The Girl Who Made a Mouse From Her Grandfather's Whiskers

by Kenneth Hunter Gordon

About the Client

Lanternfish Press

Lanternfish Press publishes rare and strange fiction that is both literary and speculative. They love the grotesque and are a home for writers and readers that refuse to be pigeonholed.

About the Book

The Girl Who Made a Mouse From Her Grandfather's Whiskers

This book tells a whimsical story about a little girl named Anny who makes toy mice out of scraps and dust, living on an isolated planet with friendly robots. When plastic people arrive on her planet, we follow her on a strange and eerie journey.

The Process

Interior Design & Typesetting

Because the cover was already finished when I started on the interior, I used the cover design to guide the interior decisions.

To create a cohesive book design, I made decisions that would unite both the interior and exterior.

The text wrap on the cover inspired me to use movement on the title page and chapter openings to evoke the whimsical nature of the book.

Each chapter opening moves in a different way, emphasizing the hand-made aspects of the book, weaving and stitching things together.

I chose Cormorant Garamond for the body text to create a classic and comforting tone.

There are also two robot voices that needed distinct styles. I used two fonts to distinguish the voices from each other, both of which are sans serif and have a sci-fi quality.

The running heads and page numbers (folios) use the same font as the chapter titles.

Lanternfish loves using ornamentation in their books, so I found a cute mouse glyph to surround the folios. The mouse creates a warm and friendly tone, while also complementing the mouse on the cover.

I also love the little mouse tails! I think the mice have a nice shape to them, allowing them to hug the page number.

The Process

Ebook Conversion

Ensuring the ebook is accessible and meets WCAG 2.1 AA requirements is the top priority, which often means sacrificing some of the beautifully designed elements in the print book.

However, I love coming up with creative solutions that allow us to keep some of those fun elements, while still ensuring the ebook is accessible.

I preserved the playful chapter openings by turning them into images, adding alt text for the images, and adding a little custom HTML/CSS behind the scenes to ensure those chapter openings would still be read aloud by screen readers as well.

Credits

Cover Design Kimberly Glyder

Art Direction & Editing Christine Neulieb

Interior Design, Typesetting, & Ebook Conversion Hadley Hendrix

Hadley is hands-down the most organized person I’ve ever worked with, and her design skills are top notch.

Christine Neulieb

Editorial Director at Lanternfish Press