The idea for Baby Princess and the Lost Doll started with a coloring page.

I was working on Sana – The Last Day and had asked Mariam Trejo, the illustrator, to create a coloring page for one of the scenes. I wanted a few pages to add to my Free Downloads section, and the scene with Sana combing Baby Princess’s hair felt like something little girls could connect with.

What I didn’t expect was that it would spark the idea for a whole picture book about Baby Princess’s adventure.

The story takes place in the world of the Anyia series, in the land of Ethonia, where we first meet Sana, and where magic is everywhere. So it felt right that Baby Princess’s world would have a little magic too.

A magic doll seemed like the perfect start.

I began writing the story visually, mapping it out as a series of illustrated scenes. My goal was to make sure the story worked without any words at all, something even the youngest readers could follow on their own.

Some of the very first scenes I imagined were Baby Princess walking down Market Street with her mom, and her standoff with the Magical Doll. I knew early on those would be key moments in the story.

At first, I wasn’t going to add any words. But once the illustrations were finished and I started putting everything together in InDesign, the words came, and I’m so glad they did. (Of course, if you read the book, you’ll notice that the standoff still has no words. 🙂)

Find the coloring page of Baby Princess and her mom here!