Illustration Friday - Yield

Yield a crop of pumpkins!

This is from a picture book that I illustrated called THE GOODBYE CANCER GARDEN, written by Janna Matthies. It recently won the 2011 Best English Language Children's Book at the Sharjah International Book Fair - wow! And it's also been chosen for CCBC Choices 2012: The Cooperative Children's Book Center top children's book picks for 2012. It's being translated into Arabic and Danish. I hope I get copies of those!

Cancer affects so many families these days. This is such an important, hopeful book about one family's way of responding to Mom's breast cancer recovery. What an honor to illustrate.

Illustration Friday - Popularity

Willa Bean is instantly more popular because of her rare, polka-dotted, knotted arrow.

This is another illustration from a series of chapter books called Little Wings that I'm illustrating. Super-dee-duper cute books!

Little Wings Series

What is Harper whispering to Willa Bean? Oooo... the suspense! You'll have to read the book to find out!

I just received my illustrator copies of a new series of chapter books I'm illustrating for Random House called Little Wings. They just came out and are super adorable. Check them out!


Last week I visited NYC to meet my editors and art directors at Random House, to meet a few more publishers and my agent, to visit my brother, and to go to the big SCBWI Winter Conference with over 1100 attendees. What an amazing week! Random House even invited me to draw on their illustrator wall alongside some incredible illustrators - I totally geeked out.
"Really? Really? I can draw on your wall? Are you sure? These are all massively famous illustrators!"
I drew my dancing penguins from my upcoming picture book, PENGUIN CHA-CHA. Here I am with my editor for PENGUIN CHA-CHA and my dancing penguins on the wall next to Babymouse and Duck & Goose:

Merry Christmas!

Wow, Christmas is in 4 days! Last year was my first daughter's first Christmas. This year is my second daughter's first Christmas. It's so eye-opening to see Christmas through a child's eyes. One of the traditions we started last year was to make a birthday cake for Jesus for Christmas day and sing Happy Birthday to him. I'm looking forward to that again!

Illustration Friday - sink

From a picture book I illustrated called Cora Cooks Pancit.

PiBoIdMo

Have you heard of PiBoIdMo? It stands for Picture Book Idea Month, and it's a challenge you can sign up for to pledge to create 30 new picture book ideas in 30 days. It's quite tough to come up with one unique picture book idea that could make it in this market, much less 30 of them! But hey, let's give it a try. Want to join in?

Sweet blessing

Been a bit busy lately:

Meet Jovie!

App Giveaway of Cora Cooks Pancit

One of the picture books I illustrated has been turned into an app for iPhone/iPad and Android. The publisher is hosting a giveaway with 15 winners. Fun!

From a manuscript I'm writing

Little Wings Series, Conferences, Baby

So sorry for neglecting my blog for months! Anyone still out there?

It's been a busy time around here. I'm illustrating a series for Random House called Little Wings by Cecilia Galante and these books are oh so adorably cute. They're now listed on Random House's website.


Back in April/May, I hosted my first conference as Regional Advisor of Indiana SCBWI. I added a whole lot of stuff to the conference that we hadn't had before, the biggest being tacking on a day of intensives. The writing intensive sold out in 24 hours and the illustrating intensive sold out in 48 hours, and the entire conference and all individual critiques ending up selling out too - yay! It was wonderful to see so many writers and illustrators working on their craft and crawling out of their writing spaces and studios to get to know each other and be inspired. These conferences always give me such a boost. Here I am with one of our conference speakers, Lisa Yoskowitz from Disney/Hyperion, and one of my critique group members, Christi Atherton:


Soon I'm taking off for the big Summer SCBWI Conference in Los Angeles. I'm organizing my portfolio for the Portfolio Showcase and just about every piece is from this year. Even some super brand new ones from this week. I'm praying all goes well with traveling because I'll be 33 weeks pregnant! Lovin' the 3D ultrasounds of our little sweetheart:

Any name ideas for her? Her big sister's name is Ciana.