One of our book contributors, Robert Pizzo, whose unique email marketing designs were featured in the book, recently announced that his first children’s book, The Amazing Animal Alphabet of Twenty-Six Tongue Twisters will be published September of 2013.
The book features a silly tongue twister for each letter of the alphabet, accompanied by Pizzo’s iconic art:
When asked where his inspiration came from, Pizzo said it was close to home:
“As the father of three daughters, I had always enjoyed reading to my kids. We ended up acquiring quite a collection of books and I guess it’s in the genes that my girls always enjoyed the ones that had more of a graphically designed look to them. A few years ago I had this idea for an animal alphabet book loosely based on a little sentence game I would play with my kids while riding in the car. Though I had illustrated many book covers I had always wanted to see what it was like to illustrate an entire book.”
Pizzo says creating a book wasn’t that much different than his average illustration assignment, “only much, MUCH longer!”
He looked to authors like Dr. Seuss, who have mastered the simplicity of words in children’s books, and put more focus on the illustrations. “First, I took a jumble of seemingly random words beginning with the same letter and turned them into a complete sentence. The more unlikely and absurd the better! Once I had that I thought, ‘OK, now, how can I illustrate that?’ You ought to see the gigantic stack of sketches and Post-It doodles this process generated.”
Pizzo says he would consider writing more children’s books in the future, depending on how well this one does. “I have a couple of other book dummies and ideas in a folder on my computer, so who knows?”
