Hello!Lucky is all about using creativity to spread joy, fun, and kindness. Founded by sisters Eunice and Sabrina Moyle in 2003, Hello!Lucky is an award-winning letterpress greeting card and design studio working with dozens of partners to create products, including Abrams’ pun-derful children’s books: My Mom Is Magical!, My Dad Is Amazing!, Super Pooper and Whizz Kid: Potty Power!, Kindness Rules!, Christmas Is Awesome!, Sloth and Smell the Roses, Go Get ’Em, Tiger!, and Thanks a Ton!
They also offer bedding, ceramics, socks, stationery, custom photo albums, and more. Hello!Lucky is based in San Francisco.
TBE: The friendship between Astrid and Stella is central to the story. How did you approach writing their dynamic, especially when they face creative differences in the first chapter?
Eunice and Sabrina Moyle: Astrid and Stella’s dynamic is deeply influenced by our relationship as sisters and creative collaborators. When we were kids, our dad was a diplomat and we moved to a new country every couple years – we had to be best friends since we didn’t know anyone when we first landed in a new place. We played together, putting on plays, making our own doll houses, and even starting our own businesses! As adults, we co-founded Hello!Lucky and have collaborated creatively in much the same way as Astrid and Stella in the first chapter – Sabrina writes the words and Eunice draws the pictures. Over the years, we’ve had many creative disagreements and have gotten frustrated with each other sometimes, so Astrid and Stella’s creative differences are very much inspired by our real-life experiences!
TBE: “Comet Together” touches on themes of creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking. How do you balance conveying these important concepts while keeping the story fun and engaging for young readers?
Sabrina Moyle: I usually start with the story’s hook, or driving question or idea that I want to explore. In the case of Chapter 1, the question is: how does a creative collaboration work? I wanted to show the importance of having different roles and being each others’ champions during the creative process. Everyone has different things they are uniquely best at, and you don’t have to do everything yourself to be creative – you can divide and conquer, and often the results are way better than if you tried to control everything! Once I have the basic idea that I want to explore, then it’s all about letting the characters tell the story with as much humor as possible. I wrote an article about writing humor for children that sums up all of the strategies that we use to make kids laugh – including funny situations, hilarious facial expressions and body language, word play, visual puns, hyperbole, and pushing boundaries.
Eunice Moyle: We also get tons of inspiration from our own kids – and they read everything and contribute their input and ideas to make sure it passes the kid test!
TBE: The book introduces Time Travel Tiger, a new character. What inspired this addition, and how do you see them fitting into future adventures?
Eunice and Sabrina Moyle: We thought it would be fun to bring in a new character who could potentially spin off into his own series one day. We loved the idea of a time traveling tiger: While Astrid and Stella explore space and different kinds of beings who live on different planets, Time Travel Tiger explores time and the inventions. In the future, we can see Time Travel Tiger teaming up with Astrid and Stella to help them out of more interplanetary pickles, and/or taking them on some hilarious time-traveling adventures to explore periods like the Renaissance or Ancient China!
TBE: Your illustrations are vibrant and full of delightful details. Can you walk us through your creative process for developing the visual style of the Cosmic Adventures series?
Eunice Moyle: The style was initially inspired by a birthday card I designed featuring a unicorn in space, but the overall look is really a mash up of being a child of the 70’s and 80’s (Buck Rogers! Rainbows! Roller Skates!), Japanese and Korean pop aesthetics, and just kid vibes in general. A lot of the physical comedy of Astrid & Stella is pulled from memories of my childhood and/or my kids who I find inherently amusing. Additionally, my daughter is an avid artist herself and I’ve had her help me design elements such as a Minecraft style game environment or the uniforms for a pug army (coming up in the next book!). I love incorporating her ideas and naturally hilarious perspective into our comics.
TBE: Stella’s quest to review robots raises interesting questions about technology. What prompted you to explore this theme in a children’s book?
Sabrina Moyle: Artificial intelligence (AI) has been all over the news, and I was aware that my kids were already talking about it at school. There’s a lot of anxiety about whether it is good or bad and how it will affect us. How will it influence creators – will AI make artists and writers (like ourselves) obsolete? Will AI take over the world in some kind of a dystopian dictatorship? Our own point of view is that we can find a healthy balance, and that the intentions behind how and why we use technology (to be of service) matter. So, we decided to make a story about it, to help kids wrap their minds around a big, ambiguous topic that may feel both exciting and scary.
TBE: The story seamlessly incorporates STEM concepts. How do you research and integrate scientific ideas into your narratives?
Sabrina Moyle: I read constantly and, when I’m interested in a topic, I research it by reading different articles and perspectives. In the case of What on Earth?! I read dozens of articles about AI, and even talked with people in the technology industry who are involved in designing AI applications. In the case of Time Travel Tiger!, I researched the different inventions (the kazoo, the hammock) using reputable online sources, to bring in just enough information to fit into a graphic novel format and engage readers while being historically accurate.
TBE: Diversity and inclusion seem to be important in your character designs. Can you discuss your approach to representation in the Cosmic Adventures series?
Eunice and Sabrina Moyle: Diversity is hugely important to us, in part because of the way we grew up, traveling all over the world. Sabrina has also been involved with a youth non-profit organization called The Mosaic Project for over a decade, which teaches the values of mutual respect, open-mindedness, self-respect, positive attitude, individuality, and community. Empathy, effective communication and conflict resolution skills are key to living in a diverse and inclusive world, so we try to show and model these skills throughout our stories. We also design all our characters to be intentionally different, often in humorous and super creative ways, because everyone is both an individual and interconnected.
TBE: As sisters working together, do you see any parallels between your collaborative process and Astrid and Stella’s in the book?
Eunice and Sabrina Moyle: Absolutely! Like Stella, Sabrina is more of a writer than a visual artist. She can draw, but it’s not her super power. Like Astrid, Eunice is a stellar visual artist – she’s amazing at drawing and illustration, and enjoys being able to focus on this while someone else (e.g. Sabrina) comes up with the story and words. That said, sometimes it takes us a few tries before we land on the right solution for a creative project. In the beginning of Comet Together!, Astrid and Stella think it will be easy for Stella to write a story and Astrid to illustrate it – but neither of them is happy with the result. That happens to us in real life, too! For every idea that works, there are a dozen that end up in the dustbin. We also love to riff off each other, like the way Stella suggests combining their stories with a “What if…?” question and Astrid jumps on board with “I’m on it!” A huge part of our creative collaboration is being up for trying anything, and being open to each other’s ideas.
TBE: The book is part of a series. How do you keep each installment fresh while maintaining continuity?
Eunice and Sabrina Moyle: The continuity part is easy, and a little like the basic structure of a sandwich (two slices of bread with stuff inside): it comes from the consistency of the main characters—Astrid, Stella, and Bobo, their robot sidekick—and the premise of visiting different planets to solve problems or encounter new situations. The freshness part is the fun bit – like the sandwich ingredients and filling. In each book, we try out new, hilarious situations for them to encounter, and introduce new characters, like Kittywonkus or Evil Screenius, which keep the flavor and ingredients exciting. For freshness, there also needs to be character development, both individually and in Astrid and Stella’s relationship. So, over time, we are introducing more of their back story (such as learning where Bobo grew up in What on Earth?!) and watching them learn, grow, and change, for example by having them make their own comet books instead of just reading them in Comet Together!).
TBE: “Comet Together” has a wonderful balance of humor and heart. How do you craft jokes and emotional moments that resonate with both children and adults?
Eunice and Sabrina Moyle: First, we find situations that both kids and grownups can relate to, often based on our or our kids’ personal experiences. Second, we respect the reader. Have you ever had an author, teacher, or person of any description talk down to you or tell you what to do? Not funny, right? Nope. Third, we respect ourselves. Great humor requires confidence, sensitivity, and self-awareness. When we laugh at ourselves in a kind-hearted way, and the reader laughs with us – we do this when we take a painful personal experience (like struggling to make a creative collaboration work) and mine it for humor. Finally, we write and draw from the heart. There’s a huge difference between laughing WITH and laughing AT, especially with sensitive, earnest, and vulnerable kids (and adults). Laughing WITH characters empowers them, because humor helps us gain control of an awkward situation. Laughing AT a character takes power away. So, rather than showing Stella or Astrid mocking each other’s comet books, we show them each melting down, confronting their own feelings of inadequacy – and then coming up with a stellar plan to help each other out!
TBE: Are there any real-life experiences or people that inspired elements of this story?
Eunice and Sabrina Moyle: Eunice’s daughter Imogen’s drawings were a major source of inspiration for Astrid and Stella’s comet book – and she even helped with some of the character designs! The toilet in Time Travel Tiger! is inspired by Japanese toilets, which Sabrina’s kids encountered on a family vacation to Japan. We had fun designing the character of Cheetah Pawlo, who is obviously inspired by the artist Frida Kahlo. In the process of writing the book, Sabrina also played around a lot with AI chatbots and drawing apps to get a better feel for how AI could be used as a creative tool, and the possible threat it presents to writers and artists. Stella’s star rating system is inspired in part by John Green’s The Anthropocene Revisited, and innumerable funny Amazon reviews we’ve read over the years.
TBE: The book touches on the creative process. As authors and illustrators, what message do you hope to convey to young creators through Astrid and Stella’s comet-making adventure?
Eunice and Sabrina Moyle: We hope to convey to young readers that everyone is a creator and that creative collaboration is hugely enjoyable! You don’t have to be great at every single part of the creative process in order to do something creative (whether it be making a graphic novel or starting a business). You can rely on friends with different talents and skills to work with you to create something that no one could have imagined on their own. In addition, creative collaboration is hard. It requires a “yes and” approach that is reminiscent of improv comedy—you have to be able and willing to build on other people’s ideas without knocking them down. This takes self-awareness and good communication skills, which are great to develop for all aspects of life! You also have to be willing to admit when something isn’t working, scrap it, and go back to the drawing board.
TBE: How has your background in greeting card design influenced your approach to children’s books?
Eunice and Sabrina Moyle: When we first started making children’s books, we realized that, in some ways, they were just expanded greeting cards. Both formats involve combining words and pictures to reinforce an overall idea or message. In addition, our greeting cards are funny, punny, and empathetic. A great greeting card makes the recipient or reader feel good (and, ideally, laugh out loud), and we hope to achieve the same thing with our children’s books. Like our greeting cards, our books focus on celebrating key milestones and moments, and also on helping children and adults express feelings and ideas that they couldn’t necessarily articulate on their own.
TBE: Can you share any challenges you faced while creating “Comet Together” and how you overcame them?
Eunice Moyle: One of the challenges we faced was coming up with a whole different art style of Astrid and Stella’s respective comet books. I overcame this by using a different pen and drawing with my left hand, and also by asking my daughter Imogen to help draw some of the characters to establish a more naive, childlike visual style.
TBE: What’s next for Astrid and Stella? Can you give us a hint about future cosmic adventures they might embark on?
Eunice and Sabrina Moyle: We’re changing up the format a bit in the next Astrid and Stella adventure, Robot Rescue! Instead of going on three separate adventures, Astrid and Stella will have one big adventure that is broken into three parts, each with a cliffhanger! We’ll also learn more about their backstory, and Bobo might even make a new friend . . .
