Many of our readers wonder who is responsible for those wonderful illustrations of us in our Itty Bitty book series. Well...it’s NOT NANCY! She can’t draw well enough to get on a Pictionary team.

OK, she can write, and loves to rhyme silly ditties about our mini-antics, but when it comes to the illustrations, she has to have a professional. That’s where Rose comes in.

Let me give you an example. Nancy writes a poem, and she always has an idea of what she might like to see. Often, she even doodles or scribbles a sketch of her idea and sends it to Rose via email. (They live on opposite sides of NY State). Here’s an example of a sketch Nancy sent Rose for her Book 2 poem about us flying on a plane.

Eek! Look at that mess! Can you tell Nancy thought that looked like us sitting in our plane seats? Thank goodness Rose could. Here’s what she did with it: Ta da!

Here’s another example: Nancy tried to show Rose how she wanted the Adirondack page of our coloring book to look.

Rose took one look at that and made magic out of a mess.

Look how she put the moose up front, so the kids could have fun coloring a BIG fella, and see the great details she added--the trout jumping, the tent, the owl in the tree, and the helmets on our heads, to protect us from the dangers of kayaking!  

Both Nancy and Rose do agree that everything in the books and even the coloring book have to be accurate. They do research and check out things like what kind of goats live in Mount Rainier National Park--that’s not just any goat--that’s a Dell goat.

They also made sure that the large animals in Yellowstone Park were Bison, and not Buffalo.

Nancy is a teacher, and loves to drop little bits of information in all her books. Rose is a perfectionist, so when she had to draw Scrabble and Splash in Book 2, she had to have photos of both sides of each horse, since they are Pintos, and look different on each side. As Nancy likes to say, getting a Pinto is like getting two horses in one!

Now, you might ask how we drive cars and play musical instruments, or travel on cruise ships and go to zoos. Well, again, quoting Nancy, “anything I can think of and Rose can draw, Itty and Bitty can do!” And that’s how it’s done!