Author taps Barrington students for art

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The cover for "Imagine," the first book written by Florida resident and first time author Kathy Picciano, was designed by Barrington High School graduate Lauren Swanson.

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 The cover for "Imagine," the first book written by Florida resident and first time author Kathy Picciano, was designed by Barrington High School graduate Lauren Swanson.

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Updated: November 10, 2011 2:41PM

Kathy Picciano lives more than 1,100 miles away in Winter Park, Fla., and the ideas that popped into her head one morning in January 2009 have had an impact on two Barrington High School students she didn’t know until a few months later.

Inexplicably, Picciano said, a story was forming that involved a teenage piano player, the war in Vietnam and rock ’n’ roll.

She was so moved by the developing story, she began writing it immediately. Picciano said she was never a writer before and doesn’t know where the ideas came from.

“A couple months later, I had a book,” she said.

The self-published Imagine is about Tyler John Hanson, a 17-year-old musician who goes by TJ. His passion is to play in a rock band, which is spurred on by the music he hears in his head. The high school student finds himself dealing with a string of potentially life-changing coincidences after he agrees to play at the school’s Starlight Follies — the new music popping into his head; a dreaded history project on the Vietnam conflict, which could be the catalyst for his band; and how the project will affect Emily, whom he has his heart set on.

But, the story didn’t end with the completion of one book. It picks up again in Simple Man, which is also self-published.

Simple Man follows TJ through the summer, when his band is playing gigs and he’s hanging out with his friends and girlfriend. Just as life seems like it couldn’t get better, TJ experiences a devastating loss.

Two more books about TJ are on the way, and Picciano still stops whatever she’s doing, whether it be brushing her teeth or grocery shopping, to write when she’s inspired.

“There was just something in my gut,” Picciano said. “It felt so good to put it on paper. Never in my life did I do anything like that.”

The Florida resident, who was raised on Long Island in New York, set the story in Barrington and the school scenes in Barrington High School.

Picciano lived in Buffalo Grove for only eight months when her husband’s work had the couple on the move for a while, and she visited Barrington a handful of times. She fell in love with the area. But then she had to move again.

“It was the nicest place I’ve ever lived,” she said. “The kids in the books are affluent. They had to come from an area that’s affluent and middle class. I didn’t want the kids to be snobby, but I wanted them to have a good education.”

But, she needed cover art. Her sister suggested Picciano ask art students from local high schools in Winter Park, Fla. Picciano took it one step further and offered the opportunities to Barrington High School art students since the book was set there. The student whose design was chosen would receive a $500 scholarship from Picciano.

Lauren Swanson, of Hoffman Estates and a member of the BHS Class of 2010, designed the winning cover for Imagine, which shows a portion of a piano keyboard surrounded in darkness underneath the title.

Swanson is now attending Indiana University and is majoring in Linguistics & Speech and Hearing Science and double majoring in Spanish.

“I remember Kathy saying that she wanted a piano,” Swanson said. “So, the piano inspired me and I thought the angle of the piano was a really nice shot and it made the keys look dramatic.”

She added, “Now that it’s the cover of a book, I think it is really cool to have my design published and sold. Whenever I’m in a bookstore or library I always look for Imagine. Plus, it makes a for a really good fun fact about myself.”

Jessica Bishop, of Barrington and a Class of 2011 grad, won the design for Simple Man, which is a charcoal and pastel sketch of a boy playing piano. Bishop is studying Illustration at Columbia College in Chicago.

“I wanted to draw a character as close to Kathy’s vision as possible,” she said. “It was a great opportunity. I was pretty excited.”

Picciano has just started the third book in the four-book series, so there will be two more opportunities for BHS students to design the covers.

“My scholarship was $500 and greatly appreciated,” Swanson said. “My books alone cost that much.”