Dubois native’s illustrations bring Hospital Heroes children’s book to life
A book coming out this month invites children to accompany Rugby, a cherished teddy bear, on his experiences meeting many healthcare heroes after having a rough encounter with his family’s new puppy.
And, a Dubois native is part of the team that created the book, Hospital Heroes: Rugby’s Medical Adventure.
Tesha Merkel’s vibrant illustrations bring the book to life for a young audience as they learn about the different medical professionals Rugby meets as he gets patched back up. She and fellow artist Sara Caudill co-illustrated the story written by Dr. Liz Dion.
You can learn more about the book and preorder special signed copies now at this link. The book will be available at major retailers on April 20.
Tesha, 25, grew up just outside Dubois near State Road 56 and graduated from Northeast Dubois in 2014. She completed a bachelor’s in fine arts at Indiana State University in 2018 and will finish her master’s this year at Ohio State University.
Here is our Q&A.
How did you get involved with this project?
Liz Dion (the author and head of this project) was initially only working with Sara Caudill, my co-illustrator. Her project was funded by The Innovation Studio, which is all about fostering collaborations like our book to find healthcare solutions, and through Ohio State University College of Nursing’s they connected Liz to the Art and Design departments at Ohio State.
From there, she struck up a conversation with Sara and recruited her for the illustrations. Shortly afterward, Sara—a friend and fellow graduate student in the Design program—brought up the idea of the project and invited me to meet Liz and potentially join the team. Needless to say, that first meeting went well and we’ve been a trio ever since.
Can you tell me a bit about your involvement and what it means to be a co-illustrator (differing roles or responsibilities).
Sure! I would say the project ended up as a collaboration in ways other than our assigned “roles,” though. Sara and I would make suggestions to Liz about the writing, Liz would propose ideas for the illustrations, and all three of us worked on piecing together the book itself. It was a really great experience because all three of us ended up working on unexpected aspects of the book and we worked well as a team, both personally and creatively.
While Liz handled the majority of the writing and marketing for the book, Sara and I handled the bulk of the illustration work. The beginning steps, such as how to design the characters, were an effort between both of us, and when planning out the layout of the illustrated pages we split the job up evenly, with Sara laying out the compositions for the first half of the book while I handled the second half. From there, Sara drew all of the backgrounds of the illustrations, and I drew all of the characters.
I tend to focus on character art in animation, so it’s both a specialty and preference of mine. Sara has done really beautiful background work in the past and enjoys creating environment spaces, so we decided pretty easily to divide up our responsibilities in accordance with our strengths. We communicated frequently to solve any issues that cropped up and to make sure we were on the same page, and I think our approach worked really well!
Can you give me an idea of the message and audience it is intended to help? How does your art or the art in the book help convey that message?
Of course! At the beginning of the project, Liz was still a student learning how to become an OTD (Doctor of Occupational Therapy), so she was familiar with working directly in the medical field. She felt really passionate about creating a children’s book that would help kids who have to stay at the hospital be less afraid of the experience, and also teach them about some of the jobs of the workers there.
From the beginning, she was very set on making the book as inclusive as possible to show that there’s a huge variety of people that work in the medical field who can often be overlooked, and we wanted to extend that same idea to the main characters as well. Rugby’s family has two mothers and two adopted children, and Rugby is still in a wheelchair when he leaves the hospital to jump back into his happy life.
These kinds of families and experiences are often underrepresented, particularly in children’s media, and all three of us were very passionate about trying to offer a counter to that through this project. So while the core story is about helping children feel safe and less afraid when facing medical issues, it also touches on matters of representation for different groups, including disabled and LGBTQ+ communities.
To show this off in the illustrations themselves, we designed the characters with this idea in mind. The parents in the story are based on a real couple in Liz’s life, and some of the characters throughout the hospital are also based on medical workers Liz knows personally. We tried to show off this diversity in a casual way, by just having the characters living their lives and doing their jobs as usual without really focusing the narrative on the representation itself. We wanted it to feel genuine and real.
What did you enjoy about this project?
A lot of things! Designing the characters and making the illustrations themselves was really exciting, and I’ve never had so much fun and creative chemistry in a collaboration as I have with Liz and Sara. The project was a lot of hard work and had its frustrating moments—mostly trying to get finicky computer programs to cooperate for us—but overall it was just a really rewarding experience! I feel like I learned a lot about the technical aspects of art and design, how to better communicate with and build off of others’ ideas in collaboration, and about the intricacies of actually putting a book together to publish and market.
What else have you been involved with or are working on?
I’ve been involved in a few freelance projects in the past, but mostly I’ve just been trying to keep up with my schoolwork! I graduated from Indiana State University in 2018, and now I’m in my last year of graduate school at the Ohio State University. I’m in the Design department with a focus on 2D animation, so I’m currently scrambling to finish my final thesis animation. I’ve done commission work as well in the past and plan to pick that back up after I graduate, but I’m not entirely sure what else I want to pursue aside from working on building up my animation and illustrative skills.
How long have you wanted to work in this field? Any memorable moments that led you down this path?
I wouldn’t say it’s been a long-term dream or anything to work in children’s illustration, but I have played with the idea in the past and wouldn’t mind doing it again in the future. If you’re asking how long I’ve wanted to work in a wider scope of art-related fields, that goal goes all the way back to elementary school.
I remember my dream job frequently rotating between artist, author, and veterinarian when someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’ve been drawing all my life and I became more serious about it in high school, then entered into the Fine Arts program when I went to college for my bachelor’s degree. That’s where I discovered a love of 2D animation, and I’ve largely focused on that discipline ever since. Honestly though, if this project has taught me anything it’s that I’m open to working on a variety of different art-related projects in the future.
