A media Easter egg is a message, image or feature hidden in software, a video game, a film, or a book. This post is about the Easter eggs hidden in my six books.
As an author, part of the fun of getting to work directly with my illustrator, Vicki Killion Guess, is that we have gotten to know one another. After six books together, when one of us explains an idea, the other one gets it. I always have a picture in my mind of how I see the books illustrated and Vicki is incredible at making the types of images in my mind become reality. We work together on picture concepts before she begins her drawing and painting magic.
I’m going to take you through our six books in order of publication and tell you about the fun secrets hidden in each one.
The Button Box (2014)
This is my only book that is a completely true story from my life. I wrote the story for a local “personal memoir” writing contest in Kalamazoo, Michigan and it won first place in the contest. After it was published in the local newspaper on Christmas Day of 2001, people wrote me notes and letters about how the story had touched their hearts and said they thought I should turn it into a book. I told Vicki I saw this book illustrated in vivid true colors and gave her a box of the eight original Crayola Crayons.
*The buttons pictured on the cover throughout the book are actual buttons found in my family button box.
*The quilt pictured in the book was hand quilted for me by my mom when I was a teenager. I still have it today and sometimes take it to book events.
*The information for the “Short History of Buttons” in the back of the book is from the National Button Society website. I’ve been a NBS member for 12 years.
*” The Button Box” is in its third printing.
Which Came First? (2016)
This story is based on a day at my grandmother’s farm when I was a girl. She really did make me keep going back until I had gathered the eggs. Vicki asked for a picture of me at age ten and painted the girl in the story from that picture. I told Vicki that I saw the illustrations for this book as less serious and more like cartoons. Vicki said she watered down the acrylic paint to give the illustrations a more whimsical look.
*Many of the items in the outside pictures are from my memories of my grandmother’s farm…the mop and bucket on the back porch, the clothesline, the sideways painted tractor tire used for a flower bed, the apple tree behind the house with the dog sleeping under it, the chickens and ducks wandering around the backyard.
*Vicki hid a mouse in the outside illustrations for kids to find…even on the front and back covers. (She painted a cat inside the house.)
*Vicki surprised me by painting both the button box and the quilt from our first book in Grandma’s living room.
*Graphic designer, Crystal Wood, had the idea for the chicken wire as background on the cover and on the inside pages. It was also her idea to use the bandana border at the bottom of the pages. (I really did wear bandanas when I was a girl.)
*My grandmother named her roosters, and Pretty Boy was one of them. Others were named Foghorn Leghorn, Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis.
*For the Fun Facts About Chickens after the story, Vicki painted egg points instead of using bullet points for each one.
The Day The Turkey Came To School (2017)
This story is based on a true event when an actual turkey showed up at my kid’s elementary school one school day. I didn’t intend for it to be a Thanksgiving story, but it has become very popular with teachers in November.
*The elementary school on the cover is from a picture of Angling Road Elementary in Portage, Michigan where my children attended elementary school.
*Vicki painted some of our family members in the crowd illustrations. She painted my daughter, Anna, my son, Ryan, my daughter-in-law, Paige, and my grandson, Graham, as well as her own grandchildren in the book.
*The teacher, Mrs. Thompson, is based on my daughter-in-law, Paige Thompson Sever who is a teacher.
*Turkey footprints were used instead of bullet points for the Turkey Trivia after the story.
The Halloween Scare (2021)
This was our quickest book to finish and was all kinds of fun for us to create! I wanted to write an entertaining Halloween story that would not be scary for kids. My goal was to stress the fun aspects of Halloween…the dressing up and getting candy and being with friends…in addition to telling what would scare the spooky characters of Halloween.
*Graphic designer, Crystal discovered the spooky font for the words.
*Vicki painted all of our grandchildren in the trick-or-treater pictures. I’ve had two more grandchildren since this book was published.
The Christmas Church (2022)
This book is my first one for adults and is very special to me. It’s a Christmas story with a love story inside of the bigger story. I wrote it during the pandemic when so many of us were losing dear loved ones. It’s about those who impact our lives with their love and the things they leave with us even after they are gone.
*I asked Vicki if she could make the pictures look like memories and to achieve this, she illustrated this book with watercolor paints. I think the result is stunning.
*The Christmas church on the cover was created over 100 years ago by my great-grandfather and was passed down in the family to me.
*The Christmas church is lighted, and the wind-up music box still plays “Silent Night”.
*The house on the first page is a painting of my great-grandparent’s house on Jackson Boulevard in Elkhart, Indiana.
*The painting of the framed photo on the wall in the sun parlor is from a real photo of my brother, Jeff, and me that my grandmother had.
*The night in the attic really did happen with my grandmother when I was ten years old. Vicki surprised me and painted the button box in the attic illustration.
*The face of the grandmother is based on a picture of my own grandmother.
*The hands holding the shepherd from the nativity scene were painted from a picture of my mother’s hands holding the shepherd. She was delighted to pose for me!
*My great-grandparents really were George and Amelia (Millie) Parker and George really was an inventor who created beautiful gifts for his family.
Love Hearts (2023)
This was my sixth book and came about because of something I used to say to my children when they were small: “Do you see the love hearts coming from my eyes to you?” I wanted to write a story for younger kids about love and about all the people in our lives who we love and who love us in return.
*I dedicated this book to the three grandchildren I had at the time.
*Vicki added some humor to the story by having the dog in each illustration showing love hearts for various random things and people.
*The grandmother in the story is reading the book, “Love Hearts” to her grandchildren.
*If you look closely, you will also see references to our other five books throughout this one.