Art for Bellingham!

Inviting all Bellingham kids (and the grown-ups who love them) to make art and messages for our senior community members who are self-isolating during this time! The goal is to create a virtual public art space to help our community stay better connected while we all social distance during the covid-19 pandemic.

I threw this project together because it breaks my heart to think of our beloved Bellingham community as fractured right now. I thought it would be lovely to empower kids to help their community while helping us all connect with some of those most isolated and at risk.

The video below I made as a mini art lesson to rally participation, feel free to share it with your kids!

Please send PHOTOS of any art or messages to me (use the contact form on my website). I’ll add them to a shared dropbox folder, where participating adult care facilities can access them and print them out for their residents (or share the link for those who are tech-savvy, no actual paper mail involved for safety reasons!).

I hope you’ll consider joining or inviting your kids to participate (messages from grown-ups are welcome too).

And please invite others! Thanks!

PS I originally posted this on social media but I am adding it here as an easy place to link for those who want to share. Thanks to everyone who has already participated! I’ll be sending our first round of messages by the end of this week so please get messages in by Thrusday April 2.

Booklist review!

I got an email from my publisher today that said that Booklist has given THE ELEPHANTS’ GUIDE TO HIDE-AND-SEEK a great review! What a happy piece of news. The full review will be in the April 15th issue but my publisher said I could share this quote right now.

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The world turns upside down right as I'm about to send my book out into it

A few weeks ago I was busy planning my first school visits as an author, coming up with creative silly things I could put on the internet to celebrate, and thinking of fun activities for my book launch party (still planned for May 9 at Village Books in Bellingham, but who knows what the world will look like by then…).

How many elephants do you see in the photo? Can you find the “king of hide & seek?” How many elephants are wearing glasses? How many elephants have rainbow ears? How many silly questions about this picture can a person ask?

How many elephants do you see in the photo? Can you find the “king of hide & seek?” How many elephants are wearing glasses? How many elephants have rainbow ears? How many silly questions about this picture can a person ask?

But now the world has turned upside down. Pandemic is a big word. Somehow in the chaos of the last few weeks, I forgot to post things here I put elsewhere that would have been fun to post. My excuse: my mind is often in a fog, juggling a lot of emotional labor for my family, worries for my community, anxiety for all the small businesses and people at risk for covid-19, and then to top it off trying to reinvent the wheel with how to celebrate my own little dream come true. Even while I mourn not celebrating how I’d imagined.

I originally planned on wearing these yellow chucks that match THE ELEPHANTS’ GUIDE TO HIDE-AND-SEEK to a school visit on March 20. It was a bummer to be stuck at home instead but it occurred to me that it would be fun to wear them anyway on that da…

I originally planned on wearing these yellow chucks that match THE ELEPHANTS’ GUIDE TO HIDE-AND-SEEK to a school visit on March 20. It was a bummer to be stuck at home instead but it occurred to me that it would be fun to wear them anyway on that day so I did. It was one little plan I could keep from before.

But here. Here are a few happy things that I managed to pause for in the midst of all of it. My ridiculous elephant collection. My colorful shoes that match my book. My cats playing hide-and-seek.

I made some art last Christmas that unknowingly set the tone for my year, “Even when the world feels sad I will make a joyful noise.”

Christmas art I made, but maybe I can try to do this now too? Not sure, but maybe I can try.

Christmas art I made, but maybe I can try to do this now too? Not sure, but maybe I can try.

And I threw a bunch of wishing rocks in the water yesterday.

Mostly I wish you well.

Mostly I wish you well.


Guess I’m hoping for a rainbow even in the rain.

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Love to everyone out there. Hope you are healthy, safe, socially distanced but not isolated, and reading a lot. I wish for you all the rainbows I can wish.

Author copies!

Just a few short months until THE ELEPHANTS’ GUIDE TO HIDE AND SEEK comes out (April 7), and I got a surprise package on my porch!

My author copies! And a lovely letter from my publisher! Such an exciting moment.

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I especially LOVE the funny peek-a-boo cover under the book jacket.

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And these colorful end pages!

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It’s a real book!

Cover Reveal of my first book! Pre-orders too! Happy day!

LOOK! It’s going to be a real book!

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Happy happy day! Excited to share the cover of my first picture book, THE ELEPHANTS' GUIDE TO HIDE-AND-SEEK! Isn't it gorgeous?! And yellow just happens to be my favorite color. Yay for Gladys's beautiful art—thank you Gladys and thank you Sourcebooks Kids, I LOVE IT!

And look at this! Even though it comes out April 1, 2020, you can already pre-order it!

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Thanks to everyone who already has ordered a copy! Hope you enjoy it!

Mischief Managed

Long time no blog! Realized I’ve been posting bloggish things lately on Instagram while forgetting that I could add similar things on my happy little blog here. I’d like to be better about giving both attention so I thought I’d add some highlights from my last few months to catch up a bit. That and I have about a million works-in-progress I’m excited about. I can’t keep up with my own ideas which is a good problem I guess. Here are some sneak peeks from one of my favorite pieces I’ve been working on.

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What I said about this project on Instagram is still true: sometimes overly well-behaved little kids grow up to write books full of all the mischief they never allowed themselves to partake in when they were busy being young painful perfectionists.

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Hope you’ve been up to happy mischief too!

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STORYSTORM 2019! Brainstorm, Play, and Ideas

Brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm! Play, play, play! Ideas, ideas, ideas!

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These three core creative values pretty much sum up the heart of my creative process. They also sum up Picture Book Author Tara Lazar’s annual Storystorm Challenge, which I’ve participated in for many years.

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The Storystorm challenge (used to be called PIBOIDMO—picture book idea month) is a challenge on Tara’s blog where participants agree to come up with a new picture book idea every day for 30 days in a month. 30 ideas! In a month! Seems crazy at first. But no. It’s great. 

Because where do I get my best ideas? Out of a pile of terrible ideas. It’s true. Basically I get my best ideas by coming up with lots and lots of ideas, putting every idea into the pile, and then later worrying about whether they are any good or not. And that same basic concept has now extended into so many aspects of my creative process that I feel it somehow captures the entire spirit of writing and art for me.

My Bureau of Fearless Ideas shirt and my Field Guide To Fearless Ideas poster, both purchased at the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company in Seattle, a storefront for the Bureau of Fearless Ideas, a non-profit writing and tutoring center for kids.

My Bureau of Fearless Ideas shirt and my Field Guide To Fearless Ideas poster, both purchased at the Greenwood Space Travel Supply Company in Seattle, a storefront for the Bureau of Fearless Ideas, a non-profit writing and tutoring center for kids.

So in the spirit of fearless ideas, here I am this past week wearing my Bureau Of Fearless Ideas shirt next to my Field Guide To Fearless Ideas poster, (purchased here, more info in the caption). And why am I wearing my BFI* shirt? Because STORYSTORM = FEARLESS IDEAS! And it’s that time of year. I’ve just finished up 2019’s challenge and I’m celebrating all the ways ideas, brainstorming, and play make my art better.

This past year I signed a contract for my first PB after working at it a looooong time. And THE ELEPHANT HIDE-AND-SEEK HANDBOOK (scheduled for release from Sourcebooks Jabberwocky in 2020) was definitely born from this process.

So cheers to fearless ideas and fearless brainstorming! And a big shout-out and thank you to Tara for all she’s done for the writing and illustrating community over many years!

THANK YOU TARA!

The bumper sticker on my car. Bought it at Wild Play zipline course on Vancouver Island, BC. Pertains to art and writing too.

The bumper sticker on my car. Bought it at Wild Play zipline course on Vancouver Island, BC. Pertains to art and writing too.

*BFI = Bureau of Fearless Ideas, a real place. It’s a tutoring center for kids. But they also have cool shirts and posters. And in Seattle they have a Space Travel Supply Company. So that’s awesome.

Grateful for the life of Mary Oliver

The first time I read a Mary Oliver Poem, I was visiting my mom at her college, while I was also in college. Even if I missed our house, the one mom had sold and left for her new career adventure in middle age, we’d moved so many times when I was young, I’d done this before, I could do it again. Home probably could be wherever there were people I loved. But. It was my last semester at school and it had been a difficult few months—I was struggling to let go of a very unhealthy relationship, perfectionism and anxiety raged. I didn’t know how to give myself permission to do the things I knew were calling my name. I didn’t know where I belonged. Still, visiting mom felt like soup on a sick day. I could breathe again. I felt a little more well. And there in the “kitchen” of my mom’s cramped student-housing apartment, I think under a magnet on the waist-high mini-fridge, was a poem. Wild Geese by Mary Oliver.

As far as I was aware it was the first time in my then 23 years that I’d read anything by Mary Oliver. When mom wasn’t looking, I copied the poem to take with me. I love my mom to pieces but it’s hard to talk about hard things. I didn’t want to talk about how that poem made me feel—the same feeling of exhale I felt by visiting mom, actually. It was permission to not be perfect or have the answers and still love life anyway, all in a poem, and in a visit to my beloved mother.

My life is better because of the words Mary Oliver shared with the world and now has left behind—not just that one poem, but so many I’ve fallen in love with since.

Thanks for your words and life Mary. I’m so grateful you were here among us sharing them for so long.