A local mother and daughter are excited to share their children’s book collaboration with families.
“The Rainbow Secret” Author, J.J. Ani has had a passion for writing her entire life, but it wasn’t until she had to overcome challenges in her personal life that she was inspired to publish a children’s book.
“I firmly believe when people are in a dark time in their life, they have a choice. They can either stay in that or turn the other cheek and find positivity, and that’s what I did,” Ani said.
“The Rainbow Secret” focuses on four friends who live in a meadow, one of the friends is somebody that has a lot more insight into what he believes love means. The other three friends question his dedication to the Rainbow, and he explains to them why the Rainbow is so important.
“The Rainbow Secret” is intended to be a series of three books, as the story progresses readers will be introduced to other friends in the forest.
Although the writing process was completed in a matter of hours for Ani, finding a printer, designer, and publishing the project was a lengthy process.
“As I wrote it, I could see each page with Lex’s illustrations, I knew that if I gave her the manuscript to read, she would understand how to put words into pictures,” Ani said.
“When it was completed, I handed it over to Lex, and told her to look at each page and tell me what she thinks it would look like in picture,” she added. “I told her about the type of artistic display I wanted, we were right on the same page.”
For Lex Skorpack, working on the book illustrations was unlike anything she had ever done.
“This was a different artform for me. I’ve done paintings, and I would use references to make sure I was drawing the specific animal, but for this, I was given words, and personalities to go off of,” Skorpack said.
To create the illustrations, Skorpack began with a plain storyboard sketch.
“We would go by what we thought would work. If it wasn’t going to work then at least we didn’t do a very detailed page and waste time,” Skorpack said.
From the first sketch, Skorpack added pencil crayon colour, and then decide which illustrations made it the final print, before fully inking the images.
Skorpack took roughly three years to complete the illustrations, however, she was going through many things in her life including a house fire.
“This was super therapeutic. It was one of the only things that kept me going. I would go to my three jobs at the time, and then go home and start to work on this book. Without the book, I don’t think I would’ve been successful in my art career,” Skorpack said.
“Lex was in a housefire and survived, and none of the manuscripts or pictures were touched. They were immaculate, nothing got ruined, it was meant to be,” Ani said.
Ani has received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from families who have purchased “The Rainbow Secret.”
“It’s a simple story, but it’s a very uplifting story,” Ani said.
By reading “The Rainbow Secret” Ani is hopeful that children can find a positive state of mind.
“Especially during this pandemic, because we’re in it now and there’s so much negativity that the kids are exposed to, I feel like this book is perfect to have the opposite effect,” Ani said.
“That’s part of the reason why we think it could be popular. It was born and raised out of the dark times, where we were inspired to put the words out there on a positive note,” she said.
Although “The Rainbow Secret” can only be found in-store at the Monkey Mountain Toys and Games in Okotoks, Ani and Skorpack are working to ensure the project can be found in bookstores in the future.
“Because of COVID-19, we haven’t been able to get it into bookstores. They are recommending we do book signings; they want to meet the new authors they are putting into their stores,” Skorpack said.
To purchase a copy of “The Rainbow Secret” please email Ani at 1112jani@gmail.com.
For more information on Skorpack’s art please visit Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/lex_isart/?hl=en, email Alexa.skorpack@hotmail.com, or call 403-869-9697.
