During the writing process, I knew I wanted my characters to act in kindness but, not until the entire story was developed did I know what they would look like. After creating Odessa and getting the illustrator to see my vision for her, I looked at creating the other characters. The elephant, hippopotamus and giraffe were easily chosen because I have always been a fan of each of those animals. The warthog was added by my graphic designer as a ‘cool’ friend. He was perfect! Of course, adding Monkey and Leopard was a very easy decision and my grandchildren were surprised to see them in the book. Look at some of the changes made to each character in order to get them to look like I was seeing them in my head. At that point, I was on my way to putting a face on each character and I was loving each one of them!