A new series of children’s books, written by Covington-based author Felicia McElhaney, released its first book, titled “Fuzzy Bear: An Imagination Tree Story,” this month.
“It’s called the Imagination series, but each character has the potential to basically be a spin-off,” McElhaney told LINK nky.
Published by Cincinnati Book Publishing, the book tells the story of a “mischievous bear,” McElhaney said, as his imagination leads him to meet other characters in the Imagination series universe.
When LINK nky spoke with McElhaney in the middle of August, the book had already sold out of its first printing run, McElhaney said, prompting her to request for reprints, which should be ready in the next five weeks or so.
The book’s origins trace back to the pandemic when everyone was working from home. McElhaney, who works for an insurance company, would frequently have morning video conferences with her coworkers. But then people’s kids, all home due to lock-downs, had to go and make things complicated.
“I was trying to have meetings with my co-workers, with two dads separately, and I couldn’t do that with the kids,” McElhaney said, laughing. “They wanted to be part of the meeting.”
McElhaney struck a deal with the kids: She would write short portions of a story and share it with the kids to keep them entertained, but they had to get off of the calls afterwards.
One of McElhaney’s former co-workers, Erik Lecomte, remembered how his son, Dominic, would pop his head into the video conference every morning “having something to look forward to.”
Dominic’s habit of building forts with his dad even gets a shout-out in the book.
“By the time really COVID was done and the kids were back to school, I had enough for a book,” McElhaney said. “I didn’t intend to publish. The dads said I should.”
Publishing a book, especially when you’re already working full-time, is challenging and time-consuming, though. Plus, McElhaney had no illustrator, so she stuck the draft in her desk and left it alone until around Christmas in 2023, when her son and his wife announced they were expecting their first child.
“It dawned on me that I knew who my illustrator was going to be,” McElhaney said, “and that was his mother-in-law. Her name is Debbie Van Leeuwen.”
Van Leeuwen is primarily a muralist. She’s known for her murals at the Kentucky Children’s Hospital in Lexington, where she lives. This was her first time illustrating a book, and the change in format and materials was a bit of an adjustment.
“I have painted hundreds of murals,” Van Leeuwen said. “So the big things are what I’m used to.”
The size of the illustrations was one thing, but the illustrations required her to switch from her typical acrylic paints to watercolors.
“You paint, and it creates a vague idea of what you’re thinking,” Van Leeuwen said, unlike acrylic paints. “But then it takes on a new personality, which cannot be duplicated because it’s watercolor. It just creates. It just does its own thing.”
It was fun, Van Leeuwen said, but it required multiple copies of each illustration before she got something that satisfied her. Luckily, she had help.
Three neighborhood girls, aged five, nine and ten, respectively, would come to offer tips while she worked.
“I would paint them, and then I would call the girls over, and I would say, ‘What’s your opinion?'” said Van Leeuwen. “They gave me some incredibly good feedback.”
McElhaney and Van Leeuwen initially kept the book a secret from their kids, finally announcing it at the baby shower. They wanted to have the book ready by the baby’s due date on Aug. 1. It was born in late July before the due date, so the timing didn’t quite work out, but she received copies by the end of the month. The book is dedicated to the author and illustrator’s new grandchild as well as Lecomte’s son, Dominic.
Kids were involved at every step of the book’s genesis, McElhaney points out, from the kids on the video conferences to her and Van Leeuwen’s new grandchild to the girls who advised on the illustrations.
“So, there’s a lot of heart in the book, I think,” McElhaney said.
“Fuzzy Bear” has about eight characters, each of which could eventually have its own book. Another book, “Worm Hunter,” also illustrated by Van Leeuwen, is due out in spring through the same publisher.
McElhaney will be performing readings of her books at parks around the region in the coming weeks. You can learn more about the book and how to contact her for readings at theimaginationbooks.com.