There are five snowflakes on the cover of Spikey and the Christmas Mouse, and none of them holds the same colour for long. All five are hot foil stamped in silver. Tilt the book and one flashes bright white while its neighbour turns almost black, then they swap; lay it on a blue table and the flakes go blue. Our studio notes call the foil “a cracking winner”, lighting up the cover and “sparkling in the reader’s face”.
The book is a Christmas bedtime story written by David Markee and illustrated by Hannah Bodell-Lee, published by Follys End Books and now one of the children’s titles we print every season. Spikey is a little hairy dog who lives with Mr and Mrs Darling. On Christmas morning, once the presents are open, he hears a rustle in the discarded wrapping paper and finds a small mouse in tears. What follows is a gentle tale of kindness to someone in need. Below, we work from the boards inwards.
The front board: five foiled flakes on a matt cover
Spikey sits front and centre in a reindeer antler headband and red booties, the hand lettered title curling beside him and the five flakes scattered round the edges. Because foil behaves like a mirror, each flake reflects whatever faces it, so no two look alike at any moment and the cover seems to shift as you carry it across a room. For more ideas on fronts that grab small hands, see designing picture book covers children reach for.
It works because of what sits underneath. The printed cover sheet is 170gsm silk wrapped over greyboard under a skin of matt lamination, so the background stays calm and low in glare and the foil is the only thing that catches the light. Foil the whole front and you lose that contrast. Planning a festive title of your own? Choose a handful of elements to foil and leave the rest in ink.
Foil needs its own artwork. We asked for a second file at the same size as the cover, with everything to be foiled set in 100% black and built as vector artwork in Illustrator, so the two files overlay exactly and the metal die can be made from it. We offered gold or silver; the team chose silver.
Spine, boards and a plain white endpaper
At 210 x 210mm, the book sits in the classic square for picture books. Mike’s verdict was that it is big enough to feel substantial while keeping the price sensible, which matters for a title sold in shops at Christmas. A 9mm spine carries the title and the author’s name.
Open the board and there is nothing but white. The endpapers are 170gsm uncoated and deliberately unprinted. When we sent a short video showing where endpapers sit in a case bound book, Heather chose to leave them blank, reasoning that “in theory can’t get it wrong then!” It makes a welcome beat, a clean pause before the title page, like tissue paper inside a gift box. Plain ends are a perfectly good design choice when your story starts on page one.
The front matter: a bass player’s bedtime stories
Before the story begins, a dedication page with a pencil drawn mouse faces the About the Author page, complete with a photograph of David at his bass. The page explains that he was a session bass player for Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, Joan Armatrading, The Who, Henry Mancini and Bing Crosby. A pretty impressive CV.
His other talent was storytelling. He made up stories for his three daughters, six grandchildren and great-granddaughter, and Spikey is one of them, which explains the warm, told aloud rhythm of the text.
The spreads: pen, pencil and pastel on smooth silk
Inside, 28 pages of silk carry Hannah’s illustrations, pen and pencil drawings washed with pastel shades. The Darlings snuggle on a duck-egg sofa. The family dresses a tree with a fairy on top. Spikey peers round a half-open door at the mouse in the wrapping paper. Mike called them really lovely drawings, “very high-class”, and the 170gsm silk keeps their washes bright and the pen line sharp. It is the heaviest text weight we use in our hardbacks, so the pages turn with a reassuring stiffness.
The typography is, in Mike’s words, “absolutely spot-on”. Each illustration faces a calm white page with a few lines of large, centred serif type, so a grown-up can read aloud while a child stays lost in the picture.
On the shop shelf, Christmas after Christmas
The project began with a website enquiry from Heather for a stapled square booklet, then a question: did we print hardbacks? We did, and the spec grew into this case bound book. A single test copy went out first so the team could hold the real thing. Heather’s reply: “Thanks so much for the fast turnaround! We love it!” That copy sparked the foil idea, and a wish for the colours inside to look brighter, which we suggested tackling by lifting the images in Photoshop before resupplying them.
Then Spikey kept selling. Jessi, who looks after the books, told us shops had started stocking them, so reorders had to match exactly: “We’ve managed to get a few shops to stock them so they need to be the same.” Keeping the foil artwork untouched meant every reprint wore the same five flakes. The range has grown into a set, with Nippy the Baby Crocodile on the same 210mm square spec and a smaller square, Hey There Frankie, in the same papers. A few weeks after one delivery, Jessi wrote:
“Thank you so much for the wonderful job you’ve done on the books! They are flying off the shelves and no doubt that’s because they look amazing.”
Jessi, Follys End Books
Curious how boards, endpapers and pages are married together? See each stage of binding a hardback, step by step. When you are ready to add a little silver to your own picture book, build your hardback spec here.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
Product cataloguesA5, 28 pages, stapled£166for 100
