Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash

As a writer and illustrator of an upcoming bestselling picture book (haha), I have decided to join tiktok. Specifically, I’m joining the BookTok community. I thought this would be a fun idea to involve modern social media platforms in my free inquiry as I continue working on my illustrations. I created a tiktok interviewing my peers in Education about their favourite childhood picture books. It was curious to learn what books my peers grew up with and why they chose the books they did. This was so much fun to film and their answers brought back so many nostalgic book memories from when I was a wee young lad reading picture books at home and at school.

The picture book that holds a special place in my heart is The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. It’s quite a sad book in the end, but it’s one of the first books that envoked some critical thinking and analysis in little Yireh’s brain. I also love Shel Silverstein’s other poetry books like Where the Sidewalk Ends.

Out of the Books my peers talked about, Mr. Kellam’s choice of Garfield sparked a new idea in me. Perhaps my next project will be on creating a comic or graphic novel. As someone who is shamefully not a big novel reader, I absolutely love reading graphic novels. Some of my favourites are the Amulet series by Kazu Kibuishi, Cardboard by Doug TenNapel and Smile by Raina Telgemeier.

Features and Favourite Picture Books:

  • Nova Long: Pippen and Pudding by KV Johansen
  • Chris Kellam: Garfield by Jim Davies
  • Meaghan Leong: Love You Forever by Robert Munsch
  • Jo Huber: A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon
  • Jayda Konnila: The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
  • Teagan Hunt: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

A big thank you to everyone who participated in the video!

In terms of my book progress, I am continuing to work on my illustrations and am striving to finish them by the end of the week if possible! There is a lot to do in the last weeks of the term so I’m quite honestly overwhelmed, but so far, this free inquiry experience has been really valuable and I’m looking forward to continuing to work on it after the term ends to finish it and post my final product! Maybe I’ll post more about it on tiktok too and build a bigger presence on BookTok.