Jason Sandberg's Blog: Kingdom Comeuppance, page 3

Q & A about The Phantom Tollbooth

This month I interview my daughter about Norton Juster's "The Phantom Toolbooth."

You’ve been engrossed in The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. Frequently when I’ve asked you about it you’ve told me that it's too hard to explain. Now that you’ve finished it I’d like to interview you.

Julia: It may be easier to explain that I thought. The main character's name is Milo, he's in school. It all begins with kind of a character summary of Milo; he has a dull way of looking at things. He thinks everything is boring, and he doesn't find anything interesting at all. He finds school annoying. One day he's walking home from school and he walks into his room and finds this big package.

Was there a return address on this mysterious package?

Julia: No, and he's confused because he only ever gets presents on either Christmas or his birthday. And he doesn’t remember being extremely good either. He opens up the box and finds a lot of supplies and instructions for a tollbooth. He decides to put it together and a little car comes with it.

How big?

Julia: Reasonable size, pretty big. He decides to drive through it and then all of a sudden he's driving on a road that he doesn't recognize.

It’s a magical story?

Julia: Oh, yes. He meets many strange people along the way, so many that they're hard to keep track of.

What was your favorite person he met in the other world?

Julia: The Mathemagician! He's very hard to explain. Each of the people he met had different interests and beliefs but all of them taught him some lessons he could use in his daily life. Milo is going on these adventures and his way of thinking is changing.

Are there talking animals?

Julia: Yes, there are animals and creatures that talk.

Are there monsters?

Julia: Near the end of the book, Milo had to rescue these two princesses named Rhyme and Reason, and on the way he meets different types of monsters. At first they seem perfectly normal and friendly to Milo, but they were monsters.

How does it end?

Julia: When he comes back from the strange world, he’s so tired he just goes to sleep right away. When he wakes up in the morning, the tollbooth is gone and he finds this letter. The letter explains why the tollbooth has disappeared. Because lots of other boys and girls needed to use it. He’s sad at first, but when he looks out the window, he realizes so many things he hasn't realized before. He was blind in the beginning to everything around him. The world is beautiful to him now. The tollbooth helped him realize that.

Maybe the Phantom Tollbooth is like a book where you have some imaginary experiences that help you figure out how to live.

Julia: Yes, I suppose it is.

Would you recommend this book to kids?

Julia: Yes! Actually, I was in the bookstore with my aunt and I came across the book. My aunt said that it was my cousin's favorite book. I decided to give it a go, and it turned out to be one of the best books I've ever read!

Doodled Doggy Book Trailer

My summer project was a book trailer for "Doodled Doggy." This was my first attempt at creating a GIF. I took several poses from the original eBook TIFs and built a puppet with heads, legs and arms on various layers in PhotoShop. I spent a weekend creating 140 frames of animation, it was tedious trial and error, but I tinkered away at it while binge watching Season 3 of "Orange is the New Black." I entrusted the final GIF to my cousin Travis, he added sound and polished up the MP4 file. I'm 44 years old now, why do I still find that bongo sound when someone's running in a cartoon hilarious??? You can see the Doodled Doggy Book Trailer on YouTube.

Captain Kleinbottle 10

Captain Kleinbottle 9

Captain Kleinbottle 8

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Una Corona Nueva

Libros para niños en español! The clock on my computer says it's 12:43 am on March 1st, but as far as I'm concerned this is my February BLOG post! It has been a busy month, my first Spanish language eBook premiered on Amazon in February. I'm working with Martin Bucio, a good friend and father of two. Martin is translating and rewriting my stories for lectores de habla hispana. Here's a sample of the first page of "Una Corona Nueva..."

Click here to see "Una Corona Nueva" on Amazon!

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2015

It's December 31st and the world is celebrating New Year's Eve.
My December blog post is a sneak preview of what I'll be working on in January of 2015...

Have a Happy New Year!

Under a Blue Sky

The illustrations in my eBooks are created on the computer, the line art is drawn in Adobe Illustrator and then colored in Adobe PhotoShop. The process lends itself to experimentation because missteps can be undone without too much grief (unlike painting). Sometimes during the coloring phase I'll have 2 alternate versions of the page developing side by side, then I'll keep the TIF file that most pleases the eye.

For some time I've been wondering how I could include my paintings in an eBook. I would need an appropriate narrative to tie the various landscapes together. The thought occurred that the "story" could be a poem about the experience of taking in a landscape painting, the process of slowing down and appreciating the details. I chose my favorite paintings and placed them into a variety of illustrated rooms to create the impression of walking through a museum. Under a Blue Sky is a poem for children that celebrates those first youthful glimpses at the complexity and scale of our world.