Feature Story
Former Magician Pulls Smiles Out of Nowhere with New Children's Book

Magic was one of Janan Cain's first jobs and although she's no longer pulling rabbits out of hats or levitating into thin air, she's still conjuring smiles out of nowhere with her first book, The Way I Feel.

Written to help children understand and express their emotions, this picture book is just as appealing to adults, who can't help but empasize with the fierce grimace and clenched fists of the angry child or the energetic boy springing off the page in excitement.

If you've ever been jealous, or frustrated or proud, you'll nod in agreement as Cain brings these feelings to life in settings that almost everyone can identify with. There's no moralizing as the children in these vivid pastel drawings declare, "I'm shaking because I'm scared" or "I mostly want to frown and growl." You'll cheer along with the proud kid who signals "thumbs-up" and the happy one who seems to swing right into the sunshine; share the loneliness of the sad boy who is shedding an oversized tear.

This best-seller is now available from the Press as both a large-format hardback (ISBN 1-884734-71-5, $16.95) and a toddler board book (ISBN 1-884734-72-3, $7.95).

Created because author/illustrator Cain couldn't find word books about emotions when her two daughters were tiny, The Way I Feel is full of images of the Cain girls. The book's cover resulted from a day at the park, when older daughter Emily hung upside-down and made a goofy "fish-lips" face at her mother. It was her ferocious expression that also helped Cain with the "in-your-face" image for anger.

"I'd give the girls an emotion to express, watch their faces and then photograph them," explained the illustrator, who said the girls also were delighted to create silly expressions.

Some of the emotions depicted in the book required no models; the images flowed effortlessly, with colors that almost chose themselves. "With the angry child, red was a natural color choice," pointed out Cain. Contributing to the sense of fury are the glowering face, the dagger-like pattern on the child's shirt and lettering that looks like paint-splotched graffiti. By contrast, "sad" shows a child in blue, lonely and isolated in a green tree.

Cain's characters in The Way I Feel are like no others: not cartoons, not caricatures, not cuddly cute. For the artist, who has spent much of her career creating realistic images, these drawings represent a completely new direction. Cain calls the children "stylized," with the faces simplified into a few curves and circles. Some features are exaggerated: eyes are oversized, fingers are often pointed and hair is shown in chunky layers and lumps. One child's hair will make you think of Cocoa Puffs, another's of yarn.

Cain has been compared to Dr. Seuss, but she avoids absurdity to ensure that readers (of all ages) can identify with her characters. The kids' attire, however, is whimsical: stripes run wild around the skinny arms and legs, hats are fancifully huge, one skirt looks like a hula hoop and almost every shoe has a pointed toe that curls up elf-style.

Cain, who worked as a magician's assistant as a high school student, is a long-time resident of the Chicago suburb of Riverside. A graduate of the Art Institute of Colorado, Denver, she worked in several package-design and graphic design firms before establishing a freelance design and illustration practice. She has worked on a wide variety of projects, including Norman Rockwell-esque paintings of Butterball turkeys and an illustration of an endangered toucan for a fund-raiser honoring Britain's Prince Charles, with clients ranging from Arthur Andersen to Orville Redenbacher.