Creaky Acres hits bookshelves on May 6, 2025! I worked closely with fabulous writer Calista Brill to bring the story of Nora and her friends at Creaky Acres to life. I illustrated this full-color graphic novel with the help of Akem, who assisted with background inking, and Ellis P., who colored all the art.

I also illustrated the cover. Covers are always a unique challenge. They’re the face of the book, a reader’s first impression, and this process took a bit longer than usual, so I thought it’d be fun to share.

I worked closely with our team at Kokila, editor Namrata Tripathi and designer Jasmin Rubero, to develop ideas for the Creaky Acres cover. The book is about horseback riding, so centering on that activity was a given, but we also wanted to emphasize friendship.

I always start the illustration process with thumbnails. These are simple, quick drawings where I’m thinking partly about mood and partly about layout and composition. It’s good to work small at this stage. The cover needs to be bold and eye-catching. By drawing small, I don’t have room to get distracted with detail. I can only think about big, bold shapes; the very types of shapes that might catch a reader’s eye from a distance, as they’re just walking into a bookstore and browsing the stacks.

I like to do multiple thumbnails so I can explore a variety of ideas and also give the team options, but I also try to keep the number of thumbnails contained. Too many options can be disorienting. Sometimes if I have a really strong vision right off the bat, I may only submit two or three thumbnails. For Creaky though, it felt like the sky was the limit, so I gave the team five. In each, I tried to emphasize our main themes of friendship and horses.

After reviewing all the thumbnails, Namrata and Jasmin picked their favorite, and Jasmin mocked up a cover using the chosen thumbnail. This way we could all envision what the final cover might look like. Jasmin added in Hank, one of the kids that appears in another thumbnail, and Nora’s horse Hay Fever, to round out the cast of characters.

With the thumbnail approved, I begin refining. I did a bigger sketch version of the thumbnail, then a refined ink pass. Finally, I added color.

And that’s it! Thanks for reading!

Haha, just kidding.

Illustrating a graphic novel is a very long process, as I famously and frequently go on about. I finished this cover in 2021, though I will tell you the truth, even then I wasn’t entirely happy with it. I was still illustrating the book and way too busy with that to give it much thought, though, so I set it aside and went back to penciling and inking the interior pages.

At last, in 2023, the book was almost done. The pages were inked and colored and we were moving onto addressing notes and making final adjustments. I’d been illustrating Creaky Acres for SEVEN YEARS. My skill and style had evolved over time. When I took out the cover illustration again and considered it, the look of it didn’t match what the final book had become. It didn’t feel like a graphic novel cover, and now with some time to really think about it, I began to piece together why.

For me, the image wasn’t really telling the story of Creaky Acres. With so many characters, it felt crowded. While all of the characters on the cover are important, Creaky Acres isn’t really an ensemble story. The story is about Nora. She is our hero, and it’s her experiences that tie the whole story together. In the middle of so many faces, it felt like she was getting lost.

I asked the team if I could take another crack at the cover, and thankfully they approved.

Since it had been so long, I threw out everything I’d used to work on the first cover and started over fresh. This meant doing a bit of research. I keep a few Pinterest boards where I keep track of cover illustrations for inspiration, but I also went to the bookstore to look at graphic novels that are currently selling. I took photos and compared them, studying how illustrators solved problems and what worked.

Then, I presented the team with another set of thumbnails. This time I changed my focus from “horses and friendship” to “Nora and riding”. Creaky Acres is also a sports book, and I wanted to make sure that aspect came through. 

In these new thumbnails, Nora is in her formal event gear. I did four thumbnails with varying compositional elements: Nora and Hay Fever jumping, Nora and Hay Fever at rest, Nora and Hay Fever solo, Nora and Hay Fever with friends in the background. 

Because all the images carried very different vibes, Jasmin did three mockups this time.

I thought #7 was fun, but it had a distinct “action comic” vibe that didn’t quite fit the story.

At last, we chose our winning thumbnail, and I moved onto refining. This started with a slightly cleaner sketch where I tied down the details implied in the thumbnail. I sent this to the team for review.

Once approved, I polished the image with clean inks. 

I drew directly over Jasmin’s mockup to make sure I wasn’t putting too much detail behind the title that would compete with the text. I also built out the width and height of the image a bit to give Jasmin room to work with positioning the final art.

With inks done, I handed the cover back to Jasmin to be colored by Ellis P. Jasmin added the text, and then we were done!

Finally, at long last, Creaky Acres had a gorgeous final cover. This book has been a labor of love for so many people and we’re thrilled that we can finally share it with the world!

This book is available for pre-order! Let your local indie bookstore and your local library know that you want Creaky Acres.

About Creaky Acres: A Graphic Novel

A heartwarming graphic novel about being the new kid in middle school, making new friends, and learning to trust yourself through the power of horseback riding—perfect for fans of Victoria Jamieson’s Roller Girl.

“Readers will fall in love with Nora and her quirky crew, the world of Creaky Acres, and all the horses . . . and cows . . . and possums!” —Varian Johnson, award-winning author of Twins

Nora is a prize-winning horseback rider in a suburban area, with a tight-knit circle of best friends. But when her mom gets a prestigious new job in a poor, rural area, she has to adjust to a lot of change: to being the only Black kid in a new class and to a new barn called Creaky Acres, where her beloved horse, Hay Fever, will make his new home.

It’s there she meets sweet and geeky Laura, goofy and fun-loving Wilson, and fearless Dolores (aka Dizzy). With her ragtag team of equestrians, Nora learns it’s okay to stand out and steps into her power as a leader, realizing that being a rider isn’t just about winning—or maybe that winning just might look different than what she’d thought.