About 2 years ago I wrote a bit of a radio play about an adventurer named Spank Williamson.  I thought it might be fun to do a bit of a piece of him punching a man in the face.  The drawing is below.

Monkey and Bird

Boy and Tiger

Dinner Table Yarns and Fables

This project had a tight deadline.  I really like the idea of this book.  The goal is to have historical stories that are interesting enough and short enough to read at the dinner table.  The book is small in size.  After fretting about the cover image, I was told basically, not to worry about it, because it will be very small.  I’m not sure, but the whole book might have the cover dimensions of a mass market paperback.  Still, I hope that John Adams and Bill Potter will write a number of them.  To my understanding, that’s the plan.  Mark Bauerlein wrote the forward to this one.  He’s the author of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30).  Long title, right?  [Review from the LA Times if you're interested.]  In his forward to Dinner Time Yarns and Fables he lists history scores that trumpet the failure of American education to transmit priorities from American History.  Bauerlein writes “Anybody who thinks that the poor scores signify merely an academic matter doesn’t understand the importance of history in a free republic.  For, one essential element in a vibrant democracy is precisely, the historical memory of citizens.  Their remembrance of principles of representation and liberty, of great heroes and villains, and of crucial events and transitions sustains civic life.”  So I guess the mission of this book is to provide an easy way for families to interact, and to imbed themselves in the soil of our history.

Here’s the Cover Sketch inside the frame they approved.  The cover is a little bit lush, and I struggled to fit all the characters they wanted in the frame.  I actually failed to squeeze in General Patton (sorry General), but I feel the meal still has a good turnout.

Here’s the final sketch.

I felt because the frame was so warm they might want a cooler palette.  I was wrong.

I warmed up the palette and gave Jackie Robinson some size.  I was glad to show his uniform.  Here’s the final cover image.

I also got to illustrate the inside content.  Below are a few of those.

Winston Churchill

Booker T Washington

Dolly Madison

Look for the book to come out in July.

I’m a big Neil Postman Fan.  He’s so dang quotable.  So here’s a quote of his on a painting I did.