Getting Near to Baby’s Jacket

My jacket for Audrey Couloumbis’ Newbery Honor award-winning novel, Getting Near to Baby.

I painted the original in black and white ink and acrylic and the blue sky color was added in production (I was afraid to do it in two colors myself, so I relied on G. P. Putnam’s Sons’ Art Department to get the desired hue).

My niece Nyssa unwittingly posed for Willa Jo Dean, the girl on the left. By “unwittingly” I mean that I had several dozen photos of Nyssa left over from our work on Amy Littlesugar’s Jonkonnu (see a link and some reviews on the left hand side of this page), so I adapted one or two snapshots of her for this project.

And I just discovered the Chinese edition!