Humphrey - Hee-yah!!
Sometimes I feel like a little hamster spinning on my wheel, especially when I’m working on three Humphrey books at the same time. Which means I have been: writing a new Humphrey book while also:
- finishing the FINAL-FINAL-FINAL copy editing on Adventure According to Humphrey (coming out in hardcover in the US in February)
- writing the Reader’s Guide and activities for According to Humphrey (coming out in paperback in the US in January)
- and making the LAST-LAST-LAST little tweaks on Surprises According to Humphrey UK (coming to the UK this October)
- plus October is the month when the UK audio version of Friendship According to Humphrey, read by Greg Proops (see previous blogs) is released.
I can now reveal the UK Surprises cover (the purple one on top) and you can compare it to the US cover. I love them both! Humphrey’s fear of aliens and his encounter with the cat are both equally important in the book. But because the aliens may not be real, the UK designer made it a drawing - very clever.
If I could change one thing about myself, I would choose to be able to draw. My dad was a talented amateur artist (and an all-round creative person), my stepdaughters Anna and Becca are both successful professional artists/designers and my late brother-in-law Leon deLeeuw was likewise a very fine artist and art professor. Maybe we just didn’t need another artist in the family! I also tend to have friends who are artists. Mitch, Anne, Cynthia, Davis, to name a few.
Maybe it’s time for Humphrey to express his inner artist!