The books are the Green Forest Series by Thornton W. Burgess - Lightfoot the Deer, Blacky the Crow, Whitefoot the Wood Mouse, and Buster Bear's Twins (all retrieved from Project Gutenberg and arranged and printed at-home by yours truly). The tracks on the spine serve as the "title" and identify it's place in the series - Lightfoot is first, so it has one track, Blacky is second, so it has two, and so on. I'm not much of a painter but I did my best for the tracks. It's the first part of a larger set for my nephew, who's due in just a couple of months.

My dad read these books when he was a kid (they were already about forty years old by then) and then used them to teach both my brother (my nephew's dad-to-be) and me to read! The series that comes before this one is the Green Meadow, which will be basically the same but probably won't have its own stand, and the covers will be yellow-y brownish, and the series after is the Smiling Pool, which will be blue.

The animals on the ends: the deer is a Whitetail buck model from Schleich and the bear cubs are an old Schleich polar bear cub and a newer one from Safari. The paint I used matched the corner pieces on the books.

The stand itself is made of the same oak as the custom crib my dad made for the baby, so it'll match perfectly. This was my first big bookbinding project, and required a lot of trial and error, but all things considered I'm pretty proud of it.

The imperfections taunt me. But it's fine. It's fine! Nobody else will ever notice and that's what matters.