This might seem like a bad idea… even for me… but let me explain my thinking… such as it is;

I don’t think I sold very many of my first children’s book; ‘I like Monkeys’, through the blog… (even though it is written and illustrated entirely by yours-truly, and is available by clicking on the picture of the book right over there in the sidebar, and even though it has gotten awesome reviews from every parent and child who has read it)…   So I doubt that posting the second one will cut into my almost nonexistent profit margin. Yes, I suppose you could gather your children or grandchildren around the warm glow of the computer monitor and read the story to them that way, but that wouldn’t really compare to the joy of snuggling on a couch surrounded by little ones listening with rapt attention to your voice, while you held up the book to make sure that every little pair of eyes could see the funny pictures, pausing occasionally to discuss the important life-lessons that the story is meant to get you all thinking about… wait… I guess you could do all that on a computer monitor, dang it! Well, you couldn’t send the wee ones to bed with their own copy made out of actual dead trees and watch them as they practice their reading, or just listen to them recite it because they have it memorized from all the times they made you read it to them.  (Seriously, one grandmother that my mom gave the monkey book to said her granddaughter absolutely refuses to get into the car to go anywhere unless the monkey book is in the car with her… and the little girl who my daughter, Mollie, babysits… the one I ‘loaned’ my very first copy of the book to, just to get a child’s opinion of the book… cried so hard when her mom asked for it back that I just relented and let them keep it.)

Besides, you all have seen the posts where I walked you through the creation of the book, step by step, from its original… and unusable, insofar as being a book for small children… cartoon comic strip, and the inclusion of the new watercolor paintings I did at my mom’s house when I was last there, and all the clean up of the images in Photoshop, and the other paintings and pictures I scanned from all sorts of other works of art I have lying around to use as backgrounds.

This, to be honest, will not be the final version. This is a mockup. I changed the resolution to 72 DPI instead of 300 DPI so I could email it. The text is not the final version, and will be sized to fill the pages and might be a different font. I haven’t finished the cover page art, and I will probably use some of the images, combined in Photoshop, for end pages. I created it to send to my other daughter, Jessica, the one who helps me format and compile all my books to send to the publisher. She told me there was no way I was going to change that comic strip… with its obvious ‘poking-fun-at-overly-religious-people’ overtones into a book for kids. She now admits she was wrong. She thinks it’s cute. So does Mollie. But Jessica also suggested that I get the opinion of some of my blogger friends. She thought I would just email it to a few of you. But I can’t pick favorites. So I am posting it for all of you.

Please, give me some feedback.