Our Mission
Family Fun
Toybox Books Publishing creates fun children's books and adventurous novels that can be enjoyed by all ages. In particular, we are here to support families who desire to read out-loud to their children. We consider ourselves a ministry providing KID-SAFE books to the English speaking world. 🙂
About David & Katarina
Author & Artist
Indie author David Howland has created Toybox Books Publishing with hopes of producing many entertaining children's books and Treeworld novels. David's writing refrains from glorifying evil and champions truth and goodness. He considers himself blessed to have the opportunity to work with the lovely and talented Katarina Stevanovic, a Serbian watercolor specialist who illustates his childrens' books.
Behind The Scenes
About The Author
Work on the Oka Irathace series began in 2009. The books were completed in 2017 and they were edited by John David Kudrick. A year was spent submitting to agents until David realized that without a “platform” no agent would be interested. David also realized that the age of traditional publishing dominance was rapidly coming to an end with the internet and print on demand technology, and he saw that being an independent author gave him complete artistic control.
As a former competitive ballroom dancer with five United States, five British, and six World Exhibition championship titles (1996-2001) David had learned the importance of believing in your art and working passionately to create things of beauty for others to enjoy. His former partner and mentor—a former soloist with Hamburg Ballet—modeled perfectly this ethic and instilled it in the author, turning athlete into artist. David had been a high-hurdler in college and a ski instructor before his dance career took off.
After a long search for a cover artist for the Oka Irathace series, David chose T. K. Diem Nguyen. The covers were designed and composed by David who chose special moments from each book to serve as the cover scene. Then Diem made four beautiful watercolor paintings in her distinctive, vintage, “golden age of children’s books” style. Each cover is in itself a miniature story, hopefully provoking questions and interest in the viewer and conveying a feeling of fantastic adventure.
During this same time period, David was also getting illustrations for the children’s books, Snow Flurry, Johnny Avalanche, and Anna the Wereshark Mermaid. By chance after searching for two years for the right artist, David finally found the young and brilliant Katarina Stevanovic. David was thrilled by her ability to capture emotion and her visual imagination. Katarina is also an amazing watercolor artist, and she holds a masters degree from the Faculty of Applied Arts at the University of Arts in Belgrade. David hopes to create many more “David & Katarina” books. In the works are Randy’s Rock Socks, The Great Grape Escape, Bodyboard Badger. After that David plans a ten book series of Sticky Greenfingers episodes. All these works are written but the artwork will take some time.
Character artwork was obtained as well during this period. Kae Richardson did excellent work creating Oka, his lead dolphin Bubble, and the seven Whitebark guardsmen, Willow, Sargent & Fireh, Axmet & Lethle, and Holly & Dreven.  The guardsmen are the cast of supporting characters who accompany Oka on his epic adventure. Willow is featured on the covers of Missing Rider and Redgull Spy. Bubble appears on Dolphin Caller and Sentrees’ Song. The interior of each novel has maps of the fantasy world and images of two distinct characters. The maps were created by David Moliveira.
Having been read to in bed at night by his father, David understands the joy and benefit of bedtime reading. He also has a passion to create the highest quality product that his skills and ability can offer. Rest assured that much care and love (blood, sweat, & tears) goes into every Toybox Books Publishing production.
