Little Guides to Great Lives: Nelson Mandela

Little Guides to Great Lives is a series of children’s books by Isabel Thomas, celebrating the lives of amazing and influential people through history, including Leonardo da Vinci, Marie Curie, Frida Khalo and Amelia Earhart.

Hannah Warren was asked to illustrate Nelson Mandela’s story, from his childhood through all the challenges he faced and over came in his life. Here’s a little insight as to how this wonderful project came together.

Laurence King approached Hannah to create some sample spreads for the book, including selection of the 3 spot colours in which it would eventually be printed.

The next stage was to create pencil sketches, playing with the layout and the arrangement of text within the illustrations. Drawing a very recognisable face in Hannah’s style proved to be a challenge, and took some practice.

The publishers were very open to ideas Hannah had about the page layouts alongside their own art direction. Making sure there was ample room within each spread for the text was important. The publisher was keen to evoke a “screen printed” look, so some of the colours are deliberately offset.

The process of spot colour printing is quite similar to screen printing in the sense that the colours are already mixed solid colour and it was great to play with that in creating new ones.

The whole book includes 64 illustrations that needed to be researched for historical accuracy, the correct clothing, vehicles, Mandela at different ages etc.

Isabel Thomas’ writing and research into Mandela’s life is thorough and interesting for both adults and children. It doesn’t play down some of the harsher moments of Mandela’s life but instead makes it an approachable topic for children.