Hababy’s Christmas Eve second printing is available to order from Jamie Farr’s site, amazon and select bookshops. The new printing is 7″ x 8.5″ size, full-color, softbound book.

Hababy’s Christmas Eve was written by Jamie & Joy Farr and was my first published full-color children’s book. Originally published in 2003, it was reissued in 2010.

I’m often asked how the opportunity to illustrate this book came about. It was my pleasure to assist in hosting Jamie Farr when he was touring in promotion of his autobiography, Just Farr Fun. I was living in Raleigh at the time, working as the Community Relations/Events Coordinator for Barnes & Noble Booksellers. Jamie’s schedule had him staying in Raleigh overnight, so I played host outside of the scheduled signing. It was during this time that I discovered how challenging it is to be a celebrity. It was near impossible to eat out without meals being constantly interrupted. I have to say he was courteous to all, even as his meals got cold. It was wonderful to find that celebrity as Jamie is, he was really great to hang out with and easy to talk to. Throughout the day he asked about what my future dreams were and discovered that I loved to illustrate. A few months later, he called me at work to ask if I would be interested in illustrating a children’s book he and his wife had written. How cool is that!

For the second printing we changed the size of the book and I edited some of the page layout and updated a little bit of the art to fit the new size and page count.

For more on Jamie Farr, visit his website.

Our goal was to make a cookbook that was usable and didn’t break the bank, either to produce or to buy. We opted for a 2-color cover and 1-color interior, designing for no bleed on the inside pages to save on printing costs. It was important that the book be truly usable in a friendly kitchen way. What were the important elements to accomplish this? A) Readability – both in font selection and text layout; B) Accessibility – a book that would lay open without propping and not requiring page turns to complete a recipe; C) Personality – copy written to reflect April’s style, fun food related quotes throughout, and space for the cookbook user to write notes.

I believe we accomplished all that, and it was a team effort. Besides April, her family was fully part of this book’s creation. Her daughter, Hana, interned with me for the summer specifically to work on this project. She did a terrific job! For anyone that has put together a 160 page cookbook you know that the devil is in the details and Hana was right on those.

With Hana checking all the layout details and making copy edits, I got the fun job of designing the cover. (Hey, experience has some clout.) Sunny Point’s logo is a cheery orange sun, which was perfect for the “Dawn” part of the title. I went with hand drawn stars for the “Dark” and used a strong diagonal division of the two colors to make a bold cover.

And, I have made a good half dozen of the recipes out of the book since it was released – all with excellent results. Perhaps there is cooking hope for me yet.

Copies of the cookbook can be purchased via the Sunny Point Café blog store, or at the restaurant.

Here in Asheville the book is available from Spellbound Children’s Bookshop and will soon be available at many other locations.

The book is published by Back of a Mouse Books, a division of Blue Throat Publishing.

Some pages from the book are shown below.

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