Sometimes a story finds you

“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” Pat Thompson

My love of children's illustration began many years ago.

As a former Disney illustrator and the creator of The Christmas Treasury collection of children's books for Dalmatian Press, I spent more than 15 years immersed in the world of children's illustration. I fell in love with creating characters, imagining their worlds, and bringing familiar stories to life through pictures.

One of the most important lessons of my career came from a little book called The Velveteen Rabbit.

When it was published by Dalmatian Press, it sold 235,000 copies in its first six weeks. I called my Mom and told her the news.

She said, "Just imagine, 235,000 children read this book at bedtime."

That changed the way I thought about my work.

Until then, I had thought mostly about creating beautiful art. But suddenly I understood the extraordinary reach that children's publishing could have. My illustrations weren't hanging in the home of a few people who could afford original artwork. They were becoming part of the childhood memories of hundreds of thousands of children.

I realized that I didn't want to create beautiful things that were available only to a few. I wanted to make beautiful art accessible to everyone.

A Senior Sales and Marketing Director at Dalmatian Press once explained why my books were selling so well. He told me that they offered high-end art at a mass-market price.

That idea stayed with me.

It is still one of the guiding principles behind my work today.

With The Children of Mother Goose™, my goal is to create art that feels special enough to treasure, while keeping it accessible enough to be enjoyed by families and children everywhere. The prints are part of that vision, and so are the books and stories I hope to bring to life in the future.

And then, Mother Goose found me again.

Years after I was offered the opportunity to illustrate Mother Goose for Dalmation Press, which I wasn’t able to do at that time, I was sitting in church with my Mom when a little girl walked up the aisle.

For just a moment, I thought I recognized her.

Little Bo Peep.

I couldn't get the image out of my head.

Eventually, I arranged a photoshoot with her mother, and that became the beginning of something I never expected. Shortly afterward, my nephew came for a visit, and suddenly I saw Little Boy Blue.

Then it started happening more often.

I would see a child and recognize one of the familiar faces from the nursery rhymes I had known all my life. Before long, I had created several illustrations, and something began to happen that changed the direction of the project.

The children began to feel like they knew one another.

By the time I had completed about five nursery-rhyme illustrations, they no longer felt like separate characters from separate rhymes. In my imagination, they had become friends.

And I have honestly been obsessed ever since.

I began imagining a place where they could all live together—a village in the Land of Mother Goose, where these familiar children could grow up, play, explore and have adventures beyond the few lines of verse in which we first met them.

Then the stories began to come.

Conversations. Friendships. Adventures. Little pieces of dialogue that seemed to arrive when I wasn't even thinking about writing.

And underneath all of it was an unshakable feeling that these children had something to say to us.

Perhaps they could remind us of a time when childhood was allowed to be childhood. A time when imagination mattered, when children played outside, when friendships were made face-to-face, and when the world still felt full of possibility.

A time when things are what they should be.

That is the world I am creating with The Children of Mother Goose™.

The original nursery rhymes are only the beginning. The illustrations introduce the children. The Village gives them a home. And the stories give them a life of their own.

And perhaps, along the way, they can remind us grown-ups of something we already knew when we were children.

There is still magic in the world when we take the time to look for it.

I hope you'll come meet them.

© 2026 Pat Thompson Art. All artwork, characters, illustrations, and written content associated with The Children of Mother Goose™ are the property of Pat Thompson and may not be reproduced, copied, or used without permission.