The Monday Evening Report

"Saturday" begins (perhaps ironically) on Sunday afternoon.  We've just seen some of what the first half of Monday looks like: alarm clocks are resented, breakfast is eaten, teeth are brushed, buses are taken to school and cars to work, etc.

On this page (page five for those keeping track at home), we're looking in on Monday evening.  India's home from school.  Dinner is on the table at the usual time:

When pretty much every day looks the same, you can fall into a routine.  Routines can be boring or frustrating or comforting, depending on the week.  Sometimes it can be scary if part of your routine changes unexpectedly.  Particularly if the part that changes involves someone you love unexpectedly not showing up for dinner.

I think I've mentioned before how much I love detail, but it's worth mentioning over and over again because it's such a driving force behind this book.  I wanted this book to be something you could read again and again and be able to see new things each time.  Here are a few of the details in these panels I love:

1.) The towel on the oven door.  It has ducks on it.  We always had towels hanging from the oven door handle in our house when I was growing up (it's something I still do).  I'm not sure why.  But it makes it feel like home to me.

2.) Photos on the walls.  Sassy appears to run in the family.

3.) India's sitting on a stack of books so she can get a better angle on her spaghetti.

We're just barely beginning to see what life is like for the McGreevy Family.  It's going to be an interesting week for them.  For some of them, it's going to be boring and stifling.  For some, it'll be infuriating and dramatic.  It's going to be frustrating for all of them at different times.

And (hopefully), it's going to be fun for you.

Cheers.

Ah...Mondays.

As if a bad Sunday weren't enough, you have to go to bed and wake up to find Monday morning staring you right in the face.  You have to fight your way out of the comfort of bed only to be rewarded by having to trudge off to school or work.  And that's where we find India on this page.  Her day begins the way you would expect any standard day to begin:

India's not too downtrodden, though.  Even though the weather's rotten:

After all, the start of a new week can bring all sorts of opportunities.  You never know what might happen during the course of any given week.  A LOT can happen in just seven days.

Return of the thing...

Maybe you've noticed a rather lengthy hiatus in terms of the posts here (sorry).  Well, there's an explanation for that: In thinking about this site and what I want it to do, I came to the realization that it was getting to be a bit too much "inside baseball".

So I've decided to tone down the process part of this (there will still be some of it) and instead post a couple of panels from every page of the book.  I'm going to start with page one and post until we're caught up with where I am currently (I'm working on page 27 right now).

To make up for the long silence, here's page one in its entirety.  I'm not going to make a habit of posting full pages (there has to be SOME surprise once the book is finally released), but this time I'll make an exception:

In this first page we see how India's spending her Sunday: She's trying to draw but it's going...badly.  And the more she tries, the more frustrated she gets.

A lot of this book comes from personal experience.  I mean...not the experience of being a little girl (except when it comes to spiders).  But I know exactly what it's like to be stuck.  And sometimes figuring a way out of it isn't exactly straightforward.

Cheers.