LimeWire Music Blog

We always knew Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy was a literary guy. Aside from his bookworm-y lyrics, he contributed his take on The Replacements’ Let It Be to the 33 1/3 series. But now, it looks like he’s taking his writerly talents to a brand-new, younger audience — namely, kids. Meloy and his wife, artist Carson Ellis (who also designs Decemberists album covers and merch), are slated to write and illustrate a children’s book.

Here’s what Meloy has to say about it, in his blog:

“The Unfortunate Demise of Whitley Rackham” … owes its existence to a (admittedly pretty nerdy) Halloween party that was thrown by a friend in, like, 2002.  Everyone was instructed to write a ghost story to read at the party.  My humble contribution was this story about Whitley Rackham, a veteran of the Great War (2002 was a big year for WWI in my brain) and the ghosts (literally and figuratively) that followed him home.  Our good friend Rebecca at Stumptown Printers suggested a collaboration; we proffered “The Unfortunate Demise” and Carson set about providing illustrations for the story.  This will see publication as a very short run of likely gorgeous letterpressed copies, as only Stumptown Printers can do.

Hipster parents, take note: If this one is out in time for the holidays, you need to be all over it.

Meanwhile, Ellis is also at work on a second kids’ book Meloy describes as “the story of a talking cat in 1920s Butte Montana emerged and began its life of being perpetually put on farther back burners and graffiti-ing our wikipedia pages.”