Sage Sails The World is a 40-page climate-adventure picture book written by Diamond Spratling and illustrated by Amna Zaki of The Rainbow Stories. A seven-year-old sets off with her dog to see the world her grandmother described, starting at the North Pole — and finds the polar bears are not there. Every spread was drawn by hand, from pencil rough to print-ready files for Amazon KDP.
Sage is seven. Her grandmother, Jean, is a real-life adventurer: she has flown through jungles, camped in igloos, danced with dolphins and, she says, once whispered secrets to a dinosaur. Sage and her dog Benji decide to go and see all of it for themselves.
The first stop is the North Pole, the top of the world, where Grandma Jean promised a chilly wonderland packed with snow, ice sheets and little polar bears. Sage gets there to find sunshine, open water and penguins in swimsuits. The polar bears are nowhere in sight.
Diamond Spratling is an environmental activist and the founder of Girl Plus Environment, a nonprofit for young women in climate and environmental justice, and this is her first children’s book. What Sage does about the missing polar bears is the rest of it. Sage Sails the World: A Little Girl’s Journey Across The Arctic is published and on sale on Amazon.
| Title | Sage Sails the World: A Little Girl’s Journey Across The Arctic |
|---|---|
| Author | Diamond Spratling |
| Illustrator | Amna Zaki, The Rainbow Stories |
| Extent | 40 pages, with artwork on thirty-six of them |
| Editions | Hardcover and paperback |
| Trim size | 8.5 inches square (21.6 cm) |
| ISBN-13 | 979-8305388992 |
| Series | Sage Sails The World — this is book one |
| Next in the series | A Little Girl’s Journey Across The Great Barrier Reef — case study, and on Amazon |
| Published by | Diamond C. Spratling |
| Published | 30 December 2024 |
| Reading age | Baby to 7 years, per the Amazon listing |
| Recurring characters | Sage and Benji the dog on almost every page, plus Grandma Jean |
| What we delivered | Character design, full-book storyboard, 36 pages of interior artwork, print-ready files |
| Printer setup | Amazon KDP, 300 dpi with bleed |
| Rounds included | Three to four, at the rough stage |
| Time from brief to files | 12 weeks |
| Copyright | Transferred in full to the author |
| Where to buy | Amazon |
Every spread was roughed in pencil and approved before any colour was laid down. The cover and three spreads are shown here; on two of the spreads you can also see the pencil rough that came first.
Character design for Sage, Benji and Grandma Jean, approved before any page was drawn. The character design portfolio shows what that stage looks like across other books. A full-book storyboard of the whole book in pencil. Thirty-six illustrated pages. Print-ready files at 300 dpi with bleed, set up for Amazon KDP. Copyright transferred in full to the author on final payment.
The studio is based in Lahore and every page is drawn by hand. If you are weighing up hiring a children’s book illustrator, the character design and storyboard stages are where most of the decisions get made.
Diamond Spratling is quoted on the book’s Amazon listing saying she “wanted Sage to be a hero who looked like me”, and the listing describes choosing an illustrator deliberately, for shared identity as much as for style.
Amna’s work was exceptional!! I absolutely loved working with her and she made it look so easy. She communicated every step of the way and communicated thoroughly. Her work was incredible and she was very pleasant to work with. Looking forward to our next project together!
Sage Sails the World is a climate-adventure picture book written by Diamond Spratling and illustrated by Amna Zaki. Sage is seven. She sets off with her dog Benji to see the Arctic her grandmother described, and finds that the polar bears are not there. The book is published and on sale on Amazon in hardcover and paperback.
Amna Zaki of The Rainbow Stories, a children’s book illustration studio in Lahore. She drew the character designs, the full-book storyboard and every illustrated page by hand, and set up the print-ready files for Amazon KDP. Amazon credits her as illustrator on the listing.
The Amazon listing gives the reading age as baby to seven years, and points the book at family read-alouds, classroom storytimes and early-reader collections, and at teachers looking for climate material that is science-informed without frightening the reader.
Ten to fourteen weeks from accepted quote to print-ready files for a book of this length, with the author’s review time at each stage built in. The storyboard alone is about three weeks, and a character set about three business days.
For a book this size: character design for every recurring character, a storyboard of the whole book in pencil, the finished interior artwork, and print-ready files at 300 dpi with bleed, set up for the printer you are using. On this book that was Amazon KDP.
Because that is the stage where changing your mind is free. Every page is roughed in order, so the page turns, the pacing and the scale changes are visible at once. Once the roughs are approved, nothing finished has to be redrawn.
With The Rainbow Stories the author does. Full copyright transfers on final payment, including commercial use. We ask only to show the work in our portfolio, and even that is the author’s to decline.
No. Every page was drawn by hand, which is why the pencil roughs on this page exist at all. A generated image has no earlier stages to show.
It is published and on sale on Amazon in hardcover and paperback, as Sage Sails the World: A Little Girl’s Journey Across The Arctic, ISBN 979-8305388992.
Yes. Sage Sails The World is a series written by Diamond Spratling and illustrated by Amna Zaki of The Rainbow Stories. This first book takes Sage to the Arctic. The next title is Sage Sails The World: A Little Girl’s Journey Across The Great Barrier Reef, also published and on sale on Amazon. Its case study is here.
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