B. One-of-a-Kind Books Made by Donna Thomas

This section describes the one-of-a-kind books made by Donna Thomas. All of the books in this section were made using Peter’s handmade paper, and although Donna often included the imprint “Peter and Donna Thomas: Santa Cruz,” typically she designed, hand-rendered the text, and bound the book with little or no collaboration. Because of this, we have listed Donna Thomas as the publisher for all of them, despite what it may say in the book itself. 

“Donna has been drawing and painting since kindergarten, when she found if she made a painting a day, then on her walk home she would always have a piece of paper to roll up and use to hit the mean dog that barked at her from the yard of the house at the bottom of the street.” – Peter Thomas

“I have noticed that when someone randomly opens one of my books and finds a picture on that page they are satisfied, maybe even delighted; much more so than if they had found pages with only text. Words require work: one must take the time to read the words in order to understand the content. But with an image there is an immediacy of comprehension. So now when I plan to make a book, rather than taking the conventional approach of illustrating a text with images, I think in terms of using text to illustrate my images. As I see my books as collections of color and line, rather than words and images."   -Donna Thomas