The Art

The story behind Storybook Crate is that Trevor and Ashleigh Dowswell wanted to create a gift box featuring great children's books. As Trevor is a writer, he would write the books. As neither is an illustrator, they would rope in their friend Christina Oliva to create the visuals.

The style of the illustrations, and of the whole product, was very intentional. We chose watercolor and pencil mediums, hardcover binding, the 6" x 9" format, and kraft boxes to provide a classic, vintage aesthetic. We are not trying to entrap your eyes with flashy colors and hypnotic scenes; we are trying to appeal to your child's grace and imagination and invite them to be an active participant in the story, as a book should.

Appropriately, each Storybook Crate centers around a book, and characters from the books are found in every piece within the crate, and even on the packaging itself. As these stories and these characters were created by Storybook Crate for Storybook Crate, our crates are the perfect unique gift for the children in your life.

We are producing multiple series of books, with each series comprising twelve books.

The current book series is Frog, which centers around a near-sighted, peculiar little fellow, Frog, who suddenly discovers the world is actually larger than his little leaf. Joining him in his adventures are a colorful cast of characters, including Squirrel, Bat, Badger, and Elephant. The first six books are available now, with the seventh through ninth releasing soon.

The next series in the works is William, Lord of the Seven Pillows, which follows an imaginative young boy and his miniature dachshund as they stumble upon all manner of wild adventures, from run-ins with space pirates to travels through ancient Egypt.

All of the books are written in verse to help create a good bedtime rhythm, with just enough big words to induce an extra bit of tiredness. The illustrations are intended to be art pieces in their own right. We want to hold the child’s interest without insulting anyone’s intelligence. We chose a matte finish for each book’s pages to reduce annoying lamp glare, and every book is hardcover with stitched binding (which is the most durable binding type) because we would love nothing more than for kids to grow up and use these books to create bedtime memories with their own children.