When Spokane, Washington, hosted the World’s Fair in 1974, a local nun with a passion for welding decided to celebrate the event’s environmental theme by creating a goat sculpture — complete with a nifty internal vacuum — that “eats” visitors’ trash.
Situated in a grotto in Waterfront Park, the Garbage Goat has charmed flocks of Spokanites ever since, including a once-visiting college student, Melissa Murakami. “I definitely fed him trash! I really loved connecting with him and feeling like he was his own whimsical character,” Murakami says with a laugh, recalling the days she spent exploring Spokane as an undergraduate student there. After moving back to her native Western Washington and graduating from DigiPen’s MFA in Digital Arts program in 2023, Murakami unexpectedly found herself connecting with the Garbage Goat as a character once again — this time, as a professional children’s book illustrator.
Set in Spokane and starring Garbage Goat and his baby goat friend, Kid and the Nothing-to-Do Year, published by Here & There in November 2024, marks both Murakami’s first published book as an illustrator, as well as the culmination of a long personal journey of discovery.
“I’ve always enjoyed drawing little doodles and cute animals,” Murakami says of her childhood, when she first began to dream of a future career in animated film. For her undergraduate studies, Murakami went to a Spokane liberal arts college where she designed her own custom degree in storytelling and visual design. As an aspiring animator, however, she quickly came up against the limitations of her school’s course offerings. “They only offered traditional art classes like drawing and painting, so I decided to study abroad in the U.K. for a while to take animation classes over there,” Murakami says.
As fate would have it, one of her overseas animation classes got cancelled, so she was placed in a children’s book illustration class instead. “There was a published illustrator there who took me under her wing completely and showed me it could be an actual career path,” Murakami says. “From there it was a personal battle honestly! My childhood dreams of working in animation came up against my skillset and natural creative talents, which seemed to lend itself much more to children’s illustration.”
After finishing her undergraduate degree, Murakami felt there were gaps in her skillset she needed to fill in order to get where she wanted to be professionally. “Nobody at my undergrad really understood the animation, entertainment, or illustration world, so DigiPen happened to be the perfect program for me to fill in the gaps,” Murakami says. “My intention was to come and learn from people who knew the industry, not really knowing where I fit in or exactly what I wanted to do yet.”
While her initial attempts at 3D modeling for animation felt unnatural, things started to “click” for Murakami when she took associate professor Pamela Mathues’ storyboarding course. “She has such a brilliant mind for story!” Murakami says. “I so connected with the quick, gestural drawing, the storytelling, and the angle and framing analysis for telling the best story.” Soon after, a children’s book illustration course taught by DigiPen art professor turned New York Times bestselling children’s author Suzanne Kaufman helped Murakami see the path before her more clearly. “I was still kind of fighting this idea that I could do children’s books as a career. In my mind I still thought I wanted to do film,” Murakami says. “But her class was really foundational. I learned a lot about what the market is like and what they’re looking for in children’s book illustrators.”
As Murakami would find out shortly, the market was looking for her. While studying at DigiPen, Murakami was contacted by a connection from her Spokane days who requested her services illustrating a board game, a project that helped fund her ongoing education. Soon after graduating, Murakami was then contacted by Megan Young, a children’s book writer in Spokane who discovered her illustrations through that same project. “Megan had a vision and really believed in it — using art and storytelling to make kids passionate about where they live. She wanted to start with this story about Spokane, Garbage Goat, and Kid,” Murakami says. “I was able to come in and use so much of what I learned in Mathues’ storyboarding class to guide how to tell this story well, and how to take Megan’s vision and passion for the city and turn it into a story that anyone can understand.”
Kid and the Nothing-to-Do Year follows the titular baby goat Kid, who lives in the same Waterfront Park grotto as his good friend Garbage Goat. Like most children, Kid is perpetually bored, always complaining that there’s nothing fun to do. At Garbage Goat’s insistence, readers follow Kid as he explores Spokane through each of the four seasons, discovering all sorts of fun activities and destinations. As Kid comes to learn, both Garbage Goat and his hometown will always be there for him no matter what. “It’s very much a love letter to Spokane,” Murakami says. “Megan is so passionate about the city and its history. I learned so much from her about Spokane through this project.”
After Young shared the initial manuscript, Murakami began drawing rough thumbnails for each page, a process that sparked an ever-evolving exchange of new ideas and concepts. “It’s actually not common in the professional children’s illustration world to work directly with the author, but I think getting to have so much contact with Megan is why this was so successful,” Murakami says. Pamela Mathues’ storyboarding lessons came into play quickly during the process, shaping not only the book’s visual approach, but its final layout as well. “We treated page flips like cuts in a scene,” Murakami says. “The very first page of the book mirrors the very last page, which is a method professor Mathues taught us to really punch themes up. Children’s book illustration and animation don’t lie in these different worlds like some people might think — they actually intersect a lot!”
One of the biggest challenges of the project was simply capturing the essence of Spokane while living on the other side of the state. “It was this interesting mix of my college memory of it versus what Spokane is now, doing all this detective work on Google Maps’ street view because it has developed and changed so much since I left!” Murakami says. Still, Murakami’s memories of standing in line for autumnal pumpkin donuts at farms in Green Bluff, playing in the snow that fell on the city every year, and of course, feeding Garbage Goat trash at Waterfront Park, all played a crucial role in conveying the spirit of Spokane to readers. “Even though I worked from a jumble of my own memories of Spokane mixed with current-day pictures, I honestly think that makes it more special, since Spokane parents of these kids reading the book probably see the city in the same mixed way,” Murakami says.
One thing that wasn’t so challenging was designing Kid, the curious baby goat at the center of the book. “Baby goats are naturally appealing to everybody!” Murakami laughs. “It’s really hard to mess up a baby goat because they’re so charming as they are.” Just as Kid’s design came naturally, so too did the visual style of the book, one that Murakami incidentally developed as part of her MFA thesis project at DigiPen — a mix of storyboards, character designs, and concept art for an original story about an American red wolf, Kaleo. “I love the look and free-flowing whimsy of watercolor. The style of this book, which is all digitally done using watercolor techniques, ended up being the same style I developed and learned for my thesis project,” Murakami says. “I really love the style I developed at DigiPen and it just naturally flowed into this book.”
When Kid and the Nothing-to-Do Year hit the shelves of famed Spokane bookseller Auntie’s Bookstore around Thanksgiving, success naturally flowed there as well. “By the end of December, in less than two months, it became the store’s second bestselling book in their kid’s category for 2024, which is wild to think about! It’s been pretty surreal to be honest,” Murakami says. “There’s been such positive feedback, even from folks who aren’t from Spokane.”
Now that the book has released, Murakami is excited not only to continue working with Here & There on future place-based kid’s books, but also to write books of her own. “I’m in the process of pursuing agents and publishers right now,” Murakami says. “I really feel my current path is to do more children’s books and illustrations, get more industry experience, and even write some books myself.” Inspired largely in part by Pamela Mathues, she also hopes to teach college-level art courses herself one day. “She’s the most amazing teacher ever and was such an influence,” she says.
Recently, Murakami paid homage to another one of her major influences as well. “I finally visited Spokane again after the illustrations were done,” she says. “It felt like I was going to visit an old friend or a celebrity when I went to visit Garbage Goat!”