Mashup Children’s Book: Mashup a children’s book based on another cultural artifact.

I really wanted to do something with If You Give a Mouse a Cookie since it was one of my favorite books growing up. Since the author made numerous sequels about pigs and pancakes and moose and muffins, I knew I had to keep the pattern of having sweet food given an animal. Immediately I thought of Donkey from Shrek and how he sat on Shrek’s armchair talking about how he wants to make waffles in the morning, and so I mashed up the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie with the movie Shrek to get If You Give a Donkey a Waffle.

Since I have no talent in the field of drawng, I knew I had to look for Creative Commons images or even better, public domain images. I went to Pixabay, which has a bunch of free images. There, I searched for donkeys, waffles, armchairs, and wood paneling that way the cover could emulate the scene from Shrek.  Once I found my images, I went to Pixlr, an open and free image editor web application that is less advanced than Photoshop but better in my opinion than Gimp. I layered my images together, added the title text in font that kind of reminded me of powdered sugar, and then saved it. I really wanted to convey that this cover is definitely for a children’s book, so I stuck with cartoon/illustrated images instead of realistic photos. I think the cover turned out really cute, and I would have totally read this as a kid.