Picture Book Marathon, Day 1

Wow. What was I thinking? I thought I'd start with something a little bit challenging, so I took one of my ideas from my brainstorm last week and write it-- in rhyming couplets. Let me say now, rhyming couplets are hard. Although I'm no artist, as I've mentioned before, I have a cover sketch, which I want to try for most of the picture books (as if this PBM wasn't going to be hard enough) and a sketch from one of he inside pages, which didn't end up in my final anyway, because it led to a bit of a dead end. With the couplets, I had to let the story drive itself a bit, because if I tried too hard to make it go a certain way, the rhymes inevitably wouldn't work out. Please keep in mind when looking at the sketches that these were done on a laptop trackpad by someone who only sort-of knows how to use photoshop. So here it is, picture book #1. Comments and edits are welcome.

The Not-So-Little Mermaid

Soon after Ariel found her prince

The other mermaids were hard to convince

That the ocean was the home for them

And under the sea it was becoming mayhem

Ariel’s big sister Elle

Was not doing very well

She was not happy to marry a merman

Wanted to marry a human, said “I know I can!”

And so one day when she was swimmin’

With her friends the other mer-women

And saw a prince upon the shore

She said, “This is it! I won’t wait anymore!”

She shed her fins, running onto the beach

Until she had run right into the prince’s reach

“I want to be your princess,” said the newly-human Elle.

“What a beautiful girl! Are you under a spell?”

“Yes, I am under a spell to let me stay here

And I have only three days, then I must return, I fear.”

“Only three days?” said the prince to sweet Elle.

“Only three days, and then I must say farewell.”

So for three days the prince and Elle talked and played

Until the prince wished that she could have stayed

And in order to break the spell

Tried to kiss his new friend Elle

“What are you doing? Why didn’t you ask me?”

She shouted, and the prince began to see

That Elle had decided she wanted to go home

And play in the waves and foam

And didn’t want to stay with someone who didn’t ask before he kissed

After all, it was a good thing he had missed

Or else she’d be stuck on land

Never able to go farther than the sand

“Thank you for letting me stay these three days

But now we should go our separate ways

If you had some manners maybe I’d stay

But now I think I’ll go.”

And she walked away.

Alright! While we're at it, let's get some strong female characters into these picture books, shall we?

In the future I may try hand-drawing the cover and/or whatever inside page(s) I feel like doing, and then digitally coloring them. Hmmm.

1 down, 25 to go!