Another Version of Sam & Dave Dig a Hole
There were a lot of skeletons.
Our post about the different published versions of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? last week got us thinking about books we’ve done and how we would change them given the chance, and it brought to mind a book that we made and drastically changed pretty late in the process (though before it was published.) Sam & Dave Dig A Hole came out in 2014. It is the second book we made together, following up on 2012’s Extra Yarn. Sam & Dave, as it was originally conceived, had some very different things going on under the surface than its final version. Even though the text stayed more or less the same, Mac’s visual direction and Jon’s illustration work was quite different until pretty late into the making of it.
For example, here is the final, published version of this page:
And this is the same page from the other, earlier version:
It went on from there, into some pretty wild territory. We present the complete alternate version, along with a chat about it, and why we changed our minds, below.
As usual Mac and Jon had this discussion over text.