Here is the first spread -- that's 2 facing pages -- in my dummy book. The picture is a pencil drawing copied on xerox machine, then pasted into a book of folded, stapled pages.

Below is the spread that comes next when you turn the page, after the squirels get in Axels trunk. Here you see the first view of the junkyard.

The illustration to the left is my watercolor of the junkyard. The main character Axel is in this upper left corner -- that yellow taxi under a tree. In the picture below he's circled in red.

I my painting I tried to show how fine it is in the junkyard, so full of life and history -- a nice place to rust with lots of time to hang out and watch the day go by.

Below is the text -- it will go in the sky above the old school bus.

This illustration will go in the book as a full spread -- so the picture goes across the fold -- in the diagram below you can see the red line down the middle is where the fold will be. That's called the gutter and nothing important goes there. The red box shows where I will put the words.

"No more rushing around guzzling gas, or idling bumper to bumper in city traffic with his meter ticking endlessly.
Axel sat comfortably rusting after a gentle rain and let some air hiss out of his tires. Country life was so restful he was thinking about letting his back doors fall off when a cold polished voice said, 'Even in the junkyard one needn't be a wreck.'?

Can you see the racoon on the car? He likes life in the junkyard too.