A little over 30 years ago, the first book in the Kingdom Tales Trilogy was published. It was titled The Tales of the Kingdom, and won a Gold Medallion Award. This book was to be followed over the next decade by two more in the series, Tales of the Resistance and Tales of the Restoration. For whatever reason, the original publisher chose to use a different artist to illustrate Book Three.
As many of you know, our son Jeremy died last year at age 41 from a rare and aggressive form of lymphoma. Because of his travels through the world and his growth as a multicultural specialist (he taught Spanish at Wheaton College and ran his own Dynamis Immigration Aid to counsel people seeking U.S. citizen status), it was always his wish to someday redo the 36 illustrations in the three books with artwork that included an array of multiethnic faces.
As a legacy project in his honor, we held a contest in which some 87 artists from various countries competed for the honor of illustrating the three books in the Kingdom Tales Trilogy. A winner has now been chosen, Zhivko Zhelev from Bulgaria. You can learn more about what’s happening by going to this website. For those of you who have been concerned for the Mains family, this is a perfect opportunity to be personally involved in this special legacy project, which will continue on Kickstarter through the end of July.
