The North Pole Village

The making of the "North Pole Village" written by Sabrina Makhsimova and illustrated by Dinara Mirtalipova

Available on Amazon | Chronicle Books

Little story of how it started:

Back when the world was on a covid lockdown, Sabrina and I spent our most days socially distancing. That was the year we gave homeschooling a try. During those days Sabrina wrote a lot and her creative writing began to emerge. Simultaneously I was working on my illustration jobs - there was this idea we were discussing with the wonderful Chronicle Books team about a pocket book format with three little houses. The visual was there, but the story itself - wasn't. 

I worked on my sketches and wrote a few scribbles just as a text holder. Sabrina looked over them and didn't approve of my writing. She offered to re-write it her way and I included her writing in the proposal.

Turned out our lovely editor Ariel Richardson loved Sabrina's writing and encouraged her to continue to work on this project. 

At that time Sabrina was only ten years of age!

I'm so proud of this kid! 

I don't know what she is going to make of it in the future, but I hope no matter where her interests take her she will not loose the spark to write. 

Early scribbles:

It was a long and meticulous process of writing and re-writing and then editing and re-writing some more! Sabrina was very professional about the process and took her role seriously. 

My early sketches included the visual search for characters, what do they look like, where do they live and what is their surrounding and environment. 

Sabrina influenced the way the characters look, she had a great vision for their personalities and I wanted to reflect that in my illustrations.

Final Illustrations:

Available on Amazon | Chronicle Books