To help me deal with the hours-long plane ride to Boston and back, I grabbed a copy of Colin Meloy’s Wildwood novel. The beautifully illustrated novel cover (by Carson Ellis) had caught my attention, so I plucked the children’s book from the shelf, opened it, and gave it the “quick skim test.” I skim a few pages to get a feel for the writer’s style and see if it’ll appeal to me. Meloy‘s sentences were so lyrical that I bought Wildwood immediately.

As I sat in a cramped tiny seat on a stuffy airplane, I escaped into the world of Wildwood and truly forgot my less-than-enjoyable surroundings. I read half of the novel on the flight to Boston and saved the rest for the flight back home. (I would’ve read the book in Boston, but the B2B Forum made extra reading time utterly impossible.)

Inspired by the whimsical and spirited book (and its incredible color plates), I decided to draw a book review rather than do a straight-up book review.  Here you are… (Click the image to enlarge it.)

(Click the image to enlarge it.)