Maplewood artist to publish child’s book – ‘Road Trip’

A book that began as something a father did for his son, later this year will be available for many more toddlers to have fun with. Bill Perry said when his son was three years old (he’s now 18) he loved to drive his toy cars through books as Perry read to him.

He decided to make a book for his son to drive through containing everything his son liked. Perry is currently an art teacher at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, a St. Louis magnet school.

It took a year and a half and ended up being an accordion fold book 37 feet long.

“I made it for him,” Perry said. “I thought maybe I’ll publish it someday, but really, I wanted my son to have a neat book to play with.” Perry has now raised more than $17,000, through Kickstarter, to publish Road Trip.

Perry’s house, at the corner of Yale and Bruno avenues, in Maplewood, is on page one. The road winds past a fire station, construction site, bicycle shop, the old Grafton ferry—all things his son liked.

“He liked buses, trains, airplanes, trash trucks—because they’re big and noisy, and smelly, too,” he said. His family swims in the Current River with a beaver playing nearby.

The road ends in Honolulu because Perry’s wife is Hawaiian. His son blows out three candles on a cake on the last page.

Perry didn’t want to start the publishing process until it was fully funded.

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He said Kickstarter recommended a shorter time frame to raise the money because it adds a sense of urgency. “Well, it added a sense of terror and panic halfway through when I was 13 days from the end and I had a third of the money I needed. I wrote to every single person I knew,” Perry said.

Now that the Kickstarter is completed, he said he feels like everybody who pledged is his personal friend.

“People all over who you have something solid in common with,” he said. “It really makes you feel like wow—this huge world for me.”

Of the 1,000 copies of Road Trip, to be published in China, approximately 400 will go to his Kickstarter supporters. He hasn’t figured out how he’ll sell the rest.