Who did the cool illustrations?

John R. Fritsch did the illustrations plus a whole bunch of preliminary sketches for the chapter thumbnails. At the time we started working together, the book was still a website project, and he was a student at Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I'd give him a chapter that I had recently finished, he'd read it, and then he would show me a series of five or six sketches taken from different scenes. I got to choose my favorite one, and then John would finalize it before it got posted to the website. One of the coolest things that John illustrated for that forum couldn't be used with the book: that of a little boy carrying a lighted candle, walking down a stone staircase. In the website illustration, the candle flickered. One of my favorite thumbnails of the book is the one for chapter fourteen--a snake having its venom captured.