Joan Calder’s “Airplanes in the Garden” has launched and it’s already for sale in bookstores nationwide. And the first reviews are coming in:

“I can’t think of a more rewarding, long-lasting summer strategy for entertaining (and stealthily educating) youngsters than reading this fancifully illustrated, engagingly written, instructional book.” — Billy Goodnick, Fine Gardening.

Children are loving this book for its illustrations and engaging story about monarch butterflies. Parents are very grateful, for the children are learning by playing and reading along with the main characters of the book, the monarchs Sergio and Stanley. The book even has a few pages with monarch butterfly facts and Fly Away, a song by Rebecca Troon that you can download for free.

I was very fortunate to work with Joan and with illustrator Cathy Quiel to make their dream a reality. The magnificent illustrations by Quiel didn’t always fit the spreads, and I had to add some content. I was very nervous to tinker with somebody else’s beautiful art, since I’m also an artist, after all. I tried to be as respectful as possible so that at the end you wouldn’t even see any changes.

Here are a couple of spreads I am particularly proud of:

Illustrations: ©2011 Cathy Quiel/cathyquiel.com
Story: ©2011 Joan Calder/airplanesinthegarden.com

PS. I love when I can contribute by sharing many of my talents in one project: Design (inside pages, cover and dust jacket), Illustration (invisibly enhancing some pages with Photoshop), Writing (helping with the author bios), Photography (creating the author portraits for Joan and Cathy), and public relations skills. Thank you Joan, Cathy and John for making this possible, and great luck with the book. For everybody else, purchase the book.