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My Wishosaurus product is featured in the September issue of Family Fun magazine.

I happened to be reading the magazine (a fave of mine), and whoa! There it was!

Thanks, Family Fun. You’ve got awesome taste!

My poor, ignored blog.
Been busy lately with a million things, and there’s a million more coming!
In the meantime, some of my art has been popping up here and there:

Here’s April 2008’s issue of Highlights High Five, with my Creepy Crawly Dominoes feature (oooh, it’s a fold-out!).

Here’s a little piece in May 2008’s Highlights magazine (the one for bigger kids). It’s a feature they run every month called My Best Self. Hey, look- Roz is on the same page!

The Read, Rhyme and Clap DVD is available from the Children’s Book-of-the-Month Club’s Spring 2008 issue. I did the Muffin Man sequence on it.

Here’s the new, improved children’s menu for the Newport Creamery chain of restaurants. I got to do the whole thing (fun!!) and will continue every so often as they need ‘em. I applaud the company for pursuing a more individual approach with these- instead of using the menu equivalent of “clip art” (which they could have easily done), they commissioned me to make something with local appeal and original characters. Yay!

And hey, what’s THIS?
You’re right, I did NOT do this. Eric did!
His design is featured in June 2008’s MacLife Magazine, where his iPOD watch idea came in as a runner-up in their Design-the-Next-Big-Apple-Thing competition.
They had some very nice things to say about it- check it out!

That’s it for now! Back to work!

It took a while, but my website has now been updated with new stuff- new illustration, new toys, new products, and all kinds of fun facts if you care to read ‘em.Feedback greatly appreciated! If anything is wonky, please let me know!Go ahead, go to my website now!

One of my recently designed products has been added to the new 2008 collection at RISDWorks! There’s a press release here.

This lovely piece o’work is called Foot in the Door, because, well-
it’s a doorstop. And it’s shaped like a shoe.
It’s FOOT IN THE DOOR!
Visit the FRED site for more stuff like this, or for a fun retail experiece, shop RISDWorks in person or online. They carry a bunch of my products: MonKeys, Chopstick Kids, Pony Tales, etc.

Me and some of my stuff at RISDWorks a few weeks ago.

For the record, I have never owned a high-heeled shoe in my life.
No, wait. I take it back.
I have a doorstop shoe now.
That counts, right?
At least I don’t have to walk on it!

The last couple of months have been been good to me- here are a few things that have come out recently:

I received an Honorable Mention in this year’s SCBWI Don Freeman Memorial Grant-In-Aid competition:

One of my products was featured in the August 2007 issue of SPIN magazine!
Here you can see a bit of Cool Jazz- it’s an ice cube tray that makes guitar-shaped swizzle sticks for your rockin’ drinks.
I created this product for my guitar-playing dad and brother; it’s nice to see other people “getting it” too!

The September issue of Highlights High Five: find me on pages 23, 26, and 34 this month!

One more interesting thing on the shelves recently: here’s an updated version of the Fisher Price Ready Reader book I did about 5 years ago (I did one story in the collection). It’s been in print ever since- but this newly updated cover has a little rendition of my Lily and Daisy characters on it!

That was surprising- it’s funny to see my old little characters drawn by someone else. They did a good job!
That’s it for now!

This is a mocked-up page from my upcoming pop-up book, What Kind of Rabbit Are You?.
Interestingly, this is not the name the book has had during it’s birth and lengthy development process- I have been calling it Rabbit Rainbow for years!

As a title, What Kind of Rabbit Are You? probably speaks more to the point of the book. It’s a baby’s first look at diversity and differences, as shown through bunnies! It is a line from the book’s text, too, so it makes sense.

Quite a few things have changed with this book as I have developed it with Little Simon, and I have to say they are good changes. The text has been edited down and tightened, and it is now a pop-up book (with Eric and I doing the actual paper engineering). The engineering made doing the art very different from flying straight though on a standard book- and the end result is WAAAAY more fun than my original dummy. I have LOVED working on this aspect of it!

Good news! This book will be available sooner than I thought…January 2008!

A funny thing happened to me at the Target today. As I walked down the aisle, A DVD caught my eye. “Hooked on Baby.” It sounded familiar. Then I realized that it was the very DVD that has my Muffin Man sequence on it! That was a strange sensation- I guess I thought it would take longer for these to hit the stores, so I wasn’t expecting to see it. These film fellows work much faster than publishers!

Anyhow, I had done drawings for this DVD over the summer. It’s brought to you by the awesome people who created Reading Rainbow, together with the Hooked on Phonics/Educate Products folks. What a great job they did of “animating” it! They took my still drawings and added little film twists and turns- the muffins bounce around, the Man rotates- very cute and interactive. They also have live action sequences with real babies, and some of them have been superimposed on my backgrounds.

The most interesting part of this is that on TV the art looks big- really BIG- and happily, it holds up nicely. You can really appreciate the texture of the fabrics when they are blown up.

Got babies? I think they’ll like this! There are 3 DVDs in the series, this one is called Read, Rhyme & Clap. It’s got that Reading Rainbow feel, but for the younger set.