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Before Still Life was launched, the opportunity arose for it to have its own window display in New York City’s best and only children’s bookstore, Books of Wonder, in September around the publication date. Only a two-week spot was available, but Paul jumped at the chance. He hoped for something memorable. September was five or six months away, plenty of time to make plans and implement them. There was no budget for this,* so he would have to do what he could do at minimal cost. Since the focus of the book is an artist’s realistic painting, he thought of turning Books of Wonder’s whole big display window into this painting: a three-dimensional still life with a gold frame, in which the not-so-realistic intruding characters might actually move around somehow. Inconveniently, Books of Wonder’s window is much wider in proportion than Still Life the book. But maybe the artist himself, seen up close as on the book jacket, could occupy the extra space on one side ...? It was fun to try out ideas in the computer, where the question “is this even possible?” was no consideration: Paul adapted the digital files he’d drawn for the actual book, printed on stiff paper to make a small model, and assembled the result. Pretty nice! 
He didn’t at all know how to proceed to a full-scale 3-D still life like this—paint onto cardboard? Somehow come up with huge printouts of the digital files that made the actual book? Also, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that no matter how this diorama was made, if it were big enough to fill Books of Wonder’s window, transporting it there would pose a problem. Even if he had a truck, the diorama might not get through the store’s door and into the window. And just to build it in his studio would be questionable: not enough room there, either. So this diorama needed to be smaller in scale. Like a box hanging in the middle of the window, maybe four or five feet high and six feet wide. Paul thought and measured, and measured and thought, and time went on. What he didn’t do was build anything; he just pondered and sketched. There were now about three months left. Painting on cardboard seemed risky; printing would be more likely to look like the book. There are services that can print onto big pieces of foam core (which seemed better than cardboard, or the diorama might get awfully heavy). But the expense for that looked daunting. Paul’s reaction was to put off dealing with the whole thing. Time grew shorter. Maybe a month and a half was left. He went to the bookstore and measured, then planned and measured and remeasured and planned.
Soon it was too late to arrange for any service to do the massive amount of printing; there were only two weeks to go. He would have to use his own printer somehow. But for the artist hovering in front of the still life, Paul went online for help. He adapted the artist image from the book’s digital files and uploaded it to a website he found. Only four days later, a big printout on clear vinyl, rolled up tight, arrived from Utah. It would have to be unrolled, cut to shape, and applied to the inside of the store window, where it would stick like a decal, but only after the big diorama was in, and that diorama had yet to begin. So Paul’s own printer would have to do, with some method of mounting onto the foam core he would buy. Paul’s printer makes beautiful prints up to 13” wide, and can print on rolls of paper so there would be no limit to the length of pieces it turned out, but many parts of the diorama would be well beyond 13” wide. Could he print all this and glue down to foam core? Rather than act decisively, Paul took a big chunk of a day off and convinced his friend Brian Floca also to stop working and join him for lunch. They met at the restaurant closest to the midpoint between their studios. At this lunch, Brian spontaneously offered to help Paul transport the diorama, when it was ready, from his studio to the bookstore. There really was no pressure applied! Finally Paul started moving, and moving fast. Over several ambitious trips to art supply stores, he managed to haul back huge sheets of thick foam core, even more medium-sized sheets in various thicknesses, a 100-foot roll of printing paper, all kinds of glue and tape and knives and blades, and a stack of 24” x 36” sheets of double-stick tape, covered on both sides with non-stick paper, which was so non-stick that the sheets slipped through the packaging and kept falling onto the sidewalk as soon as he left the store. With materials finally in hand and harrowingly little time left, Paul had no choice but to begin the actual work. Starting with the longer, thinner pieces, he set his printer churning out the many, many parts he would need to mount and assemble.
Gluing these printed strips onto the foam core without wrinkles or bubbles was a challenge, but Paul figured out how to work with the floppy, gluey double-stick sheets . Each strip had to align perfectly with the previous ones, so that wide expanses of background and tablecloth could appear continuous and uninterrupted. By this time, Paul was working nearly around the clock, printing, printing, printing; gluing, taping, praying. There were eleven days left. What didn’t help was that a great opportunity to share the book publicly, a presentation at the wonderful Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, had been scheduled for the same weekend that the window had to go up! The store was agreeable to Paul's coming in to install on the Monday rather than Sunday, though it meant one less day for the world to see it, and almost three fewer days to get the work done. So he had to work even harder.
Once the printed images were fixed to the board, they had to be carved: cut out into the individual pieces, with edges beveled at an angle so you wouldn’t see the thick, white foam core edges. Paul used a mat knife, replacing the blade frequently. And then he painted all of the edges black in case you did see them. Paul took these prepared pieces and built the still life: the backboard with its window and drapes, the table and chair, the fruit platter, the dollhouse and everything else, and finally the outer box and then the front frame. He glued it all in place with a caulking gun fitted with a fast-drying glue that claimed to be safe for foam. Most glues apparently will melt foamcore rather than make it stick. This glue was white, and had to be painted black, too. On the Saturday before the Monday deadline, Paul drove to Amherst, Massachusetts, where the next day he and Still Life’s author Alex London had a wonderful time presenting their book. Unfortunately, the diorama was not quite done! 
Sunday night Paul returned to New York, hoping to finish it off and get it ready for transporting the next morning. As Monday morning proceeded, it was clear that the diorama wouldn’t be heading out on schedule. But toward noon, it was just about ready.
A truck would have been ideal, but Paul didn’t have access to a truck. He did have a friend willing to lend him his car with a hatchback, but this diorama was too big to fit in it. All Paul could figure out was that if he sliced the diorama in half down the middle, he could fit it in the car and figure out how to tape it back together on site.
He had actually constructed the whole diorama with this slicing in mind; it would have bisected perfectly (he thinks!) and maybe been rejoined invisibly, but on the morning of delivery, he hadn’t yet dared to start cutting. When Brian Floca arrived to help. he took one look and said: no way should this thing be cut in half. We’ll take it on the subway!
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*--- At the beginning of this process, the book's publisher, who had not been involved in any of this window project, offered a small token contribution (when asked) to reimburse Paul's costs. But when the window was finished and Paul was submitting an invoice, he decided to itemize (almost) all of his costs, and they very kindly reimbursed that entire amount. Paul is grateful to HarperCollins and Greenwillow Books for this generosity.