Thursday, October 29, 2009

Trash Day a Third Time

This week I thought I'd clean out all the old stories I have no intention to use anymore and put them out by the curb. This one is actually a painting from an old story–the first picture book I ever wrote and dummied up in its entirety. It was called Red, and it was sort of a postmodern urban retelling of the classic tale Little Red Riding Hood. I wrote and worked on this in the mid-nineties, and if you remember the picture book market around that time you'll know that the last thing the world needed was another postmodern retelling of a classic story. Needless to say, Red was never published, but I always liked the slow bus I designed for this scene:

I claimed above that I'm pushing all this old stuff to the curb, but the truth is I've recycled this bus design before, in my book Tree Ring Circus.

I hate wasting stuff.

6 comments:

Jean Wogaman said...

These are so cool! The top one looks kinda steampunkish.

Anonymous said...

It was worth recycling plus you have the satisfaction of doing something green.....er, sort of.

Keeli M said...

I seem to recall some extremely amazing, technically proficient, highly memorable custom lettering in that book.

Adam Rex said...

Hey Keeli! What a coincidence–I tried to track you down online a few weeks ago, see what you've been doing. Email me if you have time.

NĂºria Coe said...

Hello, Mr. Rex!

Just a note to let you know Tree Ring Circus, Psst!, Steamboat A-Comin'! and both your Frankenstein books are my children's favorites by a long shot.

My 7-year-old's sense of humor has gained in sophistication ten-fold just by being exposed to your witty poem, and she now even laughs at the little jokes that, like Easter Eggs, are there for the benefit of the parents reading said stories to their kids. My 4-year-old loves to laugh whenever her big sister is laughing, with that palpable, secret longing that she, too, will finally get the joke when she's older. And she can't wait.

You, sir, are a genius.

P.S: Sorry for my apparent verboseness. NaNoWriMo seems to have wreaked havoc in the conciseness of my electronic correspondence. I hope it will pass soon.

Adam Rex said...

I love hearing stuff like that, Nuria. The stuff about your kids, I mean, not the stuff about me being a genius. Oh, who am I kidding–both.