Merrill Rainey ought to get the award for the good grownup ever.
The Whitehouse author/illustrator/father of two will get up each morning at 6:30 a.m. Generally he goes for a run, typically not. He places on his Ariat cowboy boots and proceeds to spend his day writing, illustrating, and designing pop-out books (versus pop-up books) for kids all around the world.
Rainey’s new ebook My First City: A Constructing Block Ebook , which comes out April 4, is a do-it-yourself exercise ebook for teenagers the place readers ages 4 and older can pop-out the pages and construct a metropolis out of paper, full with vehicles, buildings, timber, hydrants, and different issues that you just’ll discover round a metropolis.
“I’ve been doing paper engineering for a very good a part of 12 years,” mentioned Rainey in an interview. “It’s simply one thing I’ve at all times been occupied with.”
The primary web page of My First City lists the directions for Rainey’s ebook. The 1st step: Punch out the items on the web page. Step two: Fold alongside the yellow strains. Step three: Utilizing a glue stick, seal the items on the suitable tabs.
The entire ebook is like that — a enjoyable and kooky method for children (and the young-at-heart) to construct their very personal paper metropolis. Rainey has been lucky sufficient to make his ardour his profession and work full time as a author and paper artist.
Rainey, 45, grew up west of Cleveland in Elyria, Ohio, and graduated from Kent State College. Earlier than he wrote kids’s books full time, Rainey labored as a graphic designer for an organization referred to as Wholesome Interactions, the place he wrote and designed instructional supplies for corporations. In 2018, he self revealed his first kids’s ebook Tremendous Hero Colour – Reduce – Create! Paper Toy Exercise Ebook and was quickly promoting his work to such large publishing corporations as Macmillan and HarperCollins.
The writer additionally works for a lot of kids’s magazines like Highlights, Ranger Rick, and Humpty Dumpty and has served on the college on the Highlights Basis retreat middle. He’s additionally the previous illustrator coordinator for the Northern Ohio chapter of the Society of Kids’s Ebook Writers and Illustrators. The present difficulty of Humpty Dumpty contains a large story on My First City .
Rainey has acquired a number of accolades within the kids’s literary world. His ebook Roar! I’m A Dinosaur was the winner of the Good Housekeeping Finest Youngsters’ Board Ebook of 2022 and his ebook Giants Are Very Courageous Individuals was a 2023 Cybils Awards nominee.
However writing and designing kids’s books requires some severe adulting.
“That is most likely the toughest job I’ve ever had,” mentioned Rainey. “It’s like another enterprise that you just personal. It’s not like a standard 9-5 the place you’ll be able to simply go away it on the door at 5 o’clock. Deadlines are at all times on the high of your thoughts and when the artistic spirit calls, you need to reply. It’s not a standard job but it surely appears to be understanding.”
With My First City prepping for launch, Rainey is at the moment exhausting at work on his subsequent venture On the Air with Dr. Doodle Bug , which comes out in October. Like his different books, On the Air with Dr. Doodle Bug is a pop-out exercise ebook.
“I’m an individual who likes to study new issues and work with my fingers,” he mentioned. “Numerous my books are geared in the direction of being a creativity starter and get children working with their fingers.”
To advertise My First City , Rainey has a number of native appearances deliberate this spring, together with a launch occasion April 6 on the College of Findlay’s Mazza Museum, and a go to to the Claire’s Day Ebook Competition in Maumee in Could.
One other launch occasion will see Rainey seem at native ebook store Gathering Volumes (196 E. South Boundary St., Perrysburg) on April 2 at 6:30 p.m. Retailer proprietor Denise Phillips mentioned Rainey’s glorious capability to attach with younger individuals make him an distinctive kids’s writer.
“He’s glorious with faculty visits and he’s actually good at working with college students,” mentioned Phillips, who famous Rainey has held occasions on the retailer a number of occasions together with one after Giants Are Very Courageous Individuals was launched in 2023.
The proprietor mentioned that she appreciates Rainey’s deal with core ideas younger individuals have to study.
“He’s very STEAM (Science Know-how Engineering Artwork Arithmetic) oriented, which may be very in style proper now with educators and college students,” she mentioned. “We’re excited to have him again and he’s very partaking and he at all times brings a ton of actions.”
Another person who has witnessed Rainey’s affect upon the world of youngsters’s books is his buddy and former editor Justin Krasner, who at the moment works as an editorial director on the publishing firm Sourcebooks.
“If (Merrill’s) Colour Reduce Create collection are the LEGO of paper toy books, then his new collection is form of Duplo, which is LEGO’s youthful viewers,” mentioned Krasner.
The editor mentioned that Rainey is the whole lot a kids’s ebook writer must be.
“Merrill meets children the place they’re. He by no means talks right down to children. He challenges them, by no means throws softballs, and that why his ebook resonates with youthful readers. He actually speaks their language. It’s at all times that good mixture of ‘Sure, I can do that but additionally let me study and develop from this.’”
For extra details about Merrill Rainey and his books, go to littlerainey.com .
