Jurassic June!

I realized that I never shared any dinosaur drawing sheets here when my Mini Doodle drawing books came out last June. Now that they’ve been out a year, why not celebrate with a stegosaurus and pteranodon?

You can find copies of both books at Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, NH (my home bookstore, they are the best!) And also in many B&N locations as well as online B&N and Amazon.

Some of you might know that I started an online event for illustrators called #KidLitArtPostcard - a targeted way for children’s book illustrators to promote their work to publishers and agents. June marked the 3rd anniversary of the event. My post was inspired by an old pink poodle push toy, the themed parties for my daughter, and Teresa Guidice’s wedding hair (if you know, you know!) I started this piece during my Gab n Doodle with Mark Hoffmann many months ago - I was happy that I finally had time to finish it (restart it, who am I kidding!)

With all the big rumblings and problems with various social media sites, I announced that Bluesky and Cara should be the main places to share our work for KidLitArtPostcard. To explain: Cara is new and predominantly a portfolio site. Bluesky has been around for over a year with a growing KidLit community, has direct messaging, can share images and links, offers functional hashtags and searching, etc (think Twitter without the ads or ick). It now has close to 6 million users. It’s taken me a long time to feel comfortable like the old days of social media, but I think I’m there. I’ve been nagging a bit on Twitter and Threads with the tag #movingkidlit - because I’d love to see our community all together in one main spot that feels supportive and functional. If you haven’t given Bluesky a try yet, you should! One of the best new things is the KIDLIT MEGA FEED - saving you lots of time in finding your favorite authors and illustrators. The big excitement today was seeing Raina Telgemeier join Bluesky!

So what’s next? School is out for my kids, and I’m deep into story development on a few picture books. I just sent a revised story off to my agent and I’m doing first sketches on a new story that has taken me FOREVER to push to this stage.

AND… We’ll be taking our first family road trip to Canada in a few weeks - visiting Montreal and Quebec. If you have any recommendations for things to do or fun teen activities, please share!

What I’m Reading: I just finished Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness. It was, at times, quite sad but so beautifully written.

What I’m Listening to: Come by Chance - a true story podcast about a switched birth mystery in Newfoundland.

What I’m Watching: Dark Matter on AppleTV - I think there is a fair amount of buzz about it, but I honestly wasn’t loving this show as much as my husband. Then it took a more interesting turn last week, so I’m excited to see how it wraps up.