Making of The Blue Umbrella

“The most magical things can happen even on the rainiest of days…”

When I received the text by Emily Ann Davison from my editor, I fell in love with it instantly. The Blue Umbrella (Andersen Press) begins when the blue umbrella mysteriously turns up at the door. The story evolves around the magical umbrella and the child who found it. She finds out the umbrella shelters everyone who needed it. In this post, I’m going to share the joy and challenges I had while illustrating this heartwarming story. 

The story is narrated in first person and there was no description of the child, not even their gender. I chose an East Asian girl for the protagonist because I had never done a book with an Asian / female protagonist before except Little People Big Dreams: Yoko Ono. I strongly believe we need more INCIDENTALLY Asian protagonists in children’s books (you can read the eye-opening CLPE Survey of Ethnic Representation within UK Children’s Literature 2017-2022 here).