The final drawings for Avi's final Poppy book are now underway. Meanwhile, reviewers may already have copies of the book in their hands. This phenomenon is made possible by Advance Reader Copies, or ARCs, early versions of a book sent out with finished text but often with sketches in place of the final art. This is the usual way of things with the Poppy books and is a convenience to everyone involved, with the exception of the illustrator; Poppy ARCs have left a trail of reviews, stretching back over the years, with only this to say about the drawings in the series: “Final art not seen.” After all that work — ouch. Still, that's better than the time a student reviewer, working from an ARC, posted a review of
Poppy’s Return on Amazon that reads, “I didn't like the pictures very much because they looked like a small kid drew them.” Double ouch.
Above: Poppy, airborne over Dimwood Forest, in sketch and final form. Click to enlarge. Explanation to come in the spring of 2009.
If you subscribe to Click Magazine (see here and here for more on Click) or read it at your library, I hope you’ll look for Rachel Young’s story in the November/December issue, which is all about cars. I drew some pit stop scenes for the piece, and it was fun to revisit — if briefly — my Racecar Alphabet days. And on the back of that issue, in my regular Click gig illustrating the Beatrice Black Bear comic (John Grandits writes the text—more on John here and here), I was able to cut loose with a lot of vehicle drawings. Behind Beatrice I drew the gas-guzzling International Harvester Scout that I drove in high school and the Vespa that I would drive now if I weren’t so afeared of getting into a wreck on one of those things.
