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For each Tashi book Anna and Barbara Fienberg must think up two brand new adventures for Tashi. They invent new characters for him to face, or bring back some villains from past stories. The Wicked Baron lives in Tashi’s village so he is often a problem for Tashi.

When they've finished writing the stories, Anna sends the manuscript to the Tashi book editor, Sue Flockhart, accompanied by a letter.

Sue reads the manuscript and makes sure that everything in the story will be clear to the readers. Anna and Barbara have such fun telling the Tashi stories that sometimes Sue has to find ways of tightening up the manuscript to make sure there's enough room for Kim Gamble's illustrations. She pencils her thoughts in the margins of the manuscript. In Tashi and The Mixed-up Monster, she suggested that part of the story needed more 'scary tension'. See the manuscript here

Once the editing is finished, Sue sends the manuscript back to the authors. Anna and Barbara consider her comments and make any changes they think will make the story better, and then return it to the editor. In the case of Tashi and the Mixed-up Monster, Anna really liked Sue's suggestion of using the serpent's tail to create more suspense within the story. Read Anna's letter to Sue.

When the manuscript is finalised, it gets sent to the Tashi book designer, Sandra Nobes, to typeset the text. When Sue receives the initial round of typeset pages from Sandra, she has to break up the text to fit into 60 pages and think about where to leave space for the scenes Kim might like to illustrate.Take a look at the first round of typeset pages for Tashi and the Mixed-up Monster with the serpent tail idea incorporated, as well as Sue's mark-ups. Each number in the mark-up indicates where a new page will start.

Sandra then runs out the pages with the spaces for Kim's artwork. Here's a look at how the final typeset pages for Tashi and the Mixed-up Monster came together with Kim's illustrations included.

Typset pages with illustrations Typset pages with illustrations

 

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Tashi