I am in the process of publishing my next book entitled Pickles, Pickles, I Like Pickles. Before contacting an illustrator to draw the pictures for this book, I created a “dummy” so that I knew how the book would be laid out and what pictures I would need.

To create my dummy, I first typed and printed all of the words that will be included in the book. I made sure to put enough space between the sentences, and I cut the sentences into strips. Then, I cut computer paper into 8.5″x8.5″ squares since that is the size that the book will be once printed – I wanted to make sure I had an accurate idea of how much space the pictures and words would take on each of the pages. On the first three pages, I wrote “title page”, “copyright page”, and “dedication page”. Then, I began taping the various sentence strips on to the pages in the book where I thought they would fit and look best. Since I used tape, I was able to move them around as I saw fit. Some of the wording didn’t seem to flow well when I put it together, so I changed or deleted those words to make it sound better. Once I had the word strips in place, I went through the book and tried to imagine what pictures would look best for the particular words on each page. I wrote (not drew) my “picture ideas” on sticky notes and stuck them on each page, so that I could move them around if I wanted.  Then, I consulted my “team” (AKA my daughters) to get their opinions on if the words and picture ideas seemed to flow well together. Once we were satisfied with the look of the interior of the dummy, I finished it off with a front and back “cover” (cardboard cut to size).

Once I had my dummy completed, I felt I was ready to move on to hiring an illustrator to create the various pictures that I had envisioned.  Stay tuned for information about the illustrations of Pickles, Pickles, I Like Pickles.