Sammy Squirrel Reads

For the past three years, I've been taking graphic design classes. In order to practice, I invite middle school students at Borel Middle School to recommend character ideas and which book the character will be reading. The characters were added to a collection of 1" x 4.25" bookmarks.  Kids could use the back of the bookmarks for jotting down due dates when borrowing a book. Or, they simply collected the characters. The bottom line is that my Adobe Illustrator skills improved thanks to those students!

There are now three types of characters: people with heads and books, animals with heads and books, and (most recently) whole body characters. One of the most challenging animal characters was Sammy Squirrel, requested by my friend who specified a question mark-shaped tail and glasses.

In addition to using the characters to practice my craft, they come in handy in two ways:

• Free bookmarks that include the message "Strong Libraries, Strong Students". A carry a half dozen or so with me as conversation starters.
• Images available on the Library Advocacy Store and DesignClass sites, thus providing a small revenue stream to the California School Library Foundation.