Anyone who has spent much time around cats knows they have personalities all their own. And some cats have such personalities that they are able to win over even people who profess not to like cats. I lived with a cat like that once, and over and over saw him turn cat-haters into fawning admirers. It was uncanny.
Designer Tim Potter of Belfast, Ireland’s Little Thunder Co, has such a cat. Chalky, a mostly-white, rather rotund fellow, was found as a young stray in a friend’s shed. He was friendly and unafraid of people even then, and grew up into an endearing, curious creature eager to investigate any strange thing in his neighborhood — like a sportscar, for example.
Such a personality is Chalky that Potter’s father was inspired to write a children’s story about him, titled Chalky and the New Sports Car. That story lead Potter and his Little Thunder compatriots, Gabriel Muldoon and Michael McKeever, to decide to turn the tale into a fully-illustrated book.
Chalky’s story is fun and engaging, and the cat’s personality comes through strongly. I found Stanley Potter’s writing sweet, though occasionally grammatically awkward, but the real stand-outs in this project are the gorgeous full-color illustrations and the playful typography. The book will be worth getting for those alone, even if you don’t have a toddler to read it to.
Those lovely illustrations were done by Jordan Henderson, best known for his book Upon a Star, a children’s book about a fantastical journey to make a wish on a star. The art for Chalky and the New Sports Car is an interesting combination of cartoon-ish cat with a much more realistic car and background elements, and combined with Henderson’s expressive, sometimes-sketchy style, it brings an energy and excitement to the story. The expressions he gives Chalky really make the cat seem alive on the page.
The typography is hand-drawn by type whiz Kyle Steed, and if you pop over to the project’s Kickstarter page, you can see how Steed works on the design, with two images of the same page, side-by-side, showing two different type possibilities. That alone makes it worth looking at the page if you have any interest in the design process.
Chalky was funded via a Kickstarter campaign and the team plans to make Chalky’s adventures a series. In fact, Stanley Potter had already written several more stories. Find out more about Chalky on the project’s homepage at chalkythecat.com.