Now that I have the art scanned and saved as large .JPG files, I am ready to begin the layout for the book. I started by going to my printer’s website and following their instructions for making an InDesign file suitable for the book’s size.

I’ve been comparing other children’s books in order to get an idea as to how I wanted to put the book together. Since I’ll be paying for a full premium color on each page of the book, I want to make the most of it. The entire page will be in color, as well as the text.

I played around with making the background a light red color, but because it turned out looking more like pink than red, I decided against it. I wanted to choose a text and background color that weren’t too distracting from the book, but still added to the overall feel.

I haven’t fully decided on the colors yet, but I was pretty happy with how a background of light green looked with navy text. The colors seemed to compliment the art, and I think they will flow will throughout the book. Because this is a Christmas story, and a lot of it takes place outside I think green is a great choice.

The book is about the tiniest tree, the grumbling tree and the wise old tree as they discover the Christmas spirit is a matter of the heart and attitude. It’s a heartwarming story that reminds us to share Christmas with those less fortunate than ourselves….