Creating Unfolded Fables

At the beginning of 2019, Chloe was asked to teach an art class for an entire grade school. As she brainstormed what sort of project she could do with such a large group she decided to teach them how to draw a character on a piece of paper. To make it more fun and engaging she had the creative idea of having the student’s draw their characters on a folded piece of paper, while at the same time drawing a twist to their character in the hidden folds. After the art class had finished, Chloe had numerous students running up to her asking if she would create different animals that would unfold into something they didn’t expect. At this moment Chloe decided she should create a coloring book using this unfolding technique since all of the student’s seemed to love it.

So, Chloe went to work creating different animals that would unfold for this new coloring book idea. After a few creative hours of drawing she decided that she wanted to show her husband (Trevor) what she had created and talk with him about her new project. After looking through the many images Trevor looked up at Chloe and said, “I think the coloring book is a great idea, but I think it would be even better as a children’s book.” Chloe started thinking hard about how a story could be made from all of her images, so she started laying them out and naming each of the animal’s after some of the important friends and family in her life. Giving each animal a name also gave them a personality which helped Chloe lay out a new story centered around a small cow moving into a new town. All of this work culminated in the first draft of her first book, “Chloetta’s MooOOove-In Party”.

Since Chloe likes to focus more heavily on illustration and marketing she asked Trevor to help her with the story and the editing of her new book. After reading Chloe’s first draft, Trevor had the idea to make the story rhyme which were Trevor’s favorite types of books as a child. It was important to both of them that their story would have an important life lesson for the children who would be reading it, which is how they settled on the name “Unfolded Fables” for this type of storybook. They worked together over the next 3 years refining the story, and getting feedback from friends and family who had many great suggestions. Chloe and Trevor hope that you enjoy this story as much as they enjoyed creating it.