Book Cover Premiere: Charlotte the Scientist is Squished

Camille Andros and Brianne Farley join us today for the cover reveal of their brand new picture book, Charlotte the Scientist Is Squished! Watch the video below, then keep reading to learn more about the inspiration behind the story.

Camille: Charlotte is a bunny and a serious scientist who solves important problems using the scientific method. With her essential scientific equipment-protective glasses, lab coat, magnifying glass, and clip board Charlotte tries to solve the problem of being squished by her many brothers and sisters and not having enough space to conduct her experiments.

Brianne: Each drawing started on Arches hot press paper with ink and a crow quill pen, colored pencil, and graphite pencil. These drawings were then scanned and colored digitally on Adobe Photoshop.

Camille: My favorite spread from the book is wordless where Charlotte has finally succeeded in getting some space. I love the look of sheer joy on her face. Also in the author’s note at the end Charlotte asks her readers to write and share how they are being scientists in their homes and classrooms. I can’t wait to hear how kids are being scientists!

Brianne: I’m excited for readers to see a character who is so smart and adventurous and believes she can solve any problem. But my favorite spread to draw was the one of Charlotte, victorious, in front of all of her scientific equipment. There’s a tiny star on one of the bottles to mark where my dad said, “you’re not going to fill that WHOLE PAGE with bottles are you?” I also liked any scene where I got to draw robots covered in toilet paper. I’m not as mature as Charlotte.

Camille: When I was doing research for CHARLOTTE I came across the term “spaghettification” which, in astrophysics, refers to the stretching of objects into a shape like a spaghetti noodle when that object gets close to a very strong gravitational field, like a black hole. I thought this was hilarious and so interesting. It didn’t make it into this Charlotte book, but it may show up in another.

Brianne: I love love love reading scientific articles. There’s a page about balloons in space in this book, and I became very curious if a balloon could in fact float on the moon. I found that, because there’s no air on the moon, a hydrogen balloon released there falls with an acceleration of 1.6 m/s^2. So I put the balloon scene in Charlotte’s rocket ship where there’s air. I really overthought this, didn’t I?

Camille: Jennifer Greene at Clarion Books, part of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, was our amazing editor. I can hardly wait for Charlotte to meet the world on March 14, 2017; if you feel the same, you can preorder from Indiebound or wherever you buy books.

Brianne: Thanks so much for chatting with us! Clarion Books is publishing CHARLOTTE. We got to work with the amazing editor Jennifer Greene and art director Sharismar Rodriguez, who put a lot of time and love into this book. God bless them for keeping track of Charlottle’s thirteen siblings. You can preorder now, but it will be in your local bookstore on March 14th!