Preface

    For my children’s book, I chose to base it off my personal dog, Sunshine, who is a mischievous, playful Pomsky. The genre of my children’s book is learning life lessons, the focus of my children’s book research project. This project highlighted to me how children’s books teach lessons about feelings, behaviors, responsibility, and outcomes of our actions. Sunshine displays these lessons through her experience of leaving the yard and becoming lost. Sunshine, at this moment, makes a mistake and learns from the experience, and the takeaway is that she sees the consequences of her actions.

    In my story, Sunshine becomes overly curious and chases a cat, which leads her away from home safety. Sunshine became caught up in the moment, which shows a common childhood response of acting on impulse without thinking of the future. Next, Sunshine becomes scared and realizes she does not know where she is; she begins to understand why listening is important. Sunshine then hears her owner’s voice calling her, and it helps her get back home. Sunshine learns that listening to those that help care for us is the best way to stay safe. The emotions of excitement, worry, fear, and comfort she experienced during this time are emotions children may also relate to when they read about Sunshine's adventures. Children can also learn from Sunshine, what happens when you make a choice, and why taking responsibility is important.

    The main concept of this story is to play off Sunshine’s playful and emotional relationship between her and the owner while influencing a lesson on listening, safety, and trust. Young children can relate to animals and animal characters that have childlike behaviors and personalities, as animals can also be very appealing to gain children’s attention. This moment when Sunshine gets scared can easily resonate with children. Sunshine reflects on the importance of listening. Sunshine also shows how listening can protect us from harm. This story also shows how when we act impulsively and do not think before we act upon something can come with consequences.

    The illustrations in this children’s book display the story in more detail than the text itself. The text is simple, so it is understandable to the intended audience and strongly showcases emotions involved. The story utilizes artwork from real-life pictures submitted into an iPhone application called Clip2Comic Toon Photo that took real-life images of Sunshine and made them into a cartoon story-like feel. The goal of the illustrations is to make Sunshine appeal to children, show her feelings of excitement, feelings of being scared, and comfortability of finding her way home. The illustrations will help the target audience follow the story and understand the emotions.

Photo of Sunshine the book is after. 

Sunshine was owned in a beautiful home by Jessica.

Jessica and Sunshine's home was in a busy neighborhood, you see, it had many  people and pets as friendly as could be.

Sunshine's backyard has toys to tug, room to run,  and bones to be dug. It even has a fence to make it hard to escape, keeping her safe.

Sunshine was playful and curious all day. Looking for something new to chase or play.

Sunshine looked up and froze in place as a neighborhood cat sat and stared at her face. 

The cat decided to run away. Sunshine started chasing the cat as a way to play. 

As the cat went out of the yard, Sunshine went under the fence to keep chasing it hard.