"Tove Under the Tree" Cover Reveal

How I illustrated the cover of "Tove Under the Tree" (Oct 2025)

Hello Sketchbugs,

Happy end of January! I am happy to share the cover to my new, upcoming illustrated chapter book, Tove Under the Tree (2025), written by the amazing Larissa Theule, art directed by the insightful Amy Berniker, and published by Candlewick. The story follows a little girl named Tove who grows a ficus tree on her head but it is much more than that. I love the way Candlewick described the book:

A child’s courage and creativity save a fallen tree in this gentle young chapter book about empathy, resilience, community, and our indelible bond with nature.

This manuscript was special; evocative and kind in ways I wish I had as a child. There were also so many characters to flesh out in Tove’s neighborhood so this cover explores a more character driven approach than the normal “Julie” style. The book will be available in bookstores October 14th, 2025 and there will be some fun goodies for pre-orders coming soon (look to this newsletter for more book news!)

Mo admiring the new cover!

This was my first time illustrating a full chapter book, let alone anything in the juvenile fiction section. I had previously illustrated The Screaming Hairy Armadillo and 76 Other Animals with Weird, Wild Names but that was a nonfiction chapter book and required an entirely different mode of thinking. When I had gotten this manuscript from my agent, I immediately thought of Imogene’s Antlers, written and illustrated by David Small, and Fall Ball, written and illustrated by Peter Mccarty. Both book covers encapsulated a mood I wanted to evoke: one of a girl dealing with a new physical situation and one of children in community with each other.

Imogene's Antlers (left), Fall Ball (right)

With some of these nostalgic covers in mind, cover ideas for Tove started developing in my sketch/ concept phase. This doodle simmered in the backburner as I worked through the character designs and interiors first.
Look forward to an in depth peek at the concept phase in an upcoming post, closer to the publication date!

Watercolor sketch in the concept phase

Once I had the voice of Tove down and most of the book dummy outlined, I sent in a few cover sketches.

The character design of Tove went through a lot of tweeking

Once the character designs were finalized and the dummy was okayed, I sent in a bunch of edited sketches. The title also changed from Tove Grows a Tree to Tove Under the Tree.

Edited sketches with the new title

There was more back and forth until the editors asked to see a more rendered color sketch of idea 4.

Rendered versions of idea 4

They liked Tove in the middle of her neighborhood but wanted the tree to be altered and her community surrounding her. Amy made a title font mockup, which I incorporated into these more tender sketches.

Tove surrounded by her community

Amy and the team loved sketch 1 so I went to work finalizing it. After lots of sweat, color mode mixups and digital finagling, the final cover was created!

Tove Under the Tree (2025) cover

There will be more news regarding pre-orders but please consider meeting Tove and all the people in her loving community this Fall! This book is more important than ever with the powers that be trying to divide us!
Thank you once again to Larissa Theule for creating Tove’s world, editor and art director Amy Berniker for her guidance, Candlewick for publishing this story and my agent Rebecca Sherman for putting this all together!

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Extra Cool Things

This month has been a whirlwind of emotions for many of us, so I thought I’d share some things that made this month more bearable

• Feeling down with all the news? I really enjoyed this post, What you can do, by

  Robert Reich
  . It outlines steps you can do to protect the most vulnerable in your community, supporting the organizations fighting back against the onslaught of laws making our country worse, and more!

• Metaphor ReFantazio

  • A video game by ATLUS, the creators of the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series. I watched my partner play it all the way through and enjoyed every second of it, from the refreshing gameplay to the beautiful UI design. It is an ambitious game that could not have come out at a better time (released during the election season last year). It is not afraid to get political, addressing racism, theocracy, crumbling leadership, the rise of dictatorships and more. Please play it if you’re at all interested! Plus the english voice cast uses all british actors so the accents are a nice touch.

• Deep Dish Mysteries Series by Mindy Quigley

  • A cozy, somewhat silly detective series following Delilah O’Leary, a gourmet pizzeria owner and her cat Butterball, as they find themselves in the middle of mysteries within their small Wisconsin town. Along with the stories being fun and not too intense, Quigley has recipes on the back of each book! Who doesn’t love free recipes? I literally started reading these books because of the gorgeous cover art by Mary Ann Lasher , so this recommendation ties well into this post about book covers!