This children’s book is available on Amazon as an E copy and a paperback! Trichy Tillie has an Instagram as well if you would like to be up to date on her adventures.
Why Amazon?
We got offers from publishers to publish this book but we chose Amazon as our platform for Trichy Tillie. It is a great way to publish online with a wide range of readers, it is easy to manage, and helps keep the author’s vision for Tillie alive.
It’s finally here. Over the past few months, I have worked on this book along with schoolwork, ballet, my life, nothing is as rewarding as seeing it come to life. I collaborated with my aunt who’s incredible writing will bring you into Tillie’s experience with this rare hair pulling disorder, Trichotillomania or Trich for short.
My Experience
My aunt and I had already written a children’s book together so this was our second time collaborating, but first time publishing. Trichy Tillie went through many edits before I drew Tillie in the book.
This was my first draft. An ombré bird with small feet and an orange beak. Cute right? We wanted only a few eyelashes to raise awareness for other BFRB disorders. This is a children’s book so I used bright colors, some of my personal favorites, and made her fluffy. This was drawn on January 1st, 2020, nine months before the book was published. Afterward, Tillie was put on hold for our new children’s book coming out soon. When I returned to Tillie, her layers were all wrong, I couldn’t find the exact colors to use on the new sketches of her… so I changed Tillie.
Excuse my handwriting but as you can see Tillie is completely purple with light pink skin. This was much easier to transfer from page to page. After I was sent the words to the book I started getting idea after idea. When I sat down to draw I used the lighter color palette and black outline to add more of what drawing style I liked on children’s books.
Each page was so colorful and fun to draw that I ended up finishing fast, although each page was fixed at least twice, what you see in the book was overall my first idea. But there were some that I never felt happy about and fixed right before the book was published.
What I fixed
This page never sat right with me. It was too plain and didn’t convey the best way it could. I changed it out a week before the book was published. I had drawn something for my aunt that it was replaced with.
This fit better with the words and I liked how simple it was. One of my favorite things you will see throughout the book is colors, all of them, including black for backgrounds. It just makes the drawings come to life.
Struggles
My aunt lives in Australia so I would say one of the harder things about this book was distance. Time zones, limited talking time, connection. It was different than being able to sit down together or show her what I was thinking in front of her. She was amazing at answering back and calling so that made the distance so much better. It takes me a while to start a book so once I got into it I wanted to do it in my free time, at school, on the bus. There was no struggle too big to stop this book from happening and I am grateful for that.
Hadley's Hues 