It's never to early to plan out your social calendar for that all-important party weekend of January 6th!  Please join me at Books on the Square for a special story hour and book launch PARTY at 11am.  There will be snacks. And books. And crafts.  And what more could you ask for to brighten those post-holiday blahs?

LOVE, MAMA LAUNCH PARTY
Where: Books on the Square, 471 Angell Street, Providence, RI 02906 (Parking in rear or on street)
When: Saturday, January 6, 2018 at 11am. 

Ensure you get a signed copy of LOVE, MAMA by pre-ordering from Books on the Square!
Call: 401-331-9097 or 1-888-669-9660 (toll free), or,
Order online: BOTS on IndieBound, Check the "pick up in store" box, and write "For LOVE, MAMA launch party January 6th" in the comments box at checkout. 
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Do you want to do something great for your school or library while also helping those affected by hurricane Harvey? Bidding is now open for KidLitCares. Organized by Kate Messner, this fundraiser brings together an amazing amount of talent to offer almost 200 amazing items from book critiques to classroom visits to original art. 

Want to have me visit your classroom or library?  Then bid on my auction item, and receive an awesome package in Winter 2018.  I can teach a mini writing workshop for your K-2 students, talk about the process of writing, or simply read my book aloud for story time. 

I'm offering - as one auction item:

• One Skype classroom/library visit 
• 5 signed copies of LOVE, MAMA
• A signed archival art print of the LOVE, MAMA cover art

Bidding starts at $50.00.

Winning bidders will donate directly to the red cross, and provide a receipt of their tax-deductible donation.

Click on the cover image below to go to the auction page:

And don't take my word for it!  The list of authors, illustrators, editors, and agents who have items available for bidding is amazing.  www.katemessner.com/kidlit-cares-our-hurricane-harvey-relief-effort/Bid on them all! 

Check out the 2018 picture book debut authors & illustrators at our new Epic Eighteen website!

Keep track of what we are up to, and see the latest book cover reveals by checking out our twitter hashtag #epic18.  It's gonna be epic...

I'm celebrating my favorite flightless birds by sharing the cover for my upcoming picture book LOVE, MAMA!

When Mama goes on a trip, her baby penguin Kipling knows she’ll return home soon—yet he still can’t help but miss her. After all, Pillow Mama won’t read, Picture Mama won’t laugh, and Snow Mama is too cold to cuddle.

LOVE, MAMA is being published by Roaring Brook Press, and will be in bookstores in early 2018.  I can't wait to share it with you.

To preorder, ask your favorite indie bookseller for ISBN 978-1-62672-949-0.
Roaring Brook Press, mackids.com

This is both a list of books that make great Valentine’s Day gifts Valentine’s Day love note to some of my favorite picture books, new and old.  Warm fuzzies everywhere.
This year, I am sharing the love by giving books to my children’s teachers and librarians on Valentine’s Day.

Worm Loves Worm
by J. J. Austrian, Illustrated by Mike Curato

Jane Yolen called it “a word perfect (and picture perfect) picture book, and I couldn’t agree more. Worm Loves Worm is a simple story, with simple text, about simple invertebrates, that boils down all the complexities that adults attach to words like marriage to the simple point that love is love.
In Mike Curato’s own words:
“In Worm Loves Worm, no matter the opinions and criticisms of others, Worm and Worm hold fast to what is most important to them: each other… People will love who they love. This is what makes us human. This book is a celebration of love.”
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Valentine:  Yes, Worm and Worm, it really is that simple. Love you both.

Be a Friend 
by Salina Yoon
Be A Friend is a sweet story about a little boy named Dennis who only communicates through mime. He feels isolated and alone until a classmate, Joy, reaches out to him and they become friends.  Salina Yoon’s illustrations are charming and the simple text lets the visual storyline of acceptance and love shine through.
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Valentine:  [Gestures unwrapping a gift of Be A Friend] [Hugs self] [Smiles]

Stella Brings the Family
by Miriam B. Schiffer, illustrated by Holly Clifton-Brown
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Stella Brings the Family is set on Mother’s Day, but the message of a child’s love for her family is perfect for Valentine’s.  Stella is a little girl with two dads, who is told to invite her mother to a school Mother’s Day party. Unlike the adults in charge of party planning, Stella realizes that her family is really made up of all of the adults who love and support her every day.

 Valentine: Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you!  Really, ALL of you!

I Love You, Stinky Face
by Lisa Mccourt, illustrated by Cyd Moore

An oldie-but-goodie, I Love You Stinky Face is one of my favorite bedtime read-aloud books. The text and illustrations work together to create a comforting, yet silly, reassurance of love and complete acceptance of the child by the mother. The child main character is dressed in gender-neutral clothing and is never identified with a gendered pronoun.
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Valentine: I made you this Valentine out of bugs and slime. I love you, my little swamp monster. ​

Roaring Brook will be publishing my debut picture book LOVE, MAMA in Winter 2018!

If you are thinking of self-publishing, then your next step is to find an illustrator.  Along comes my super-handy, step-by-step guide to the rescue!

Check out The Indie Publisher's Guide to Hiring (and Working With) an Illustrator and get the answer to all of your questions about hiring an illustrator and seeing your book through the process to indie publication.

The guide contains step-by-step instructions to finding not just any illustrator, but the right illustrator for your book, along with printable worksheets to help you manage your project and write agreements with your illustrator and book designer. It's 57 pages of research, worksheets, and advice on how to navigate the illustration and book design process when you are self-publishing.​

I recently had the opportunity to design a donor wall for Thundermist Community Health Center in Wakefield, RI. The organization has just opened a gorgeous new building, and the donor wall as designed by the architectural firm was not going to work in practice.  I was asked to create a design that fit the distinctive design of the new building, which made use of multicolored acrylic panels inset into the walls in squares and rectangles, in a sort of randomly-scattered-yet-balanced placement. It also needed to fit into an entry space that had existing door opening hand plates, and make use of existing materials.

Here is the end product. Acrylic Lumicor strips in a randomly-staggered-yet-balanced arrangement, with brushed aluminum hardware and donor name plaques. The Thundermist staff wanted the name tags scattered randomly as well, with plenty of room for new donors.
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This project was very different from a lot of my recent illustration, and challenged me to brush off my old urban planning design skills and think mathematically. It was a lot of fun to work with this great community organization and help them materialize their vision for this donor wall.

Like the rest of the country, I grieve for the families and community of the nine people killed in Charleston, even though I do not know them. I am horrified by the violence and repelled by the hate. But I am not shocked or surprised. And that lack of shock or surprise also makes me grieve.
I have been struggling with how to talk to my kids about the news. A friend of mine who spent years working for peace in South Sudan, has put out a call to her American friends who are parents to talk frankly with their kids about racism. In her words:

 “The reality is that we talk to our kids all the time about uncomfortable topics. We do this all the time. It’s called parenting. But for some reason, race is a very uncomfortable topic for most of my white friends and many are unwilling to talk to their children openly and honestly about race.”

As a white parent myself, I realize that most of the conversations about race I have had with my kids have fallen into the “diversity is good” category. The “everyone is different, but we all have unique talents to contribute to the world” conversation.  Or the geek version: “Race is a social construct, what we construct as racial differences are a tiny percentage of genetic variation in the human population.”

Race is a social construct. Racism and racial inequality are the social reality we all live within.
Talking about racism can be uncomfortable. But yeah, those uncomfortable conversations are called parenting. Or teaching.

As Maurice Sendak often pointed out, childhood is difficult and full of danger. Children know that terrible things exist in the world. We need to let kids know we are willing to talk.

"The children know. They have always known. But we choose to think otherwise: it hurts to know the children know. If we obfuscate, they will not see. Thus we conspire to keep them from knowing and seeing. And if we insist, then the children, to please us, will make believe they do not know, they do not see. They are remarkable–patient, loving, and all-forgiving. It is a sad comedy: the children knowing and pretending they don’t know to protect us from knowing they know."        
​                                       — Maurice Sendak

To get those conversations started, here is a list of amazing picture books that go beyond surface discussions of diversity to explore racism and discrimination head-on. Explore them with your kids. Use them to spark conversations.

New Shoes by Susan Meyer (illustrated by Eric Velasquez)
Ella Mae needs new shoes but is forbidden to try them on in the store. Humiliated by the shoe shop owner, she and cousin Charlotte collect old shoes, refurbish them, and open their own shoe store where everyone is welcome to try on the shoes. The emotional impact of Eric Velasquesz’s incredible illustrations pairs with the spare, but gut-wrenching text.

The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson (illustrated by E.B. Lewis)
Two girls whose lives are divided by a fence that separates the black side of town from the white side strike up a friendship. The award-winning author and illustrator team pair perfectly in this lyrical story of kids circumventing adult rules of segregation. Segregation is a backdrop to the unfolding friendship, presented as  “that’s the way things are.”

Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles (illustrated by Jerome Lagarrique)

“I didn’t want to swim in this old pool anyway.”
John Henry’s eyes fill up with angry tears.  “I did,” he says.

John Henry and  Joe are best friends, across racial lines in the Jim Crow South. When their town is forced to integrate, the boys are excited to swim together in the public pool. Unfortunately, rather than opening the pool to all, town leaders have it filled in and paved over.
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Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman  (illustrated by Caroline Binch)
Grace wants to be Peter Pan in the school play, but her classmates tell her she can’t play Peter because she is a girl and she is black. After her grandmother takes her to see a family friend perform as prima ballerina in Romeo and Juliet, Grace realizes she can play any role she puts her time, effort, and passion into learning. The actions of Grace’s classmates ring true for a contemporary audience, although the book is now old enough to be considered a classic.

Something Else by Kathryn Cave  (illustrated by Chris Riddell)
Something Else is excluded by his classmates for being different, told he can not play with them or sit with them at lunch. When another creature shows up at his door, Something Else in turn excludes her. He then realizes that he has hurt someone the way he was hurt, and sets out to repair the relationship. The creatures in this book are imaginary beings, which allows the reader to fill in any possible reason for Something Else’s exclusion.

As Good as Anybody by Richard Michelson (illustrated by Raul Colon)
This book is a double biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King, Jr, which concludes with images of their march from Selma to Montgomery. The book paints parallel stories of  the anti-Semitism that Herschel experienced growing up in Nazi Germany, and the racism King encounters in his American childhood.

When Marian Sang: The True Recital of Marian Anderson by Pam Munoz Ryan (illustrated by Brian Selznick)
The biography of Marian Anderson, whose life spanned a near-century of social change. Marian never gives up her commitment to her art, despite discrimination that dives her to leave America for Europe. The book concludes with a wordless spread of famous concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939. I cry every time I read it. Every. Time.

A recent story on NPR discussed four picture books that were banned when they were published that Americans would now see as innocuous. All four contained images of racial integration. Strangely, even though the illustrations of black and white children playing together were what so enraged Jim Crow–era community leaders, the article failed to mention the illustrators of these four books.
I decided to do a little research. I had to remind myself that miscegenation laws were not overturned by the Supreme Court until 1967, and some city swimming pools were not forced to integrate until the 1970s.   These illustrators were all leaders of cultural change.
While we can’t go back in time to ask them about their thoughts while illustrating these controversial books, I believe they were all making conscious decisions to visually integrate their books. They were probably highly sensitive to the fact that they risked being censored, and they chose to make these books because they believed in the power of illustration to change the hearts and minds of their readers (both children and adults).
Here is a little bit about the illustrators of the four books profiled by NPR, and a bonus new picture book about Loving v. Virginia.

Black and White, 1944
Charles G. Shaw was a renowned American abstract painter, and author/illustrator of the classic It Looked Like Spilt Milk. He collaborated with Margaret Wise Brown on The Nosy Bookseries.  The text of the book specifies that the characters are a black man and a black woman. The man loves only black things until he sees snow, then it snows and leaves a white snow lady in his yard. They fall in love and get married.

Swimming Hole, 1950
Louis Darling, Jr. was an American illustrator, writer, and environmentalist, best known for illustrating the Henry Huggins series and other children’s books written by Beverly Cleary. He and his wife Lois provided illustrations for the first edition of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. The plot of this book involves a white boy moving into a new neighborhood where some of the neighbors are black. The boy realizes that “his sunburn is more of a problem” than integrated swimming.

First Book of Fishing, 1952
Edwin Herron was an illustrator of science books for kids and a political cartoonist under a pen name for a socialist journal that published from the 60s-late 80s. Since this was a nonfiction book, Edwin Herron’s choice to visually integrate the children pictured in the book was most likely his own.

The Rabbits’ Wedding, 1958
Garth Williams was the illustrator of Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, and the Little House series.  The text of The Rabbits’ Wedding refers to the main characters as “the little white rabbit” and “the little black rabbit;” they are illustrated as fairly realistic wild rabbits who decide to put flowers behind their ears and get married so they can be together always.
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Williams said about this book that he “was completely unaware that animals with white fur, such as white polar bears and white dogs and white rabbits, were considered blood relations of white beings. I was only aware that a white horse next to a black horse looks very picturesque,” and that his story was not written for adults, who “will not understand it, because it is only about a soft furry love and has no hidden message of hate.”

The Case for Loving, 2015
The Case for Loving is a narrative nonfiction picture book that tells the story of the real family who won the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia. I’m not sure if it is the first picture book since Williams wrote about bunny love in 1958 to address interracial marriage, but it is definitely a landmark picture book.
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The Case for Loving: The Fight for Interracial Marriage by Selina Alko (Author, Illustrator),and  Sean Qualls  (Illustrator) (The two are a husband/wife team, which is a warm and fuzzy as bunny love.)