While kids and cats ran around my house making lots of joyful noises yesterday, I drew and cut a prayer. Just after midnight I finished it, welcoming in Christmas Eve in the dark of night. Sending a wish out into the world for more joy in the darkness of winter, wherever it’s needed out there. Merry Christmas!
Advanced Reader's Copies!
Eeeak! Look what I found in a package on my porch! Advanced reader’s copies! Happy surprise and happy me!
Also, I might have cried when I showed them to my family. 💛🐘💛😭😍
Dahlias in my garden
Made a dahlia collage a few days ago.
The Dahlias in my garden make me so happy!
Enjoy!
Cover Reveal of my first book! Pre-orders too! Happy day!
LOOK! It’s going to be a real book!
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!
Thanks to everyone who already has ordered a copy! Hope you enjoy it!
Beach or bust!
Been working at some new art samples in between summer adventures. Here’s my latest. Enjoy!
Ride On
Four years ago from last Saturday I made a stupid mistake riding my bike, went over the handlebars going fast downhill, and crashed face-first into the gritty pavement. Over the following months I struggled with the after effects: a concussion, a mangled chin, a mangled hand, severe flashbacks, and severe headaches, to name a few. It’s not easy to get up after a crash. But people do.
🚲
Fast forward to last Saturday and most of last week, where I spent the four-year anniversary of my crash at one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever been to, teaching my son how to ride his own bike, surrounded by joyful families soaking up the view, writing a piece I’ve been scared to write (but need to write) about riding bikes, and mostly, celebrating being alive by living life to its fullest, taking in all the beautiful things.
If you’ve ever had a crash, small or large, I hope you can get back up and ride again too. And if you are in the middle of doing just that, I send you all the encouragement and love I can send.
🚲
Ride on.
❤️
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.
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.
Hope you’ve been up to happy mischief too!
STORYSTORM 2019! Brainstorm, Play, and Ideas
Brainstorm, brainstorm, brainstorm! Play, play, play! Ideas, ideas, ideas!
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.
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.
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.
*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.