It’s My Book Corner’s stop on the Call The Puffins! blog tour today and, as well as our review, we have a brilliant behind-the-scenes guest post by Ella Okstad to share with you. Check out her early cover designs and learn what worked, what didn’t work, and why!
Muffin the puffin is so excited to try out for the Search and Rescue team, she can’t eat her breakfast!
She knows what to do in an emergency, how to dive into the cool waters around the island and to stay away from the rocks – all Muffin needs to do is to find the courage and try her best to pass.
Her big day arrives and she bravely completes all the tasks with only a few bumps along the way. When word gets out Minchie, a baby bird, has gone missing somewhere on the island, Muffin and her new friend, Tiny, join in the search.
Can Muffin use her training to find and rescue Minchie before it’s too late?
Cath Howe’s fantastic story of hope, friendship and team work, will have every reader rooting for Muffin. With brilliant illustrations by Ella Okstad throughout, this is a fun-filled addition to any classroom, bookshelf and library!
Illustrating the cover of Call The Puffins!
A guest post by Ella Okstad
illustrator Ella Okstad
When picking up a book, its cover will be the very first thing you see. The cover development process is an exciting part of book making. As this is a series, the title will have to work as a recognisable logo on all of the books. For this series we hit it quite right straight away along with the colour pallet.
The cover illustration however took a few attempts before finding the right one. Here are a few different approaches. The first two sketches were a bit static focusing too much on the characters and not so much on the action. With help from the great team at Welbeck, we picked out a few scenes from the story that could work as a cover illustration.
One of them is depicting Muffin in the water, diving for a shell. This one was much more on the right track, but still not quite there.
We wanted to try an airy alternative to see if that could work better. The puffins are flying high up in the sky on their way to exciting adventures and this was spot on for our little friends.
Check out the rest of the blog tour for more excellent content!
