Oregon Reads Aloud is a collection of 25 stories written and illustrated by Oregon authors and illustrators to celebrate 25 years of the SMART organization's work. SMART pairs volunteers with children in need of reading support and books to take home and keep. SMART volunteers read one-on-one with students weekly during the school year, modeling a love of reading and building children’s reading skills and self-confidence in a positive, child-driven environment.

I was so fortunate to illustrate a story for it written by Eric A. Kimmel (the award winning author of Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins and loads more excellent books.) Oregon Reads Aloud also includes work by many of my wonderful author and illustrator friends.

Contributors are:
Dale Basye, Estela Bernal, Carmen Bernier-Grand, Kate Berube, Susan Blackaby, Susan Boase, Addie Boswell, Cathy Camper, Curtis Chen, Nancy Coffelt, Carolyn Conahan, Judy Cox, Mark Fearing, Carolyn Garcia, Elizabeth Goss, Kim Griswell, Barbara Herkert, Robin Herrera, Debbie Hocking, David Hohn, Barb Kerley, Robin Kerr, Amber Keyser, Eric Kimmel, Bart King, Jane Kirkpatrick, Gesine Kratzner, Mike Lawrence, Trudy Ludwig, DamienMacalino, Helena Macalino, Abigail Marble, Natalie Metzger, Lisa Mundorff, Wendy Myers, Gina Ochsner, Brian Parker, Valarie Pearce, Dawn Prochovnic, Doug Roy, Elizabeth Rusch, Linda Dalal Sawaya, Heidi Schulz, Stephanie Shaw, Cathy Stever, Sonja Thomas, Katy Towell, Zoey Abbot Wagner, and Johanna Wright.

It's a fantastic collection!

Purchase it in Portland at Powell's Books, Annie Bloom's Books, Broadway Books, and some Fred Meyers.

Purchase it online at any of these places:
IndieBound
Powell's Books
Amazon
Barnes and Noble

Mr John Schumacher's fantastic blog hosted a cover reveal of my next book, MY LITTLE HALF-MOON by Douglas Todd Jennerich.  Ta da!

I'll be available to critique picture books and illustrations at SCBWI Oregon's - The Great Critique in January. This is a great chance to get helpful feedback on your works in progress! There are a number of other excellent authors available to choose from too!

Indies First is an initiative to support independent bookstores - read all about it here: http://bookweb.org/indies-first-2016

I'll be at Green Bean Books on Alberta St. in NE Portland, OR Saturday 11/26 from 1-2p. Come by and visit!!!

I'm struggling to write a new book. Often it feels like nothing is happening and I'll never figure out how to make the story come together. But today I came across two things which gave me a little bit of a boost in that they reminded me to be patient. I thought I'd share them here to help me not forget.

"...if you can think of the difficult moments in your life, if you can feel them as that part of the creative process and know that though very painful [...] that it is working, that it is creating, it just isn't the finished product..."
-Corita Kent speaking about how creativity has seasons.  Listen to the full recording here: http://mocacleveland.org/media/artcasts/corita-kent-relates-phases-creativity-seasons

(I came across this on Austin Kleon's lovely blog. Also, I'm thrilled that there's a Corita Kent exhibit opening art the Portland Art Musuem tomorrow! Portland friends - let me know if you want to go see it with me.)


The second thing I came across was this amazing little guy solving a Rubiks cube - so much thinking before action!

Please come by Migration Brewing on Wednesday, July 20th and join me in supporting First Book Portland. I'll have copies of both Hannah and Sugar and The Summer Nick Taught His Cats to Read to sell and I'll donate 10% of my proceeds to First Book. I'll have a little story time and we'll do some fun activities for kids! And there'll be trivia for grownups and 10% of your food and drink purchases will go to First Book.

Spread the word and I hope to see you there!

I'm trying a little experiment this summer. I'm taking a social media break! I've deactivated my accounts and erased the little apps from my phone. I'm hoping to spend a little less time sitting at my computer and a little more time out in the world with people. My plan is to take the month of June off and come back in July. Maybe I'll even write a blog post about the experiment after it's all done.... maybe...

Happy summer!

 The wonderfully charming children's musician Emily Arrow has created a new song based on HANNAH AND SUGAR! She's visiting Portland this weekend and will be performing 3 times.

It makes me very happy to see pictures of kids reading HANNAH AND SUGAR. So far, this has been the best part of making a picture book. Seeing real kids reading MY book! It's amazing.

Hannah and Sugar was released on March 8th! It's been such a fun couple of weeks. Powell's Books hosted me for a fabulous launch party. It was a wonderful experience to celebrate the release of my book in the bookstore I used to work at. Many thanks to all the folks who came out to support me and to Powell's for hosting!

All kinds of excitement around here.

First off - I got married!

Oh wow, it's been much too long since I posted! I've been so busy making illustrations that I haven't had time for anything else!

The good news is that I've now turned in final art for my first two picture books! Yay!

Also, I just spoke at the Oregon Coast Children's Book Writer's Workshop out in Oceanside, OR. It was a great time - I met some wonderful folks, ate some delicious food and thoroughly enjoyed the amazing ocean views. Many thanks to David Greenberg and family for hosting!

During my presentation I shared a photo of a pile of my favorite books about story telling, children's books and creativity. Here it is for anyone who was there and missed some of the titles and for those of you who weren't but might be interested:

My critique group pal Susan Boase shared this speech with me. I found it so moving I just had to share.  In it Holly McGhee shares interesting stories from the careers of her clients, such as David Small and Kate DiCamillo (two of my favorites.) And she also share her own story of becoming a writer and dealing with the doubtful inner voice. What a wonderful speech! So full of wisdom.

I also just listened to this interview with Mary Oliver and would recommend you do too:
http://www.onbeing.org/program/mary-oliver-listening-to-the-world/7267

Another lovely blogger put together an anti-Valentine's Day collection and included my love stinks card.

My anti-valentine was featured in an apartmenttherapy.com post

I had a lot of fun back in November live sketching the Oregon Children's Theatre's production of Ivy + Bean. The costumes and set were created to mimic Sophie Blackall's excellent illustrations from the books. So, I was drawing actors and a scene originally created by an illustrator - it was like a game of illustrator telephone!

I made this little elephant invite for my friend Angie. Yay for babies!