Making a Book

Above: Klint wrote each letter of the alphabet as neatly as he could.

Below: A sample of the new font as it appears inSalamander Rain. We named this font "Klint Print".

Creating the Font

"This step is not necessary for every book. But it is really exciting. Once I decided to make Salamander Raina journal book, I figured it would be neat if the text looked like it was hand-written. It turned out that my cousin Klint, who is the model for the character in this book, had very good hand writing. At first I thought it would work to have him actually hand letter the text, so I sent my dad to his house with a copy of the manuscript. My dad is an airline pilot so he dropped by Klint's house the next time he was in town. Well, that plan didn't work. It is hard to do your best hand writing when you are about to miss the bus.

"So we thought of a better idea. This time I asked Klint to send me samples of his best alphabet letters, both upper and lower case. That way he would only have to write each letter once. My husband helped me turn those letters into a font I could use on the computer. I could type in the manuscript and it would come out looking like Klint wrote it. We named this font 'Klint Print'."

~Kristin Joy Pratt-Serafini, author/illustrator