images and stories about the different courses at my online school
also visit the website www.schoolofthefreemind.com
What I shared in Part One and Part Two of this series contributes to why I felt driven to stronger action with School of the Free Mind, my online school. The children’s book industry feels like a state of emergency for our communities and a powerful place to invest our …
When we look at CCBC’s statistics in the framework of how many books we need to make to stand in equity with white Americans, we begin to understand our real position. I estimate that the children’s book industry would have to increase its production level by 45% to accommodate an …
I just released Children’s Books as a Radical Act on Indiegogo to support my first 6 independently published children’s books. What makes these books radical? Why is it noteworthy that they’re independently published? Why children’s books of all things? Radical? Any time we center ourselves as POC, indigenous or queer …
these words have been rolling around in my brain, like a big wheel turning in the night sky. everything changes. turn. everything changes. turn. my last blog post was about negotiating fear after Orlando. turn. a deep turn of the wheel that rattled my heart. counted my bones. an old …
We are born to it. It doesn’t begin as a movement, as a march to equal rights. For most of us it begins as children, but it can begin later in life too. It is a knowing within one’s self. Sometimes that knowing takes time to develop in a world …
Ever since Matthew and I learned to publish books for ourselves, we have been sharing how to do it with others! True power rises and I could feel the power as soon as we began, and the desire to share it. What I know is that our work is never …
What if the children’s book industry changed tomorrow? And the number of books that actually reflect our communities was equitable with those of straight Euro Americans? What if I began getting calls that offered real advances and publicity for books with larger publishing houses? What if for some reason, after …
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 …
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 …
Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of spirit in my life. In Just Like Me: An Anthology by 14 Artists, I wrote about a vision I had in the middle of the night when I was 5 years old. I saw a light so bright that it woke …
