Children's Book Week Bookmark

As I mentioned a couple of time earlier, I am the creator the 2013 Children's Book Week Bookmark. I can't tell even begin to tell you how excited I was when I was offered this opportunity. One of my life long pipe dreams is to be the illustrator of a Children's Book Week poster--this is pretty close!

So, I really wanted to do a good job on this. The Children's Book Week people asked that the bookmark include an activity of some kind-- other artists had made their bookmarks into door hangers, even paper dolls!

I racked my brain for a long time trying to think of something as creative. Paper fortune cookie instructions inspired by Fortune Cookie Fortunes? I didn't think it would work out of context (so many people don't realize that fortune cookies are not Chinese and the subtlety of Chinese-American pride might be lost in the misunderstanding).  Origami inspired by Lissy's Friends? I thought that might be hard to follow. How to write the Chinese character for "Book" or "Read?" Maybe... but then at the dentist's office (had to get an old filling replaced!) I saw a Highlight's Magazine:

and remembered how I always loved their "hidden picture" features:

....and the light went on!

From there, I decided to create the bookmark hiding the letters R, E, A, D, I, N, G in the image. It was a lot of fun! Here's the sketch:

can you see the letters?

Here'e the work in progress:

adding the color in! Trying to make the letters not too obvious, but still not too hard to find. 

And the final painting:

I decided to add a bonus activity to the bookmark (like I said,  I really wanted to do a good job!), so I included instructions on how to draw a Chinese dragon using letters (I thought that kind of went with finding the letters on the dragon bookmark--letters, dragons, reading--it kind of works, right?):

And then the bookmark was done! See what the finished thing looks like and download it FREE at the Children's Book Week website! Hope it makes you excited for Children's Book Week--I know I am!