A Beach Day with Peggy: Understanding Lupus is finally out in the world. It took a lot longer than we expected.
When you design for someone you love, the stakes are different. There’s no creative brief to hide behind. No polite client relationship to soften the feedback. Just the work — and everything it means to the person you’re doing it for.
My partner Candy was diagnosed with lupus at five. She spent much of kindergarten and first grade in the hospital, and grew up explaining her condition to classmates the simplest way she knew how: “I’m allergic to the sun.”
When she was eight, she started writing a story — one she’d carry for years before the characters even had names. It eventually became A Beach Day with Peggy: Understanding Lupus. There’s a character named Anthony in it, too. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions there.
I won’t retell the whole story here — there’s a full case study if you want it. What I’ll say instead is what doesn’t fit in a case study: I’ve been in the room for a good stretch of a story that started long before I ever heard it.
Watching someone finally hold her own book, after carrying that idea with her for most of her life, isn’t something a portfolio piece can really capture. It’s just true. And I got to be close to it.
The imprint behind it — Henry Hudson Publishing Co. — is named after our son and his favorite stuffed animal. Which felt right, for a book about a kid who doesn’t let anything slow her down.
If you know a kid living with something like this, or a kid who wants to understand what their friend is going through, this one’s for them.
peggythepanda.com— Summer 2026
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