Mrs. Johnson and the Blueberry Blunder

Project Overview

Mrs. Johnson and the Blueberry Blunder by Rachel N. Johnson is a delightfully chaotic classroom adventure that combines the joy of a farm field trip with the fun of a child-sized mystery. When Mrs. Johnson’s class visits Mr. Regan’s farm, the excitement of the day quickly spirals into a blueberry blunder that has everyone scrambling. Rachel N. Johnson writes with a lightness and humour that keeps young readers turning pages, and the farm setting gives the story a visual richness that classroom-only stories can’t match.

The illustration challenge was balancing two distinct visual environments — the lively, contained energy of a classroom and the open, unpredictable world of a working farm — while keeping the comedy running across both. The blueberry mishap itself needed to be visually evident and funny without giving away the resolution too early.

Role

The illustration challenge was balancing two distinct visual environments, the lively, contained energy of a classroom and the open, unpredictable world of a working farm, while keeping the comedy running across both. The blueberry mishap itself needed to be visually evident and funny without giving away the resolution too early, so the humor had to live in small visual details rather than anything too on the nose.

Full illustration across the book covered character design for Mrs. Johnson, her class, and Mr. Regan, dual-environment illustration spanning classroom and farm, visual comedic mystery pacing, and print-ready file preparation for Mascot Books.

Character Design

Before a single page is illustrated, I develop the main characters in full — defining their proportions, expressions, and personality. This is the foundation that keeps your characters recognizable and consistent across every scene, every lighting condition, and every emotional moment in the project.