For Island-based author Kate Feiffer, writing has always taken precedence over her artwork. Despite being a lifelong compulsive doodler, as she calls herself, her drawings have never been featured in the many children’s books she’s authored.

But now, Ms. Feiffer is finally trying on the illustrator role in a new book titled The Lamb Cycle, written by David R. Ewbank.

In the book, Mr. Ewbank brings new life to the classic Mother Goose rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb, writing how he thinks 32 acclaimed English poets might have each told the story if given the chance. He imitates figures like William Shakespeare, Rudyard Kipling and T.S. Eliot.

Several of the poems are accompanied by Ms. Feiffer’s illustrations of the narratives.

Ms. Feiffer will be signing copies of the book at Edgartown Books on Sunday, April 16 from 2 to 4 p.m.

“I read through [the poems] and thought that they were funny and brilliant and that the idea was magnificent,” she said. “I had a vision pretty immediately of what the illustrations could look like.”

Ms. Feiffer has yet to meet Mr. Ewbank, but her doodles, which she started slowly publicizing five to eight years ago, caught the eye of Mr. Ewbank’s editor last year. Ms. Feiffer was given four months to create the illustrations.

“The challenge with this book is that it’s based on a children’s nursery rhyme but it’s adult poetry,” Ms. Feiffer said. “I needed to make them sophisticated enough for adults.”

Fascinated by lines, Ms. Feiffer focuses her artwork on exploring how both simple and complex line-based figures can be.

She also played with subtlety, hiding the word “ewe” in each of the lambs she drew as an homage to caricaturist Al Hirschfeld who hid the name of his daughter in his pieces.

She challenges readers to look closely and find them.