36 CHRONICLE BOOKS
As addictive as it is inventive, All Mixed Up is a children’s book where readers get to create their own characters. Each page is cut into three equal sections that easily flip back and forth on a spiral binding. It’s a setup that lets you match the head of a beauty queen with the midsection of a robot and the legs of a clown. “It’s really whimsical,” says Tracy Sunrize Johnson, the book’s designer. “It’s something you can mix up and be silly with and do all day—if you have all day.”

The book’s design was influenced heavily by its illustrator, Carin Berger, who created each character to size as a handmade collage. Since Berger collects antique ephemera for her work, she provided Johnson with a stack of old book plates, bags and other interesting tidbits to use as backgrounds. The page opposite each character, for example, features a pattern that shares some sort of visual relationship—whether it’s a shared color or general tone. These patterns also add color throughout the book and help make the cover more engaging. by Michelle Taute