Customers kept asking for it at The Haunted Book Shop on Joachim Street: an ABC book about Mobile’s Mardi Gras. There wasn’t one — not for the city that invented Mardi Gras in America. So Candice Marley Conner, a children’s author who works at the shop, wrote it herself, and teamed up with Fairhope illustrator Julie Allen to create “M is for Moon Pie: ABCs in the Birthplace of Mardi Gras,” the city’s first Mardi Gras alphabet book, arriving just in time for Carnival season.
The subtitle carries a point of pride every Mobilian makes quickly: Mobile, not New Orleans, is the birthplace of Mardi Gras. Conner’s book gives young readers — and the grown-ups reading to them — a fun, local answer to a shelf otherwise stocked with books about other cities’ celebrations. “Move over New Orleans,” as one early reader put it.
A partnership that started at a conference
Conner’s third children’s picture book began as a manuscript; the illustrations belong to Julie Allen, a professional illustrator whose path to the project was anything but straight. The two met at a local Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference in Mobile. After the manuscript was done, Conner reached out: “I remember you. I love your work!” Allen loved the idea and signed on.
Before accepting, Allen asked a question that shows how much she had learned about the business: “Do you have a book designer?” Designers, she explains, are an important element in a book’s appeal and readability — a lesson she learned the hard way. Conner did, and the partnership was formed. Allen illustrated the entire book, and the pages give each letter its own visual identity in a dyslexia-inclusive font created by designer Christian Boer, a dyslexic designer whose letterforms are easier for dyslexic readers — including adults who want to read to the children in their lives — to decode.
Blank pages at the back invite kids to draw their own images, customizing the book after the last letter. Conner’s dedication is warm and personal: to the City of Mobile, and to “Josh, Marley and Gabel — my favorite people to eat Moon Pies with.” Allen’s dedication is two words: “For Doug.”
From Andalusia to millions of Happy Meals
Allen’s own story explains how a Mardi Gras ABC book ends up in good hands. She grew up in Andalusia, Alabama — “doodling” her way through school, always coloring outside the lines — and majored in art at the College of Charleston. From there she went straight to New York to study animation at the School of Visual Arts, then spent eight years working in the animation field. Marriage to Doug, an investment analyst, took her to Houston, then Chicago, where she enrolled in children’s illustration classes at the Art Institute of Chicago while Doug worked at Allstate Investment Group.
Her instructors pushed her into the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, whose national conferences opened the industry’s doors. Her first break, though, came from next door: her Chicago neighbor was the creative director for McDonald’s worldwide advertising agency, and the company wanted a children’s book inside every Happy Meal. Allen submitted her work and was chosen to illustrate one of four titles for the campaign — “Doddi the Dodo Goes to Orlando,” starring a dodo bird the company hoped might become an animated movie star.
The stakes felt enormous until an Art Institute teacher told her, “You’re ready. You’ve got this, go for it!” Allen decamped to her family’s boat-access cottage on Dog Island near Port St. Joe, Florida — her happy place — and illustrated Doddi’s story. McDonald’s printed millions of copies for Happy Meals worldwide, and Allen and her friends bought Happy Meals all over Chicago hoping to find hers inside.
Home in Fairhope
After a second stint in Houston, the Allens moved to Fairhope in 2016. When Julie’s mother died, the couple bought the family home on the river in Magnolia Springs, and Julie worked in the Fairhope Library’s Children’s Department for a couple of years — painting two murals there, a lighthouse and a panel of local sea life. Today she and her Chicago business partner Anne Benson run “The Glendale Girls,” a stationery and tea towel business named for the street they both lived on in Chicago, selling hand-illustrated stationery on Etsy and in local gift shops like the Happy Olive. “I start, and she finishes,” Allen said — her illustrations, Benson’s graphic design. Custom wedding suites are a specialty: “If you want whimsical, we’re your people.”
M is for Moon Pie is available at The Haunted Book Shop in Mobile, or through Page & Palette in Fairhope — supporting the independent bookstores that inspired it. And for readers of every age, the book does what an alphabet book rarely does: teaches the ABCs, a little dyslexia-friendly design, and the history of America’s original Carnival city, one letter and one Moon Pie at a time.