This is the first scribble drawing that I made of Mom and Joyce for the book cover of “Mommy, How Do You Know I’ll Like CoMo?” in January of 2016. I wanted the Mom holding an item that you could purchase on Ninth Street. At first I drew the Mom holding a cup of coffee but decided upon a pizza because I wanted to show right from the start that the book was going to be whimsical. I chose the building on Ninth and Cherry street because of the historic look it had and also I didn’t want to feature a business on the front cover. I had multiple experts suggest moving the stoplight post over to the right of the page only showing half the stoplight. Unfortunately, it also left out half the street sign and in the end I decided to keep the whole stoplight on the cover which continues to make me happy to this day. The font style for the title of the book is similar to Dr. Suess font which was done intentionally.
It was also important for me to place actual pictures of Columbia, Missouri in the drawings for the book. The glass window behind Mom and Joyce is an actual picture of the glass on the front of the building on Ninth and Cherry. In the original picture there were white hanging lights that made a huge blemish on the cover after the cover was preprinted for review, so the white lights had to be deleted. Thank you Mr. Ott for allowing me to draw your building.