How we knew Rebekah was the one

Colleen McCubbin
Jul 27
2 min read

When Kathleen McMillan and I started looking for an illustrator for BlueBeary and the Open Eyes book series, this is the first picture Rebekah sent to us:

This was her initial conception of Samantha and her bear. The girl was a little too skinny and the bear not quite what we imagined, but definitely eye-catching and promising. So we gave Rebekah (and our other applicants) a few tips on what we were looking for.

Rebekah’s next official communique to us was an 11-page PDF file that included the following elements:

Cover page with her Catch The Red Balloon logo
Resume
Bio
Artist’s Statement
A paragraph titled “My role in this project”
Three excellent professional references
Sketches illustrating two pages from the story
Sketches: an emotion study

Very tidy and impressive. We liked the sketches fine:

But what really blew us away was the emotion study:

We had not asked for this. Immediately several things became clear to us:

Rebekah was serious about her craft and her business.
Rebekah could give us consistency in drawing/painting the same characters over and over and over again throughout an 11 book series.
Rebekah could convey a wide range of emotions—a key factor for Kathleen educating young children.
Rebekah would take initiative with the extra things that we might not think to ask for.
Rebekah is entirely delightful. (Actually, I think we knew that much earlier in the process, but the portfolio confirmed it.)

So we hired her, and she painted Samantha consistently with a range of emotions in the first book, BlueBeary:

And she took initiative with colouring pages before we even asked about them:

And she painted Samantha consistently with a range of emotions for the second book, Samantha's First Story (in which the paintings are smoother because she painted them during a heat wave and the acrylic paint ran!)

Hiring and working with Rebekah set the bar really, really high for relationships with future illustrators. We all learned so much from each other in this immensely satisfying process.

We sure like Rebekah Joy Plett!

p.s. Rebekah had lots of ideas and connections for promoting the series and for spin-offs. She blogged her process of illustrating the first book — a delightful series of posts! Sadly, we have lost touch with Rebekah, and she decided to "disable her [Facebook] profile in favour of the antiquated, immensely personal and slower communication form: snail mail letters." She has also disabled her website and blog. I was able to capture her BlueBeary posts, but I don't have her permission to share them publicly. If you know Rebekah, please tell her how much we appreciate her work and that we would love to reconnect with her!