It all starts with the story at the end under “About the Authors.”
At 2:30 am on September 16th, 2020, Lan awoke in a panic from a vivid nightmare in which her mother was in terrible danger. She waited for the night to pass with tears in
her eyes. Four hours later, she was whispering on the phone, buried under a pile of
warm fluffy blankets and nestled next to her sleeping children. Her mother, in a soft
and soothing voice, told her troubled daughter the story of her morning oatmeal routine.
By noon that day, Lan had started drafting this book.
When you’re writing something as simple as a counting book that goes to ten, it’s too easy to make it perfect. We get books like that for free every year from the Austin Trail of Lights. My counting book had to be the opposite of that - it had to be flat out wrong. We start off counting “one bowl of oatmeal” before the second ingredient, which is “raisins and peanuts.” You could really go back and count “one bowl of oatmeal” followed by “raisins and peanuts,” but of course it would make more sense to count “raisins and peanuts” as ingredients one and two instead. To make matters worse, I used two raisins and two peanuts, so there were four items to count instead of one or maybe two.
The third ingredient was applesauce, which I illustrated with an apple slice. Not only is this clearly not applesauce, but the number of seeds and placement of seeds changes throughout the pages for absolutely no reason. The fourth ingredient, olive oil, was cut differently each time from a picture of olive oil. You see, I had accidentally built up an empire of paper textures, and it was time to break that rule. The fifth ingredient, Metamucil, was a powder. Powder is already difficult to illustrate, so this was a great opportunity to use an overly abstract representation. The triangle is a color-edited section from the Metamucil lid on page 13. The sixth ingredient,6 legumes, was cut from paper again, but because my raisins and peanuts were the same sizes, these weren't. Seventh was chocolate, the only ingredient that overlapped itself, and fish oil, eighth, was a simplified photograph. I wanted the fish oil to reflect light like a real oil capsule, but at the same time, I didn’t want a fully photographed effect, which was reserved for the bowl and the mug.8 Ninth was strawberries cut from my only truly patterned paper, and the pour of the coffee on page ten was the only wildly irregular shape.
The next set of colors are all about the olive oil, for you can make olive oil by mixing a little of that blue into the mustard. They could also illustrate moon and stars, dusk, fields, and sunset.
The Halloween trio, orange, purple, and black, dominate the next set, which is an appropriate setting for the poisonous Mr. Yuk.1
The greens, blue, and orange on pages 12-13 reflect the Mr. Happys and Mr. Yuks as well as the olive oil and Metamucil, and this time, the green circle background on the right echo Mr. Yuk instead of apples. Remember how there was an unspoken rule that every page had its own unique border and background? Not anymore.
Pages 14-15 are the darkest of the set. The ocean deep is to the left, and the right does little to lighten the mood. The contrast of yellow and purple in the first place is probably the murkiest of the primary secondary complementary pairs (compared to red and green or blue and orange), and the eerie placement of a lightbulb in the bottom right hand corner reminds us that gravity may not be functioning properly.
The outer borders in the next set represent the text quite literally with chocolate dots and fish scales. The set as a whole, mint chocolates and soft teals, reminds me of baby sheets because it's so pointedly gender neutral and cuddly.
Next we have strawberries across charcoal. Again a bit more of a literal representation of the text, but also, bright pink always needs to be tempered. Sea foam and mossy cream come together to complete the chalk-on-chalkboard effect.
You could order microfiber sofas in the beauties grouped together in pages 20-21.9 They add a welcome splash of color, but not so much that you’d regret owning cherry wood furniture. Page 20 was the only page in which I duplicated an illustration or incorporated a number into the design. I like the fact that my mother and I are suddenly dragons, and also that as dragons, we’re talking about cholesterol.
4 Another way I brought Sách Đếm into Hot Oatmeal was to distort and reuse four of Sách Đếm's original layer masks.
5 We all know what a thousand is. But do you know what a hundred thousand is? I'll tell you what it is - a hundred thousand is too big of a number for us to imagine. "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" has sold more than fifty MILLION copies. To help us make sense of this, Wikipedia says this is 1.8 copies sold every minute since its publication in 1969.
6 While ingredients six through ten are completely made up, they are also ingredients that may help to lower cholesterol.
7 Drafting the book was a lot of fun. The actual words of the book have everything to do with my family. If you didn't grow up with us, chances are you haven’t heard Mom say, “cup’coffee.” You haven’t heard her use the word “gizmo” as if that's a word anybody other than my dad uses. ("Gizmo" is a character from the movie "Gremlins." "Gadget" is the word to use.) You haven’t heard Mom talk about microwaving her coffee or sending Dad to the store, but these points come up frequently for some reason. And the store she is talking about is always called "Food Lion" no matter what the actual name of the store is. (To her credit, it has been a Food Lion before.) You haven't heard me interrupting my parents with questions transparent with criticism, which without fail provoke no concern whatsoever. But the funniest family reference to me, of course, is “hot oatmeal.” When I’m talking to anybody else, “hot oatmeal” is oatmeal and “cold oatmeal” is not real. Perhaps it’s granola. I have no idea.
10 I'll close with the original text.
My mother was trapped in a large cage. Dad and I were seated on cold metal bleachers, helplessly watching as a video of my mother’s fate was projected live onto a stained, scuffed up screen in front of us. Dirty faded golden carpets unraveled down the sides obscuring our view, and strangers opened gunfire as the cage was slowly, but inevitably, lowered deeper and deeper into a large body of water.
I cried and cried and cried. I woke up crying. I wanted to call her, but it was the middle of the night. George, my giant teddy bear and voice of reason, was working a night shift. So I just sat there in the darkness, wallowing in my self-imposed trauma. When morning arrived at last and Mom answered her phone, she somehow knew exactly what to do. She chose her gentle voice - the first voice I ever heard - to tell me that she eats oatmeal every morning. She puts a bunch of stuff in it. The delivery was tedious, methodical, and soothing. Distractingly mundane. It became very clear that she wasn’t in a cage. She wasn’t in the ocean.
When my sister woke up, I texted to tell her all about Mom and the oatmeal.10 Jokingly, I suggested that I transcribe the conversation into my second children’s book. Lien agreed, but seriously. By the end of the morning, the book had been drafted.7
I cried and cried and cried. I woke up crying. I wanted to call her, but it was the middle of the night. George, my giant teddy bear and voice of reason, was working a night shift. So I just sat there in the darkness, wallowing in my self-imposed trauma. When morning arrived at last and Mom answered her phone, she somehow knew exactly what to do. She chose her gentle voice - the first voice I ever heard - to tell me that she eats oatmeal every morning. She puts a bunch of stuff in it. The delivery was tedious, methodical, and soothing. Distractingly mundane. It became very clear that she wasn’t in a cage. She wasn’t in the ocean.
When my sister woke up, I texted to tell her all about Mom and the oatmeal.10 Jokingly, I suggested that I transcribe the conversation into my second children’s book. Lien agreed, but seriously. By the end of the morning, the book had been drafted.7
Once inspiration had struck, it was time to find a starting point.
My first idea was to somehow incorporate Sách Đếm, a hand-drawn Vietnamese counting book my mother had made for Drakeson several years ago. I scanned the book, deleted the white paper underneath, and smoothed over the colored pencil and marker drawings with an oil painting filter.2
My first idea was to somehow incorporate Sách Đếm, a hand-drawn Vietnamese counting book my mother had made for Drakeson several years ago. I scanned the book, deleted the white paper underneath, and smoothed over the colored pencil and marker drawings with an oil painting filter.2
Next, I started thinking about what I like to see when I open a children's book. Eric Carle, the designer behind “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?,” “The Grouchy Ladybug,” and “The Very Busy Spider” among others, is one of the world's favorites. He paints and decorates paper to make collages like the illustration below.5
Two concepts from his style became central to my approach. First, I included a variety of textures separated by clean lines and curves. Eric Carle produces more depth from his painted textures than the more subtly textured paper photographs I chose to work with. My muted approach set the stage nicely for my mom's illustrations.
Secondly, I deliberately went against my own grain by highlighting inconsistencies. In other words, I made a rule to try my very best to break rules. Some of the caterpillar’s sections overlap and some do not. One eye is smaller on top. Only some of the feet touch the body. Some of the green sections are bluer, but these don’t show up in a regular way. The colored pencil markings alternate colors enough to look patterned, but they are, in fact, perfectly unpatterned. The orange in the outline isn’t used consistently with the yellow around the border, and even the yellow is missing above the third section down from the head. Beautiful.
When you’re writing something as simple as a counting book that goes to ten, it’s too easy to make it perfect. We get books like that for free every year from the Austin Trail of Lights. My counting book had to be the opposite of that - it had to be flat out wrong. We start off counting “one bowl of oatmeal” before the second ingredient, which is “raisins and peanuts.” You could really go back and count “one bowl of oatmeal” followed by “raisins and peanuts,” but of course it would make more sense to count “raisins and peanuts” as ingredients one and two instead. To make matters worse, I used two raisins and two peanuts, so there were four items to count instead of one or maybe two.
The third ingredient was applesauce, which I illustrated with an apple slice. Not only is this clearly not applesauce, but the number of seeds and placement of seeds changes throughout the pages for absolutely no reason. The fourth ingredient, olive oil, was cut differently each time from a picture of olive oil. You see, I had accidentally built up an empire of paper textures, and it was time to break that rule. The fifth ingredient, Metamucil, was a powder. Powder is already difficult to illustrate, so this was a great opportunity to use an overly abstract representation. The triangle is a color-edited section from the Metamucil lid on page 13. The sixth ingredient,6 legumes, was cut from paper again, but because my raisins and peanuts were the same sizes, these weren't. Seventh was chocolate, the only ingredient that overlapped itself, and fish oil, eighth, was a simplified photograph. I wanted the fish oil to reflect light like a real oil capsule, but at the same time, I didn’t want a fully photographed effect, which was reserved for the bowl and the mug.8 Ninth was strawberries cut from my only truly patterned paper, and the pour of the coffee on page ten was the only wildly irregular shape.
The backgrounds in Hot Oatmeal preserved the idea of an upper righthand light source by revealing a lower left hand shadow on concrete, but still sidestepped reality by blending into differently colored papers, all of which reflected light in a more uniform way. Shadings of “steam” were illustrated with concrete seeping through paper. The bowls were always shot at different angles, but the shapes of the concrete steam were unrelated, and the ingredients weren't scaled or placed in any realistic way. The ingredients, including the oats, were as randomly rotated as I could manage. I tried my best, in fact, to have very little regard for the balance in these arrangements in general. To top it all off, all 55 illustrations from Sách Đếm brought more nonsense and color to the mix.
While this book is dedicated to my amazing mother, it was also inspired by George’s birthday. My first children’s book, “The Little Worst,” was written for George’s 36th birthday, and it was 36 pages long. I wanted to do something similar with my second book, and who can think of 44 without thinking of 4x11? Mom’s counting book happens to have eleven pages: a title page and ten counting pages. I chose a background color for each page, and before you knew it, I had a set of eleven backgrounds. They are represented in column two and named in column one of the chart below.
For my second set of eleven, I duplicated the set, darkened each page, and slid these underneath my first set of backgrounds. To incorporate them, I needed to create a “mask” for each original background. A mask is like a window that lets you see into another layer underneath.
To follow this process in the chart, “mossy cream” is the background of the cover for Sách Đếm. Also, a darkened version of “mossy cream” appears under page six of Sách Đếm, which primarily has a "pumpkin cream” background. This was my second set of eleven. You may notice that three of the second set (sunny mustard, robin's egg, and deep periwinkle) were placed under their original counterparts, and eight of them were shifted underneath different pages.
Do you remember how the concrete backgrounds in Hot Oatmeal blended into colored backgrounds? Well, eleven of the twenty-one blended backgrounds use the same darkened set from set two. That was the third set of eleven. To follow how this works in the chart, a darkened version of “mossy cream” blends into concrete to create the background of page 19 in Hot Oatmeal. If you're following along in the book, page 19 is the one that mirrors the cover with Mom's fire illustration.
My fourth and final set of eleven is more subtle, but it references to the original set through the surrounding borders I chose in Shutterfly. In the rightmost column, you will see that "mossy cream" inspired the outer border encasing the illustration and the words on page 12 of Hot Oatmeal, which is a portrait of Mr. Happy posing with olive oil.
Do you remember how the concrete backgrounds in Hot Oatmeal blended into colored backgrounds? Well, eleven of the twenty-one blended backgrounds use the same darkened set from set two. That was the third set of eleven. To follow how this works in the chart, a darkened version of “mossy cream” blends into concrete to create the background of page 19 in Hot Oatmeal. If you're following along in the book, page 19 is the one that mirrors the cover with Mom's fire illustration.
My fourth and final set of eleven is more subtle, but it references to the original set through the surrounding borders I chose in Shutterfly. In the rightmost column, you will see that "mossy cream" inspired the outer border encasing the illustration and the words on page 12 of Hot Oatmeal, which is a portrait of Mr. Happy posing with olive oil.
Seeing a grid of 44 colored rectangles is so pleasing that I'll do it just one more time.
On top of these cycles, I wanted each pair of adjoining pages to create a four-color palette that both worked as a set and reflected the text from those pages. On the one hand, I know I've lost everyone who has started reading this post by now. In fact, I'm so confident in how boring I am that I helped you save your place with butterfly chapter markers that look like four elevens. On the other hand, if you’re reading this paragraph right now, you really are here for another chart. Like I can't imagine why you wouldn’t be interested.
This is a mess of colors. All together, they are not pleasing, but we shall examine each set, one row at a time, and see if we can sort some sense out of this.
The coffee pages, 2-3, are a combination of browns, grays, and tans.3 These are easy on the eyes and set the stage for our star, Mom’s ridiculous oatmeal.
The bowl of oatmeal follows suit in neutrality, but hints that we’re entering new territory with a pink balloon. Gazing right, we’re not in Kansas anymore, but in a world of violet grape vines for raisins. All together, the browns with this muted version of the classic 80’s color duo purple and turquoise scream "hair wrap."
Pages 6-7, were inspired by my happiest childhood memories with my dad. Dad loves crisp sky-blue days and apples. Hang on a sec. I forgot that a picture is worth a thousand words.
Pages 6-7, were inspired by my happiest childhood memories with my dad. Dad loves crisp sky-blue days and apples. Hang on a sec. I forgot that a picture is worth a thousand words.
The next set of colors are all about the olive oil, for you can make olive oil by mixing a little of that blue into the mustard. They could also illustrate moon and stars, dusk, fields, and sunset.
The Halloween trio, orange, purple, and black, dominate the next set, which is an appropriate setting for the poisonous Mr. Yuk.1
The greens, blue, and orange on pages 12-13 reflect the Mr. Happys and Mr. Yuks as well as the olive oil and Metamucil, and this time, the green circle background on the right echo Mr. Yuk instead of apples. Remember how there was an unspoken rule that every page had its own unique border and background? Not anymore.
Pages 14-15 are the darkest of the set. The ocean deep is to the left, and the right does little to lighten the mood. The contrast of yellow and purple in the first place is probably the murkiest of the primary secondary complementary pairs (compared to red and green or blue and orange), and the eerie placement of a lightbulb in the bottom right hand corner reminds us that gravity may not be functioning properly.
The outer borders in the next set represent the text quite literally with chocolate dots and fish scales. The set as a whole, mint chocolates and soft teals, reminds me of baby sheets because it's so pointedly gender neutral and cuddly.
Next we have strawberries across charcoal. Again a bit more of a literal representation of the text, but also, bright pink always needs to be tempered. Sea foam and mossy cream come together to complete the chalk-on-chalkboard effect.
You could order microfiber sofas in the beauties grouped together in pages 20-21.9 They add a welcome splash of color, but not so much that you’d regret owning cherry wood furniture. Page 20 was the only page in which I duplicated an illustration or incorporated a number into the design. I like the fact that my mother and I are suddenly dragons, and also that as dragons, we’re talking about cholesterol.
My ending page closes this chapter with a book imprint in the border. It also breaks another rule by fading four layers into the background (concrete, orange, green, and blue) instead of two. The counting illustrations from Hot Oatmeal are summarized in rows, and Sách Đếm is introduced with one of the first color combinations you ever grabbed from your crayon box - pastels of blue skies and green grass.
Notes
1 Hot Oatmeal is interrupted by dialogue featuring Mr. Yuk and his imaginary counterpart whom I have named Mr. Happy. I must have been about a year old when my parents had some friends come over to our apartment. There was a dark brown case of knives in our kitchen, and everybody watched me say the word, “knife.” I remember getting so much attention for the performance! Adults were gushing over me, and I loved it. In fact, I even remember thinking, “Why am I getting so much attention for this? They wouldn't believe how many other words I know!” In any event, Mr. Yuk was on that knife case.
2 I had used the same "oilify" filter from the digital image editing program Gimp on my watercolors and colored pencil drawings in my first book, "The Little Worst." Speaking of which, I also kept the same sizing, fonts, and layouts so that my second book, while totally unrelated, would make a nice set for my sister. Even the cranberry cover, which frames the dragon's fire and represents maternal love, was chosen with an idea of how it would look next to its precursor.
3 My sister and I maintain that Mom doesn’t finish her coffee. Then again, sometimes Mom likes to finish her coffee to prove that we’re wrong. If she remembers, she likes proving that we're wrong more than she dislikes finishing her coffee. Mom’s coffee on page three, which was not finished, shows a coffee drip that’s not on page two.
4 Another way I brought Sách Đếm into Hot Oatmeal was to distort and reuse four of Sách Đếm's original layer masks.
5 We all know what a thousand is. But do you know what a hundred thousand is? I'll tell you what it is - a hundred thousand is too big of a number for us to imagine. "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" has sold more than fifty MILLION copies. To help us make sense of this, Wikipedia says this is 1.8 copies sold every minute since its publication in 1969.
6 While ingredients six through ten are completely made up, they are also ingredients that may help to lower cholesterol.
7 Drafting the book was a lot of fun. The actual words of the book have everything to do with my family. If you didn't grow up with us, chances are you haven’t heard Mom say, “cup’coffee.” You haven’t heard her use the word “gizmo” as if that's a word anybody other than my dad uses. ("Gizmo" is a character from the movie "Gremlins." "Gadget" is the word to use.) You haven’t heard Mom talk about microwaving her coffee or sending Dad to the store, but these points come up frequently for some reason. And the store she is talking about is always called "Food Lion" no matter what the actual name of the store is. (To her credit, it has been a Food Lion before.) You haven't heard me interrupting my parents with questions transparent with criticism, which without fail provoke no concern whatsoever. But the funniest family reference to me, of course, is “hot oatmeal.” When I’m talking to anybody else, “hot oatmeal” is oatmeal and “cold oatmeal” is not real. Perhaps it’s granola. I have no idea.
8 Speaking of that mug, it has a twin, and nearly every time I'm drinking coffee, I'm using one of the two. They've been in the family since 1980, which was two years before I was born. Dad believes they came with a tiny espresso maker, which was a gift from his cousin Sylvia. He says it was "likely a wedding gift."
9 Driving home my favorite joke of “hot oatmeal,” the dragon’s fire breath heats the oatmeal on the last couple of pages before Sách Đếm.
9 Driving home my favorite joke of “hot oatmeal,” the dragon’s fire breath heats the oatmeal on the last couple of pages before Sách Đếm.
10 I'll close with the original text.
Kratzke Lan:
Okay so I can’t talk because my kids are trying to nap but I called mom this morning
to hear her voice because I was up until 6:30. Anyway.
She told me two things that made me feel so much better.
The first is that Ba is living with them right now and Ba started watching YouTube on
She told me two things that made me feel so much better.
The first is that Ba is living with them right now and Ba started watching YouTube on
her phone at full volume in the middle of the night and it was so loud that it woke Mom up.
For some reason, this is beyond hilarious to me.
The second thing she told me that made me feel better were all the details of her
The second thing she told me that made me feel better were all the details of her
morning oatmeal routine because it sounded so bad that I love this story.
This is how the story goes. You won’t be disappointed.
Every day, Dad wakes up and makes me cup’coffee.
And I sip on it and go to work.
And then by 8:00, I’m just about done with my cup’coffee.
So I go downstairs to make myself some oatmeal.
Kratzke Tins:
Mom said that she’s done with her coffee?
That’s not a true story.
Kratzke Lan:
Some hot oatmeal.
Well yeah, of course that’s not true, but that’s part of it.
Some HOT oatmeal.
And I put in raisins and (sounding very happy for no reason) peanuts.
And Dad made apple sauce so I put that in.
Because Cau Tung and Co Vy bring by the apples
And they have the little brown spots
And Vy says we have to soak them in vinegar or something.
Actually, I don’t know what she said.
And Dad says that’s okay because he’ll just peel them
This is how the story goes. You won’t be disappointed.
Every day, Dad wakes up and makes me cup’coffee.
And I sip on it and go to work.
And then by 8:00, I’m just about done with my cup’coffee.
So I go downstairs to make myself some oatmeal.
Kratzke Tins:
Mom said that she’s done with her coffee?
That’s not a true story.
Kratzke Lan:
Some hot oatmeal.
Well yeah, of course that’s not true, but that’s part of it.
Some HOT oatmeal.
And I put in raisins and (sounding very happy for no reason) peanuts.
And Dad made apple sauce so I put that in.
Because Cau Tung and Co Vy bring by the apples
And they have the little brown spots
And Vy says we have to soak them in vinegar or something.
Actually, I don’t know what she said.
And Dad says that’s okay because he’ll just peel them
Because you know he got the apple peeler.
So I throw in the applesauce with my raisins and peanuts.
“Uh, is it good?”
Oh yes. It’s very good.
“Oh!”
Hot oatmeal.
Kratzke Tins:
Oh
Kratzke Lan:
Oh and then I also throw in olive oil and Metamucil.
“That does not sound good Mom.”
No but it is good. The olive oil is good actually.
Kratzke Tins:
Ahh hahahah
This keeps getting weirder
Kratzke Lan:
“I didn’t have a problem with the olive oil. It was the Metamucil.”
Oh no, the Metamucil is very very neutral.
“Oh okay. Because I was thinking it was the orange one.”
Well I don’t know if it was the orange one because if I drink it
I probably get the orange one so I can have some flavor.
But the color is not the orange one.
Kratzke Tins:
Oh okay
I didn’t know that exists.
Kratzke Lan:
It is very neutral. So when I put it in my oatmeal, I don’t know if it’s orange.
It’s very plain. Like (thoughtfully) white.
Kratzke Tins:
Hahaha okay.
Kratzke Lan:
“Uhhhh”
“and it’s good?”
Oh yes. Hot oatmeal.
“Mom, I feel a lot better now.”
Kratzke Tins:
Hahahah she needs to stop calling it that.
Kratzke Lan:
The End.
Kratzke Tins:
HAHAHAHAH
Kratzke Lan:
There are tears in my eyes from quiet laughing right now. Our mom is the cutest.
And she knew I was tired and upset and she told me all of this in a very soothing sweet voice.
It was like I was her baby and she knew the kinds of stories that would calm me down.
“Uh, is it good?”
Oh yes. It’s very good.
“Oh!”
Hot oatmeal.
Kratzke Tins:
Oh
Kratzke Lan:
Oh and then I also throw in olive oil and Metamucil.
“That does not sound good Mom.”
No but it is good. The olive oil is good actually.
Kratzke Tins:
Ahh hahahah
This keeps getting weirder
Kratzke Lan:
“I didn’t have a problem with the olive oil. It was the Metamucil.”
Oh no, the Metamucil is very very neutral.
“Oh okay. Because I was thinking it was the orange one.”
Well I don’t know if it was the orange one because if I drink it
I probably get the orange one so I can have some flavor.
But the color is not the orange one.
Kratzke Tins:
Oh okay
I didn’t know that exists.
Kratzke Lan:
It is very neutral. So when I put it in my oatmeal, I don’t know if it’s orange.
It’s very plain. Like (thoughtfully) white.
Kratzke Tins:
Hahaha okay.
Kratzke Lan:
“Uhhhh”
“and it’s good?”
Oh yes. Hot oatmeal.
“Mom, I feel a lot better now.”
Kratzke Tins:
Hahahah she needs to stop calling it that.
Kratzke Lan:
The End.
Kratzke Tins:
HAHAHAHAH
Kratzke Lan:
There are tears in my eyes from quiet laughing right now. Our mom is the cutest.
And she knew I was tired and upset and she told me all of this in a very soothing sweet voice.
It was like I was her baby and she knew the kinds of stories that would calm me down.
Kratzke Tins:
Hahaha that’s soooo sweet
Kratzke Lan:
I feel like I want to transcribe the whole thing into a children’s book and every third page it says
“Oh yes hot oatmeal.”
But because it’s a children’s book I’ll put cotton candy and pizza and stuff in it.
And the first 4 pages will all repeat “cup’coffee.”
And the illustration on the page where she finishes it will show it half full.
It would be one of my favorite books.
Kratzke Tins:
Omg please do it
Make it the same dimensions as the little worst.
So it can match my book collection of one book.
Hahaha that’s soooo sweet
Kratzke Lan:
I feel like I want to transcribe the whole thing into a children’s book and every third page it says
“Oh yes hot oatmeal.”
But because it’s a children’s book I’ll put cotton candy and pizza and stuff in it.
And the first 4 pages will all repeat “cup’coffee.”
And the illustration on the page where she finishes it will show it half full.
It would be one of my favorite books.
Kratzke Tins:
Omg please do it
Make it the same dimensions as the little worst.
So it can match my book collection of one book.
On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
Ten counting pages,
Something penultimate
Eight for 1980
Seven family references
Six to ten ingredients
Fifty million sold!!
Four layer masks
Three Kratzke ladies
Two children's books
And a story of one-year-old Lan
I'm so glad that being a genius has not made you too crazy. Your parents must be great.
ReplyDeleteYou are, and always will be, the only person to have ever called me that. The idea is so attractive that I'll pretend it's true for a minute. Thank you, Jack!
ReplyDelete