Granny Mae Meets Harry P. Best

Project Overview

Granny Mae Meets Harry P. Best by Candice Mary Thomas is a whimsical, warmhearted story that pairs genuine comedy with quiet lessons about compassion and connection. Granny Mae and her loyal dog Bam Bam cross paths with Harry, his mischievous ferret Daisy, and the wonderfully quirky Walapazoo, and what follows is a silly adventure full of funny misunderstandings and surprising moments of real friendship. Candice Mary Thomas writes with a light touch that keeps the humour front and centre while opening gentle space for conversations about the experiences of elderly people.

The illustration challenge was giving each character — human, dog, ferret, and the delightfully named Walapazoo — a distinct visual personality that made every scene feel like a cast rather than a collection, keeping the comedy sharp and the warmth consistent across every page.

Role

This is a five-character book, which means the illustration challenge begins with making sure each character — Granny Mae, Bam Bam, Harry, Daisy the ferret, and the wonderfully named Walapazoo — has a distinct visual personality that reads clearly in every scene, including the ones where all five are present at once. Comedy in picture books depends on that kind of visual clarity: the reader needs to track who is doing what, and to feel the specific personality of each character in the moment the joke lands.

Full illustration across all 32 pages covered character design for the complete cast, multi-character comedic scene composition, visual storytelling across the full arc of the story, and print-ready file preparation for Dtj Press.

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.