The Alphapets portrait project this week is brought to you by the letters Y and Z. Here’s my abecedarian poem to go with these letters and artwork :

Yolanda has a good attitude

Zoe says “We’re done! Let’s go get some food!”

Here’s the artwork (somewhere on each piece is an alphabetical letter):

I did portraits of a Bengal cat and a Basset Hound.

In thinking of a “good attitude” I thought of my adopted father, a psychiatrist, and his Bengal cat named Missy. He was fond of pointing out how a cat will adapt easily to things, take things in stride – or have a good attitude – that it’s humans, with our big-brains, that will often resist adapting, and will as a result make things harder on ourselves with a bad attitude.

The Basset Hound finished off this letter sequence because as a child I was best friends with a Basset Hound and loved getting to share an evening meal with the dog.

As I completed the original artwork for my abecedarian poem I also worked on the graphic design of Alphapets by Clancy. That’s part of what makes this an “artist book” – it was conceived and constructed like an art object – by me. My spouse did proofread the text, make some book design suggestions. That, in my mind, is akin to submitting a bunch of artwork to a gallery for exhibit. Here’s a photo of me doing the graphic design hocus pocus.

You can see a bit of my book cover design in the above photo but here, below, is a better view of the front cover of the printed book.

Alphapets by Clancy is now available as both hardback or soft cover printed books. The ebook version has a similar but slightly different cover. All versions can be accessed here: https://www.blurb.com/b/10071862-alphapets-by-clancy

I had dedicated my book “for reading aloud to P and J” – both P and J are under age 5 – so the day I uploaded my book to Blurb.com for printing I told P and J’s grandparents (our friends) about the book. Then I turned off all of my devices to make dinner and read a novel a while before going to bed.

By now I don’t remember why but a few hours later, after dinner, I turned on my smart phone. I had messages just about every way a person can be messaged these days, from Storyberries.com !

Long story short this publisher/distribution house wanted to release my book for free to their readers! I gave my author/artist permissions and now you – or your little ones – can access my book here: https://www.storyberries.com/bedtime-stories-alphapets-free-books-online/

Storyberries.com is also doing audio versions of Alphapets by Clancy which are appearing on their podcast channels on Apple, Spotify and Podbean! How fun is that?!

I’d hoped for my book to be read aloud….

Here’s a photo of my friends grandkids looking at Alphapets by Clancy – the twins’ mom was pretty happy too!! Yippee!!

I’m a very happy author/artist!!

You can find the previous set of letters for this project here.

I had such fun riding this ride – I think I’ll do it again! Meet here next Monday?