When someone showed me that I could make children’s books, it changed me. It changed my whole life and the trajectory of where I was going and why.
I learned that what I have to share with children is valuable, necessary even.
Through art and story I can teach kids like me that they matter, their voices, experiences and expressions are important.
“I see you and your immense creative power. You belong…”
I can say through my books…
Holding a book that I’ve created in my own hands is amazing, but seeing how my books affect our children up and out in the world is truly transformative. This is the heart of it! This is the way of the book!
And this is exactly the kind of experience I want to pass on. I want to share what I’ve learned from creating many award-winning multicultural children’s books, but more than that, I realized that I want you to experience what it’s like to hold a book that shows your work in your own hands and be able to share it with children. I want you to see. I want you to feel. I want you to know how deeply transformative this can be.
So in my e-course, The Heart of It: Creating Children’s Books that Matter, (a class I’ve been dreaming about forever!), not only am I going to share everything I know about making children’s books from deepdeep, I’ll also guide you through the process of creating one full spread of your own and then have it published. A wonderful opportunity to gain experience and valuable practice for your own book and projects and put your newly learned skills toward “real world” application.
THE HEART OF IT Collection will be a small, full color, paperback children’s book featuring one full spread of art and story by each student and original art for the cover by me.
The small, independent press I co-founded will produce this groundbreaking little book! A collection of single spreads by different artists/authors united by the themes and experience of THE HEART OF IT course!
This will be the perfect vehicle to actively begin getting stories like ours up and out in the world and into the hands of children RIGHT NOW.
I want to start the ball rolling. I want to see things changing. I want to hold something in my hands. I want it now. We can be the change that we want to see in children’s book publishing. We have the power. What the world needs now is a return of storytellers and artists, peacemakers and tree talkers, people of color and elders, lgbtqi people and visionaries. We need everyone’s voice, we need everyone’s art. But most importantly our children need it.
Do you have a children’s book inside of you? Come learn the way of the book!
If you want to learn more about the course, check out the video below or find out more info on our course page.
Let’s create a children’s book revolution straight from the heart!!!