In devising their Best Illustrated Children’s Book Awards for 2024, The New York Times and The New York Public Library considered nearly 800 published works and, from those, selected just 10.
Their list emerged Nov. 8 and, high atop it, you can find a local name: Montgomery County author and artist Cece Bell, and her most recent release, “Animal Albums from A to Z,” which they proclaimed “brilliantly quirky.”
They weren’t alone.
Bell’s book also landed in the top 10 overall publications of the year by BookPage, which said it was “the best kind of weird and wonderful,” and both Publishers Weekly and Amazon placed “Animal Albums” in its group of the best children’s titles of 2024. The New York Post, too, singled it out for year-end praise, declaring it “beautifully designed … sure to delight both preschoolers and music-loving parents.”
Published in March, “Animal Albums” is a playful, inventive and graphically elaborate alphabet book that presents 26 illustrated record covers, with song lyrics and liner notes, from fictional, anthropomorphized artists across most musical genres: the Hip-Hop Hedgehogs, for example, as well as the Fabulous Foxes of Folk, plus easy listening star Ella Fontaine who is, of course, an especially elegant elephant.
Some of the covers mimic early Beach Boys LPs or the 13th Floor Elevators’ paisley mazes, while others draw influence from the jazzier designs of Sergio Mendes or Dave Brubeck’s landmark disc “Time Out.” All of Bell’s images are hand-made, drawn and painted by her across three years, with patterns and text cut with X-Acto knives.
“Lots of paintbrushes were killed,” Bell recently said, and with her youthful grin, infectious energy and spritely eyes that peer through dark-framed glasses, she almost resembles a literary child’s dream image of what their favorite writer might look like. Her husband, Tom Angleberger, is a successful children’s author, too, known for his “Origami Yoda” series.
“This is some of the most attention I’ve ever received,” Bell said of the nods. “And, actually, quite a bit of a surprise, because I thought it would just be the kind of book where some people would see it, but it wouldn’t get that much notice. So it’s been really, really exciting that it’s done so well.”
Still, roughly 20 years into her publishing career, Bell is no stranger to positive notices — her graphic novel “El Deafo” received the prestigious Newberry Honor in 2015, and in 2022 the Apple TV+ animated adaptation of that book was nominated for a Children’s and Family Emmy Award and won a Humanitas Prize for its writing, among other trophies.
“With my other books, the artwork is very much in service to the story. It’s almost more cartoon-y, even,” she said, and explained that one of her aims in making “Animal Albums” was: “I’m going to show people that I am a good illustrator. … I felt like it was time for me to make a beautiful book.”
With The New York Times citing her work specifically for its art, that goal is now in the bag.
“That particular award wasn’t even on my radar. It’s like, that’s reserved for the superstars,” she said. “But it felt very validating, for sure.”
Publishing a lyrical book with countless musical in-jokes would also seem to mark a stark contrast to “El Deafo,” which chronicled her elementary school years in Salem as the only deaf student in her class.
But from an early age, Bell has used hearing aids and remains an avid music fan — she was in Salem High School’s marching band, playing both flute and saxophone, and although she can’t really enjoy music casually, as background noise, she has fond memories of it that stretch back to childhood.
“I guess the book is sort of like my own personal tribute to music, and especially the visual aspects of it,” she said. “The way I experienced music as a kid, which was that intentional act of going into my parents’ living room, taking the record out, putting it on the turntable, and then listening to it and looking at the album cover while it played.”
She got a chance to share that experience in October, when she spoke to a group of young readers at the Virginia Children’s Book Festival at Longwood University.
“I did a presentation for a group of kids with different disabilities,” Bell said. “Each kid was unique, and [my presentation] was a lot for them, it was hard to captivate them. I tried drawing, you know, I talked to them.
“And it wasn’t until I put the record on the record player that all of them stopped, and it was a really cool moment. It showed the power, not just of the sound of it, but actually seeing this object spinning around and music coming out of it.
“I think people in the able-bodied world sometimes make assumptions about what disabled people are able to experience, what their experience is like,” Bell said. “And this book is sort of a very subtle way of saying, you know, don’t assume that somebody like me doesn’t appreciate music.” 
‘An unexpected goal’
To echo the old K-Tel record commercials: “But wait! There’s more!”
Quite a bit more, in fact.
As the book neared completion, Bell was suddenly struck by the inspiration to record actual versions of some of the songs, supplemental curios she could post online. She made rough demo recordings, singing her lyrics to suggest potential melodies, and then started sharing those with friends.
“Initially, I was only going to do about three or five songs,” she recalled. “But as I started the process and started talking to people … I started to think, well, maybe I should aim for 26.”
Thus, what began as an EP-length project quickly expanded and the final “Animal Albums” track listing now exceeds in number those of such classic behemoth double albums as The Who’s “Tommy” or “Quadrophenia,” and her playlist spans more than two dozen musical genres. Bell and company’s tunes are now accessible via a QR code in the book, via iTunes and on her YouTube channel, Cece TeeVee.
In order to pull it all off, she turned to a wide bench of talent, musically minded acquaintances as well as a few names revered in alternative circles, and the guest list steadily grew to include more than 60 artists.
Central to the project was Will O’Brien, an installation technician at Roanoke’s Stage Sound and a technical director at St. John Lutheran Church. He’s the son of Sarah Reaser O’Brien, one of Bell’s high school classmates, and the grandson of the late Salem High School band director Dennis Reaser, who taught Bell. Will O’Brien performs on some of the songs, engineered half the tracks and mastered the entire album.
He also operates a busy recording studio out of his Salem basement, and while not every single song was made there, his facility became something of an “Animal Albums” mothership.
“We eventually decided, OK, to make this work, every time an artist comes in, they’re not going to come in through the studio door, which is what we would normally do,” O’Brien recalled. “They’re going to come in through the front door of the house. They’re going to come into the living room and we’re going to have everybody just sit down and hang out … have tea, and talk about how things will roll before we even get into the recording process.”
Bell devised extensive, color-coded spreadsheets to coordinate the traffic and organize the production, while O’Brien’s wife, Lilly — who was pregnant with the couple’s first child during some of the sessions — often hosted and supervised the waiting musicians.
“I remember that ended up being one of my favorite parts of the process, because it was almost like new student orientation in college,” Will O’Brien said. “That was one of the ways we overcame that huge challenge of having the new workflow and relationships every time someone came in to work.”
The method also provided a cozy, lighthearted environment in which they could work on numbers like “Bud Believes in Betty (But Betty Believes in Brad),” a barber shop quartet’s tale of chicken fried steak and unrequited love, or the piano ballad “I Am an Inspiration to Me,” which is sung and performed by O’Brien’s mother (albeit in the guise of an iguana called Ivanna). 
Roanoke hip-hop artist Bryan Hancock, who performs under the stage name Harvest Blaque, joined up to provide vocals for the hand-clappy Motown and girl group-inspired “I’m in the Mood for Mustard,” but to do so, he had to assume the persona of a female meerkat whose first line is a chipper, “Hi! My name is Mandy!”
“I just released an album of hip-hop and spoken word poetry, but this was completely different, it was just more about collaborating ideas,” Hancock said. “What I did was kind of emulate a three-part harmony with my voice, also singing like a female, which was a lot of fun … just completely out of the box for me.”
Also on “Mustard” was J.P. Powell, who fronts the Roanoke band My Radio but who was Bell’s classmate during elementary and high school in Salem, and again later when both attended the College of William & Mary.
“It’s amazing to me how many friends she had when she was young that she still has today, and that are still doing creative things and getting involved,” he marveled.
Powell initially approached Bell in 2022 about her doing artwork for My Radio’s latest album, but he caught her in the midst of her enormous project, and he soon wound up getting recruited for three songs, including the psychedelic entry, “Philip, Phone the Plumber (It’s Time to Pump the Pot),” and the glam rock track “Gnarly Gnomes,” which could easily be mistaken for Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie.
Powell recorded his songs away from O’Brien’s basement, while working at Fidelitorium Recordings in Kernersville, North Carolina. Fidelitorium is owned by musician Mitch Easter, known for his band Let’s Active and for co-producing, along with Don Dixon, the first three albums by R.E.M. That’s how indie rock royalty such as Easter and Dixon wound up playing bass guitar on “Gnarly” and “Philip,” respectively.
Michael Andrews, who provided music for such films as “Donnie Darko” and “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” and who scored such television shows as “Freaks and Geeks” and Bell’s own “El Deafo” series, contributed a surf music reflection on salty soup that lilts with ethereal Brian Wilson-esque harmonies.
Of course, a 26-song opus with a roster of 63 musicians doesn’t come without a price tag, so Bell devised a particularly DIY way to get it done: She financed it herself, paying for it out of her book advance.
“Yeah, baby, that was a heavy chunk of change,” she said. “And, you know, every now and then I would check in with Tom, and he was just completely sweet about the whole thing and realizing that this is sort of like a lifetime thing, you know, an unexpected goal.
“I mean, how many people in their 50s — and I’m a pretty average person — can say, ‘I produced a record!’? And it was worth it.”
Reaching the run-out groove
Even after all the tracks were cut and canned, the ongoing “Animal Albums” art project still wasn’t done.
She went on to produce, direct and edit a series of low-fi, light-hearted music videos for about a half-dozen of the songs for YouTube, complete with flamboyant vee-jay introductions, papier-mâché sculptures and time-consuming stop-motion animation. Bell even captured footage of herself strolling down Main Street in Salem early one morning, wearing the oversized head of Ivanna the Iguana.
While the inside cover of the book appears to be an illustrated array of memorabilia for the “Animal Albums” artists — a box for a 10-cent nose flute, a faux-TV Guide with accordion star Arnie Dillow gracing its cover — it’s actually a photographed collage of props Bell created. All of the “Animal Albums” artwork, including those pieces, is slated to be displayed for an exhibit at Hollins University this summer.
O’Brien compares Bell and her creative dynamism to an unexpected analog: classical composer and theater director Richard Wagner, whose life was so turbulent it almost could have been scored by his most famous composition, “Ride of the Valkyries.”
“Wagner was a guy who did everything,” O’Brien said. “He wanted to do the costumes. He wanted to be involved with the stage. He was involved with the music, obviously, like every aspect of the process. And Cece is kind of the same way.
“Although I would say that she’s a lot more joyful than Wagner,” he added, laughing.
As she wades into her next project, Bell said this year’s accolades have helped give it both fuel and form.
“I’ve been doing this for a little over 20 years now, and I’m glad [this attention] happened later and not right at the beginning,” she said. “If it was at the beginning, I think I’d have a lot more imposter syndrome, and be worried, ‘Oh, the next book has to be perfect,’ and I don’t feel like that at all.
“My next book is so completely different from this, and not nearly as elaborate,” Bell said. “The next book is definitely more story-based. Back to my stories.”
