New Children’s Books You Should See

picture book design by Abby Dening
{New book with custom hand-lettered textured title type}

Books take months to produce and years to publish, so I sometimes loose track of publication dates of the book I designed. This happened to me recently with these 2 fun and lively books: GO TO SLEEP MADDIE! and Book One of the series UPSIDE DOWN MAGIC. I worked on them earlier in the year and I’m happy to say that are now available for purchase or check out your local library!

GO TO SLEEP MADDIE is about a little girl, Maddie, who doesn’t want to sleep. She asks her mom and dad for a glass of water, several bedtime stories, and a check for monsters in her room. When she finally has the lights turned off and she’s tucked into bed, she hears a noise: Quackers! Quackers! It’s her toy duck who needs a bedtime snack of crackers. She gets him his food, but then she hears another noise. Suddenly going to bed isn’t so simple.

picture book by Maureen Wright and illustrated by Elizabeth Schlossberg

I paired 2 interior typefaces together that compliment the comic story and artwork. I also wanted young readers to enjoy the vocal noises of the toys, so those were set in a thick font and colored. The cover type was a blast to create as well. I created a couple of custom pastel art brushes in Photoshop that mimic the pastel texture in the artwork.

magic themed middle grade novel, designed by AbbyDora Design
{Title type design and interior novel design created by AbbyDora Design}

UPSIDE DOWN MAGIC
is the creation of 3 dynamic authors: Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle, and Emily Jenkins. This is a new series about Nory, Elliot, Andres, and Bax who are a group of misfits who’s magic goes wonky. What happens? Well “For Nory, this means that instead of being able to turn into a dragon or a kitten, she turns into both of them at the same time—a dritten.” You can imagine the funny situations the other kids find themselves in. This book is for ages 8-12 and with the humor and shorter chapters it’s great for those kids who don’t usually find reading so magical.

I was delighted to be part of the team to develop the cover design for UDM. My part was to create the dimensional vector title treatment that could become the brand for the series. I was also the designer for the styling of the book’s interior, too. Keep your eyes out for more books in this series!

Happy Reading!