Keep Color in Your Day

Project Overview

Keep Color in Your Day is a gentle, verse-driven picture book that shows children how love, gratitude, and small acts of compassion create a brighter world. Author Andrea Katzman Provenzano weaves social-emotional learning into an accessible, poetic narrative — one that works equally well as a bedtime story, a classroom read-aloud, or a counselor’s resource. The book’s companion discussion questions and extension activities extend its impact beyond storytime.

The central illustration challenge was translating the concept of “color” as an emotional metaphor into visuals that felt warm and concrete rather than abstract — every scene needed to radiate the feeling the text was describing, not simply illustrate the words.

Role

Andrea came with a lyrical manuscript and a concept that was inherently visual — “color” as a metaphor for emotional warmth and kindness. My role was to make that metaphor feel felt rather than explained. Every scene needed to radiate the mood the text was evoking, which meant the illustration couldn’t just describe what was happening; it had to carry the emotional tone.

From developing a multiracial ensemble cast through to print-ready files, I worked across 38 pages of full illustration, making sure every spread felt warm, inclusive, and consistent in style — a book that works as well in a classroom or counselor’s office as it does at bedtime.

Selected Double-Page Spreads (Final Book Layout)

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.