Goodness Gracious Golly Gee: I Forgot My Christmas Tree!

Project Overview

Goodness Gracious Golly Gee: I Forgot My Christmas Tree! by Carol and Cori Burcham is a rhyming holiday picture book that captures something most Christmas stories prefer to skip: the stress. A stay-at-home dad races against the clock — tree, decorations, cookies, gifts — convinced that the whole season will fall apart if he doesn’t get everything right. When a magical Christmas figure appears, it’s not to help him finish the list. It’s to remind him that love, joy, and togetherness are the only things that actually matter.

The illustration challenge was making the dad’s chaos genuinely funny and relatable without letting it overshadow the warmth at the story’s core — the festive domestic environments needed to feel both hilariously dishevelled and deeply cosy, so that the shift toward Christmas’s true spirit felt earned rather than abrupt.

Role

The illustration challenge was making Dad’s chaos genuinely funny without letting the comedy undercut the warmth waiting underneath it. The festive domestic scenes needed to read as hilariously dishevelled in the early spreads and deeply cosy once the story turns, so the shift toward Christmas’s true spirit landed as earned rather than sudden.

Full illustration across all 38 pages covered character design for Dad, his family, and the magical Christmas figure, festive domestic environment design across contrasting emotional tones, visual comedic timing within a rhyming narrative, and print-ready file preparation for Mascot Kids.

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.

Process

Every project follows this same structured path, so you always know where we are and what comes next. You review and approve at the sketch stage and the line art stage — nothing moves to color until you’re happy. By the time the final spread is rendered, there are no surprises.