My Story, Your Story, Their Story, Who Gets to Tell It?

First Voice/Own Voice and Indigenous, POC, LGBTQI Children’s Books

My Story I have been involved in the children’s book industry for over 20 years. I joke that they accidentally let me in. Indeed, something must have been going on…stars momentarily aligned, portals briefly opened… because not only did I get “in,” but my first book, Prietita and the Ghost …

The Pop-Ups Series-Honoring our gay grandfathers and those who paved the way

A new bilingual children’s book series that celebrates LGBTQ history through the lens of multicultural and multigenerational queer family The Pop-Ups’ Picnic, the first book in the series, will be published by Reflection Press in 2017 The Pop-Ups are what we call GrandPop and PopPop, Sky’s grandfathers. Like all grandparents, …

We Are Stronger Together

Aligning with Other Indie Presses

I am fiercely independent and I’m drawn to those who are too. But no one can or should live without others. We are stronger together. And in these days we need our strength. We need each other, even in our independence. As I walk toward independently publishing my own children’s …

“I’m not an artist. I can’t illustrate my children’s book.”

4 books & a potato to coax your inner artist to come out and play!

As I get ready to start my Make Books Now! Action Program, I’ve been exploring fun and fast ways to create good-looking art that kids will love. I imagine there are folks out there doubting their ability to make art so I always like to provide playful ways for everyone …

Self-publishing is a radical, powerful act.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” – Alice Walker I’ve met a lot of powerful children’s book makers over these past few years teaching The Heart of It: Creating Children’s Books that Matter. I decided from the beginning that whenever …

Falling, Fire and Fierce Creativity

The Release of Whaleheart and News of the Next Season at our School plus NEW BOOKS from the Community!

The Falling. It’s that delicious time of year when there’s a detectable shift in the seasons. I can feel the changing, the Falling, as everything around me shimmers through yet another of our eternal cycles. I’ve been craving this shift, longing for it. Today after a hot spell, the skies …

the story of Whaleheart

(....or how a wild idea became reality!)

I’ll never forget it. In February of last year I had this wild idea that I thought just might work…. It was at that critical mass moment right before the diversity conversation exploded in the children’s book world with assistance from the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign later that summer. Many of us …

Peace & Children’s Books

[Interviews with Students] the effects of Believing is Seeing 11 months later

[28 days ’till Daily Peace] Several students that I’ve worked with regularly over this last year are aspiring children’s book makers and yet our first time working with each other came through the  Believing is Seeing e-course. Because of how I approach children’s books, working with peace and how we …

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