Shadow Play in the Woods: Painter Haltern publishes an illustrated book

Author and illustrator at Haltern Sandra Rodenkirchen has designed a new children’s book. “Schattenspiel im Wald” is an illustrated book for two-year-olds where rabbits, squirrels and mice encounter frightening shapes on their way through a storm forest.

How did the work start? When short choreographed stories of “Hare, Eichhörnchen und Maus” appeared in the Halterner Zeitung during the 2017 Advent season, the Haltern writer and illustrator didn’t think they would produce her own picture book.

“Thanks to the loving and encouraging feedback from the newspaper’s readers,” says Rodenkirchen, “at some point I started sketching one of the four stories and reworking the text in a picture-perfect way.”

Driven by closing the diadem

The so-called storyboard was completed in a few weeks, but was not executed until Corona’s lockdown. Since March 2020, she has worked on it, digitizing, coloring, text and images to create a coherent story for children 2 years and older.

“It’s another project close to my heart and the first picture book in which I had everything in my hands: texts, illustrations, and layout – thanks to my small publishing house, production and sales,” the author says.

Kindly written and lovingly designed

The latter is a mammoth task that self-publishers often underestimate. Because the children’s book market is full of new publications every year. More importantly, for smaller publishers like this “Publisher Pünktchen Children’s Books” Reviews and recommendations.

“Thanks to the great rhymes and repetition, young people can read the text very quickly and enjoy reading it a lot! Really highly recommended. Beautifully written and lovingly designed!” Stated this in the first online review of the picture book published in April.

And that’s not supposed to be all. We are currently working on a kid-friendly song for the book, which should go on a reading tour ASAP.