The story of my first children’s book, Drakin the Dragon and the Quest for Strawberries, began almost thirty years ago (1997!) as a college assignment. I was enrolled in children’s literature class as a college sophomore. For our final exam, we each had to write an original story for young children. I chose to write about Drakin the Dragon, a well-loved character that I’d dreamed up and designed back in high school. So, of course when I wrote his first story I couldn’t help but to illustrate it. I bound the book all together in a photo album, complete with Japanese washi-paper accents and hand-lettered blocks of text, and turned…