A Crooked Crown Day

Project Overview

A Crooked Crown Day by Brandie Hollingsworth centres on a young African-American girl whose day falls apart in every direction — teased at school, homework forgotten, laughed at by classmates. The weight of it all threatens to topple her “invisible crown,” the powerful symbol of inner confidence and self-worth at the heart of the story. Her grandmother meets her with gentle hands and wise words, reminding her who she is and what she carries. Hollingsworth writes with the kind of emotional precision that comes from lived experience — the story feels true in the way only personal stories can.

The illustration challenge was making the invisible crown visible without making it literal — it needed to be something readers could see in the girl’s posture, her expression, and the way she moves through the world, even when she can’t feel it herself.

Role

The design challenge was making an invisible crown visible without making it literal. Readers needed to see the girl’s confidence — or its absence — in her posture and expression, not in a literal illustrated object, so the crown had to live in body language rather than on the page as a prop. Her day unravels in small, cumulative ways: teasing at school, a forgotten assignment, laughter from classmates, and each setback needed to read as a real weight on a child who is still, underneath it, entirely herself.

Full illustration across the book covered character design for the girl, her grandmother, and the school cast, illustration of the emotional arc from defeat to restoration, 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.

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.