Cash and Addie are real neighbor friends and we did have a pretzel making adventure.

Initially, all of the characters in the book were going to have vibrant unnatural hair colors and drawn with graphite grays so they would appear racially ambiguous. My intention was by not featuring  physical characteristics(like hair and skin color) of any ethnic groups that nobody would feel left out. I wanted loveable characters that children could relate to via personality and actions not physical appearance. For example; Mercer Mayer really nailed this with, Little Critter, a character who can’t be categorized by species, race, or even gender. Little Critter is just a kid.

As I wrote the story and developed characters it became more difficult to stray from the real people and the real events that occurred. Cash, Addie and I are Caucasians and we live in Portland, Oregon, a predominantly white city. I felt the need to illustrate from observation and write about my actual surroundings. The drawings in Pretzel give the reader a tour of the inside of my house, backyard, and my neighborhood where the actual story took place.

Unlike the other characters in Pretzel, Miss Klickitat’s hair remained bright pink for a few reasons. I like the pop of color on the other wise muted tone page. Her bright hair makes her noticeable and promotes the idea that she is a bit quirky. Also, I think pink hair looks great on people in real life like rock star, Pink and hip hop artist, Lil’ Kim.  I’ve never even colored my hair, and am not very “edgy” in my own appearance, I guess that’s what my alter ego is for.