Amplify ELA: Narrative Writing
Bringing personal stories to life
Client: Amplify ELA
Role: Illustrator & Visual Storyteller
Art Director: Tory Novikova
Scope: Concept Development, Illustration
Amplify creates ELA (English Language Arts) interactive core curriculum that inspires students to read more deeply, write more vividly, and think more critically.
The Narrative Writing unit brings together memoirs and personal essays by different writers, including Amy Tan’s Fish Cheeks, Roald Dahl’s Going Solo, and Kaitlyn Greenidge’s My Mother’s Garden. Through these stories, students learn to read like writers, paying attention to how authors use character, detail, and perspective to shape a narrative.
Working with the Art Director and Amplify’s curriculum designers, I explored different approaches to the characters, settings, and atmosphere of each story, ultimately developing a hand-drawn visual style that creates continuity across the unit while allowing each story to retain its own character.
The project included 13 hero illustrations, one for each sub-unit.
A visual language for personal stories
The hand-drawn style takes inspiration from middle-grade book illustration, giving the imagery a personal, expressive quality that works across the different voices and worlds represented in the unit.
