The Seven Chairs

A collaborative book from Becka Rahn and Amelia Davis

I created this book with my niece, Amelia, who just turned 10. She wrote the story in January 2020 for a school project where she was given a title “The Seven Chairs” and one sentence of the story, “The fifth one ended up in France.” Her job was to come up with the rest of the story. She chose three dogs to be the stars of her mystery – Chester, Leo and Lucy – which happen to be the same names as three (current and former) dogs I have. Since my dogs were the ones having the adventures, I asked her if I could make the illustrations to go along with her story. I invited a bunch of other pets belonging to family and friends to come and be the party guests, so you’ll also get to meet Jack, Oscar, Binx, Cheetah, Boule, Penny and Pike. You can see a photo of Amelia’s original story on the “about the author and illustrator” page at the end of the book.

Every page is a hand-cut paper illustration made from colored, patterned and painted paper. You’ll even see bits of hand-made and hand-marbled paper that I made in a class. Since all of my spring shows and teaching projects for spring 2020 were cancelled and I had a lot of time to make art, this was my quarantine art project.

You can see some of the original illustrations for the book at Collaboration, the annual members show at Art Works Eagan. The show will be available for socially-distanced viewing August 4-October 23, 2020.