Two educational mini comics for Scholastic

It's been an age since I've updated my art blog, and that's mostly due to having had a baby! Little Yolanda leaves me just enough time to post a recipe once in a while, or make myself a cup of tea, but time to draw? Not a chance!

But, here are two small comics I created for Scholastic last year that are now being distributed to schools. These were two very fun projects, the first being an info comic about garbage and recycling. My inspiration for Garbage Strike was the real garbage strike we had here in Toronto around 7 years ago -- what a mess!



The second comic is also informative, introducing Galileo to young readers and the birth of astronomy as we now know it.



I grew and learned very much working on these books, which I had to research, write, lay out, draw and colour, all for professional publishing as opposed to personal work. I hope I do more of them, and hope the kids enjoy them.

My latest illustrated fiction

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Some months back I wrote and drew a 6-page comic for the Toronto-based literary magazine, Taddle Creek, and have been since wanting to post the art here but gave the magazine a chance to publish it first. Actually, I'm not sure if I should post the whole story -- maybe when the next issue of Taddle Creek is out, I'll put the whole thing online!

(The cover, by the way, was drawn by my insanely talented husband Michael Cho. See it on his blog.)

Meanwhile my story, called The Grass Seed, was recorded as an audio clip by the magazine which you can listen to here. Above is the first page of the story, plus a few of my favourite drawings from it below. I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to create this comic story, for an older audience, and of a topic of my choosing -- in this case, thinking about life within the perspective of the universe, and how we and everything in existence are basically made up of the same wonderful, elemental stuff.