What's the Time, Mighty Wolf?
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BPublished by Scholastic Press
Book Birthday: 01 September 2026
Author: Katrina Germein
Illustrator: Amy Lee (as Kooky Chooky)
Process:
Mighty Wolf was such a fun book to dream up!
It could have gone a million ways and I still don't quite know how I ended up with the characters I did, but they all fell into place and just felt right. Stu the shrew was the surprise star and he was the first of the critters to declare themselves to me. I didn't have a specific number of animals in mind to form the merry band of little critters but I knew that I wanted each of them to have a distinctive silhouette and shape. I think that's how I ended up with the hare, the beaver, the squirrel, and the raccoon. Raccoon was a bear at the beginning but at some point, Bear got swapped out. You can see Bear complain about this on my Instagram post. Wolf was the hardest to pin down because she was too cute and sweet at first. You can see her in my sketchbook where I was finally happy with her overall look. It took a good month or so of sketching all sorts of wolves to get to this stage. You can see her glow up so she looked a tad more menacing. Fun fact - we had to get rid of her pet dog to keep her looking less friendly!
The storyboard came naturally and without major changes to what I initially submitted. It was the execution that I spent the longest time on. I had so much trouble deciding on what materials to use and what style to focus on. I knew I wanted to use my special box of Gondola pastels that I had bought in Japan when I was around 13 or 14 years old. The problem was, I didn't really know what to pair them with. There was a lot of experimenting with various inks, dip pens, coloured pencils, collaging, and wax crayons.
I also bought the largest sized paper I've ever worked with for Mighty Wolf.. an A2 sized pad! It was both intimidating but liberating to work over such a large area. Some of the animals were directly drawn with the background while other spreads had the animals digitally collaged from separate drawings. I had so much fun illustrating this one and my favourite part was adding in all the little details like the food scraps on the Dinnertime!! spread. Stu is a close second for being fun to draw... he is such a worrywart and cracks me up so much!
You can find What's the Time, Mighty Wolf? on pre-order at Booktopia, QBD Books, and Paperchain Bookstore, or your local bookshop!! If you can't find a copy, you can also ask your friendly local librarian or bookshop to order a copy!
Book Birthday: 01 September 2026
Author: Katrina Germein
Illustrator: Amy Lee (as Kooky Chooky)
Process:
Mighty Wolf was such a fun book to dream up!
It could have gone a million ways and I still don't quite know how I ended up with the characters I did, but they all fell into place and just felt right. Stu the shrew was the surprise star and he was the first of the critters to declare themselves to me. I didn't have a specific number of animals in mind to form the merry band of little critters but I knew that I wanted each of them to have a distinctive silhouette and shape. I think that's how I ended up with the hare, the beaver, the squirrel, and the raccoon. Raccoon was a bear at the beginning but at some point, Bear got swapped out. You can see Bear complain about this on my Instagram post. Wolf was the hardest to pin down because she was too cute and sweet at first. You can see her in my sketchbook where I was finally happy with her overall look. It took a good month or so of sketching all sorts of wolves to get to this stage. You can see her glow up so she looked a tad more menacing. Fun fact - we had to get rid of her pet dog to keep her looking less friendly!
The storyboard came naturally and without major changes to what I initially submitted. It was the execution that I spent the longest time on. I had so much trouble deciding on what materials to use and what style to focus on. I knew I wanted to use my special box of Gondola pastels that I had bought in Japan when I was around 13 or 14 years old. The problem was, I didn't really know what to pair them with. There was a lot of experimenting with various inks, dip pens, coloured pencils, collaging, and wax crayons.
I also bought the largest sized paper I've ever worked with for Mighty Wolf.. an A2 sized pad! It was both intimidating but liberating to work over such a large area. Some of the animals were directly drawn with the background while other spreads had the animals digitally collaged from separate drawings. I had so much fun illustrating this one and my favourite part was adding in all the little details like the food scraps on the Dinnertime!! spread. Stu is a close second for being fun to draw... he is such a worrywart and cracks me up so much!
You can find What's the Time, Mighty Wolf? on pre-order at Booktopia, QBD Books, and Paperchain Bookstore, or your local bookshop!! If you can't find a copy, you can also ask your friendly local librarian or bookshop to order a copy!
