(c) Sam Hundley, samhundley.com

Welcome to my blog, Sam! I'm delighted to have you (and your gorgeous art) here!

​Happy to oblige!

First question: How did you find your way to becoming a kidlit scrap artist?

I was a newspaper artist for 39 years, got laid off, became bored, wrote a little fable that was bouncing around in my head, realized it was possible to create the characters with found objects so they could be posed in different positions and tell a story. So, I decided to design a 32-page picture book. Finding a publisher for it was the hard part!

Glad you got those ideas out of your head and into the 3-D world! What do you like about creating humorous characters out of scrap metal?

It’s a relaxing way to make art. I daydream, allowing intuition to guide me. The results often surprise me, so I continue doing it.

Describe your process, please.

I take buckets of junk that I’ve collected from all over and also things that are donated to me by generous friends (dug relics, plastic bits, beach combing flotsam, metal, wood, etc.) and pour it onto the studio floor. For the children’s book characters, I imagine a goat, for instance, then I find things that work together in the proper scale--a paint brush becomes his head and beard, nails are his horns, a key winder nose, rubber tire fragment body, etc. Then I photograph it with my iPhone and design the book on my desktop Mac.


Tell me a little about your upcoming book, Gifts of the Magpie?

My mother called me a “magpie” when I was little because I liked to collect stuff. That memory and my experience as a scrap artist inspired me to start thinking about writing a story. Six months after being laid off, I woke up to a soft, April rain and as I lay there, inspiration struck and I wrote Gifts of the Magpie in under an hour. It’s about a generous magpie who is good at finding things, so she asks her friends what they want. She gets everything wrong and disappoints everyone--until they realize, by using a little creativity, she gave them exactly what they needed. It contains a hopeful message of positive thinking, plus some fun wordplay and of course, lots of scrap art! Capstone is publishing it in early 2021.

Congrats on your book! I can't wait to read it! Is it fun, creating stories out of your work?

​Is it fun? This late bloomer is having a blast!​

​Your delight is evident in the objects! What are you working on now?

I’m always creating personal work, like the Keep On Truckin’ tribute to R. Crumb, selling a few pieces, working on three commissions. In July, Capstone agreed to publish my second picture book, Tag and the Magic Squeaker, about a mouse who teams up with a dog to put one over on a cat. And my third book, The Hangry Pizzly Bear, which incorporates over 30 portmanteaus, is under consideration. 

Haha! Sounds artliciously fun! Well, thanks for stopping by and for sharing a little bit about your kidlit journey with me. It's been a blast!

Enjoyed it, Dionna!

Thanks so much for stopping by, Tami, and for sharing a little bit about themed illustrating prompts that kidlit artists might share on their social media accounts. 

Happy to share, though I must confess, I really feel like quite a failure at daily prompt illustrator challenges. 

Your work is no fail in my book! So exactly, what are these illustrator challenges and how many have you tried out?

I’m referring specifically to thematic art challenges that encourage participants to create and post to social media a prompted artwork each day of the month using the hashtag of the challenge. I began a great number of these hashtagged art challenges with high expectations but never seemed to make it past the first ten days. I could blame my failure on being a mom and a freelancer. As much as I’d love to spend endless hours at my drawing table, I still have to pay the bills, cook meals, feed hungry felines. 

Life is busy.

True this. So why bother doing these challenges at all? Why not find something else to put your creative energy into, especially if you feel like you fail at completing them?

Those short bursts of concentrated work I've done over the past five years always marked some big turning points in my artistic growth.  For example, attempting #kidlitart28 in February of 2019 helped me polish my digital techniques. The short timeframe I had to work within to post an illustration every day forced me to be very deliberate with the tools I used. 

My #inktober artwork a few years back sparked a story about some raccoons that eventually morphed into a character-driven picture-book dummy. Last year’s #inktober helped me flesh out the two main characters in a middle-grade historical mystery also under development. In addition, quite a few challenge pieces eventually made it into my portfolio after I further realized the artwork. A couple designs even became promotional postcards.

What advice do you have for kidlit illustrators out there who might be on the fence about doing these art challenges?

On one hand, challenges can be a great way to exercise and grow your skills and creativity. They provide an opportunity to experiment and a chance to connect with a community of like-minded artists. If you’ve never tried a daily art challenge, I recommend you give it a shot. Even if you manage only ten posts, you’ll still see benefits. On the other hand,  if doing a challenge is not enjoyable or is too stressful, then don't do it. You have to do what works for you as an artist.

Any tips for those giving a challenge a whirl?

I have five.

1. Polish your illustration technique.

Whether you use a dip pen or a stylus, you can use a daily challenge to perfect your mark-making. The repetition of drawing daily helps hone skills and build muscle memory.

2. Get familiar with drawing/painting a particular subject. 

One of the best ways to improve at drawing a thing is to actually draw that thing...a lot! For example, if you have trouble drawing dogs, try doing a dog a day for #doggust during the month of August. Or for #inktober, choose your own topic, like houses, vehicles, or marsupials during the month of October. The sky’s the limit and I guarantee you’ll feel more confident drawing the thing once you’ve churned out thirty of them.

3. Make your own rules. 

If daily posting makes you cringe, set an every-other-day goal or post once a week. No one will judge you. I promise. Folks will be just as happy to see what you’re sharing weekly. You can even challenge yourself to do one fully realized portfolio piece in the theme of that challenge by the end of the month. 

4. Use the challenge to develop a story. 

Imagine the possibilities of writing a picture book centered on the challenge theme or your own chosen theme. Some artists will use prompts to develop a running, daily narrative tale, which builds suspense and brings viewers back to their social media page.

5. Do the heavy lifting ahead of time. 

There’s nothing to prevent you from storyboarding and sketching ideas for a challenge before the challenge month begins. 

Good tips! Would you please share some monthly challenges that are out there for anyone to try?

Sure! Here are ten:

For February, post what you love: #kidlitart28 
For March, post robots: #marchofrobots 
For May, post mermaids: #MerMay
For June, post unicorns: #junicorn
For August, post dogs and/or dragons: #doggust and #smaugust
For September, post your sketches: #sketchtember
For October, post inked sketches: #inktober 
For November, post fictional maps: #mapvember
For December, post anything you draw: #drawcember

Thanks for those, Tami, and for stopping by to share your not-fails with us!

My pleasure.

Tami Traylor is an illustrator and graphic designer living in Chesterfield, Virginia, with three cats, two kids, and one husband.  She's been drawing and telling stories since she could hold a pencil. Her love of books and drawing goes back to her earliest memories. Those early books love drove her to pursue the study of design and illustration in college. She's been a member of SCBWI since 2005, and the graphic designer of  the Highlighter,  the quarterly newsletter of the Mid-Atlantic regional of SCBWI, since 2007. She’s the illustrator of THE 12 DANCING PRINCESSES by Carly Graf (ustyme, 2015). Check out  Tami's art-themed posts on Instagram @traylorillo or on her website traylorillo.com. 

(c) Cynthia Cliff, cynthiacliff.com

How did you find your way into kidlit art and what do you love about it?
 
I still vividly remember the books I had when I was a very young child—the smell of them, the sound of the turning pages. I remember the feeling of wonder and excitement I got when books were being read to me, and can still clearly see the illustrations all these years later. Those stories allowed me to escape from my small-town farming community and gave me a bit of a glimpse of the big world out there. Picture book illustrations made a huge positive impression on me, and now as an illustrator I love that I can give that same kind of joy to a child.
 
Tell us a little about your process.
 
I do a ton of research and look at lots of photos (I become a bit obsessed), and absorb it all. Then I put it all away so that my art can be original and stylized, and not a copy of what I’ve seen. For portraits, I’ll look at many photos of the real person and draw a composite so that I get a new and unique image and not a copy of an existing image. For character development, I find it’s helpful for me to identify a real person that I can use as inspiration for the character. Then I start to draw, doodle, sketch, and play until I develop my own characters that feel right. I work in colored pencil, pen and gouache, as well as in Photoshop and recently, in Procreate on the iPad.
 
Why do you love illustrating historical moments and people of historical note?
 
I grew up in an historical small town where very little changed from generation to generation. I could reach out and touch the past every day—the old well pump in the yard, the cannonball in the barn wall, the prerevolutionary war stone shops in my village. I found Civil War buttons and arrow heads in my backyard and I wondered what life had been like for the people that last held them. When I was a child, a fun family outing was going to a historical site, or listening to an elder share some folklore. I developed a huge appreciation for history and it still fascinates me today. I suppose if I wasn’t an artist of some kind, I’d be involved in history in some way—three of my family members are archaeologists. My goal is to bring history to life for children so they can “see” history and appreciate all that can be learned from it.

What type of details do you look for when doing your research, and how does that research inform your illustrations?
 
I love to find out how people lived their days—what they wore, ate, listened too, and read. This research informs my art and helps me connect to the subject matter, be excited about it, and find the right vibe for the time period. For instance, when researching for the illustrations I did for the Honest History magazine issue about Tesla and Edison, I looked at many of their personal items, and read about their habits and their communication with each other. I saw that Tesla was a very dapper fellow and owned many gloves to match his custom-made suits, and I noticed a pair of chartreuse gloves in a museum collection about him. To me this color signified his “outside the box” creative thinking, and symbolized how unique he was. So, I used this color for his suit in the whole issue. The color made him stand out on the page, apart from all of the brown and gray dressed folks that were typical of the time period.
 
What are you working on now and why are you enjoying it?
 
Right now, I’m writing and illustrating a graphic-novel style book, tentatively called The Night People of Owl Island. This is a mystery book for young readers about a family on vacation and it will contain lots of fun details like a map, some facts about owls, some folk lore, and some “mysterious” people. I’m still in the very beginning stages and am working out the story and starting some character development. I really love organizing and planning a large effort like this one. It will involve the perfect mix of history and nature, and I wake up every day excited to work on it.

Salutations, Angela! Thanks so much for stopping by to chat with us. So, how did you find your way to becoming a kidlit artist?

I always knew I wanted to do something creative. However, it wasn’t until college that I decided I wanted to be an illustrator. There were so many majors in art school. It was difficult to pick just one. Thankfully, I had a 2D-design teacher whose work inspired me to study illustration. His work was similar to Lane Smith’s traditional illustrations, and it reminded me of how much I loved the The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. It rekindled my childhood obsession with creating books. 

From there, it wasn’t a direct shot into doing kidlit. I studied general illustration and thought I would be an editorial illustrator. There was such a prestige about that type of work. Still, outside of class I found myself drawn to children’s book illustration. I even placed in an international children’s book illustration competition called Teatro while I was still a student. Despite that, it wasn’t until the last semester of school when I took a children’s book illustration class that everything aligned. 

For the first time, I could play with camera angles, humor, and a rhythm. I could tell stories, something I always loved. I could get lost creating a whole world for a book. I also had an excuse to read a ton of a kidlit! With some hard work and some luck, I started getting interest in the work as soon as I graduated. Then I was recommended to SCBWI by Abigal Samoun, who at the time was still an editor. She now has her own literary agency called Red Fox Literary. 

SCBWI really helped launch my career. I received my first small book from Children’s Book Press at Illustrator’s Day in San Francisco. More importantly my book,  Maria Had a Little Llama, began as assignment from a SCBWI Spirit conference in Davis, California. I am happy to say I’ve been illustrating for over ten years and writing six years professionally. 

​What do you love about being a children's book creator? 

I love telling a narrative and being able to draw things that I find amusing. I’ve always been on the sillier side so this is the perfect outlet for me. Also I adore the marriage of words and pictures. As a child, I could get lost reading a book and that never went away. Now, more and more, it’s the interaction with the kids that really motivates me. Seeing what they relate to during school presentations—not just what I relate to—gives me inspiration.  

As you've been honing your craft over the years, what's one of the biggest things you've learned so far.

Luckily, I studied illustration, so my learning curve with the craft has been easier. I think the biggest things is learning how to draw kids well. It’s been a bunch of practice and studying different illustrator’s work. I’ve even created a graduate character design for a children’s book course at the Academy of Art University. When it comes to being an author, the learning curve has been larger. I often force myself to write for practice and I read children’s literature as much possible.

Probably the biggest learning curve though, is realizing the amount of promotion and business skills you need to have. People assume because it’s a creative field and everything can be done at home that you don’t have to network or promote, but that’s a huge part of the job. After all, this children’s literature is its own business.

​What types of manuscripts do you love illustrating and why?

My favorite books to illustrate are ones that either feature animals and/or have plenty of room of interpretation. Probably one of my favorite books to illustrate was MARTA! BIG AND SMALL. It has minimal text so I was able to come up a with concept for where these animals lived. That was great collaborative project. I also love illustrating my own stories because there is even room to be creative!

What are you working on now and are you having fun?

I am working on a picture book with Candlewick. It’s still in the early stages, but it’s about a girl who is scared of bees. Coming up with expressions and reactions has been so much fun. I’m also working on a few story ideas. I find that it’s important to always be generating new projects for myself. It keeps me busy and hopefully it turns into a book! 

Angela Dominguez was born in Mexico City but grew up in the great state of Texas. She is the author and illustrator of several children's books and a two-time recipient of Pura Belpré Illustration Honor. Her debut middle grade, Stella Díaz Has Something To Say, was a New York Public Library and a Chicago Public Library pick for Best Books for Kids in 2018, winner of SCBWI Sid Fleischman Award, and an ALA Notable. When Angela is not in her studio or visiting schools, she teaches at the Academy of Art University. She is represented by Wernick and Pratt Literary Agency.

Welcome, Zara! Thanks for stopping and for sharing your kidlit journey with us!

Thanks for inviting me!

Do tell! How did you find your way into illustrating for children?

I don’t know that I can pinpoint the exact path, or even when I “started.” My answer may be considered a clichéd illustrator’s, but I can’t remember a time when I didn’t draw. The form those drawings have taken has always been one that leaned with a whimsical bent. 

That being said, my path to illustrating children’s books has been a long and winding one. Although in retrospect it should have been the obvious place for me to start (considering my love of stories and drawing), for some reason it was not. I think I was so convinced I couldn’t do it that I had to try everything else I possibly could before I finally let myself admit that this was where I wanted to be. 

So I led a few creative lives before I stumbled into the wonderful world of children’s publishing. And now I never want to leave!

What do you love about illustrating for children?

I love that anything is possible. Children don’t care that elephants are supposed to be grey or that people don’t usually wear snails on their heads. Their minds are open and they are interested in EVERYTHING. The smallest thing in an illustration might be the thing they obsess over. I keep that in mind when I am drawing and try to stuff each page full of interesting bits and pieces for them to find.

Describe your process, please. 

I’m pretty loose when it comes to how I work. I don’t have a set process in place, but rather let the project dictate how I will approach it. It’s a little hokey, but I tend to do a lot things based on what feels right.

For the book I’m working on right now, I read the manuscript a number of times just to get the voice and flow of it stuck in my head. Then I gave myself lots of opportunities to let my mind wander—walking the dog, gardening, cooking. I do my best thinking when my body is otherwise occupied, and that’s where I find a lot of my ideas and meet my characters.
 
I do a lot of doodling, too, trying to coax the things I see in my head out onto paper. In theory, these doodles are all in a special notebook I start at the beginning of the project. In reality, they are often on scraps of paper and drawn with whatever happens to be handy.

I’m also a total creative magpie. I keep scrap files for inspiration and tend to collect interesting patterns and color combinations that I might want to remember for some future project, so I’ll often pull these out when I am looking for inspiration or trying to spark new ideas.

How would you say your family, cultural influences, your travels, and/or your life's experiences shape your work?

I think they are woven into everything that I do. From the subjects I choose to illustrate to the stories I choose to tell. Every one of them is somehow touched by my experiences, whether I realize it at that moment or not.
 
I don’t think we can extract ourselves from our work no matter how much we might try, but luckily those are the things that make us unique and give our work it’s unique character. 

What type of children's books do you want to continue to illustrate?

I want to illustrate books that feature diverse characters—especially characters that are part of more than one culture. This is particularly important to me as a Latina, a Jew, the wife of an immigrant and as a mother of a child growing up at the intersection of multiple cultures. 

Zara González Hoang grew up in a little bungalow in the great white North. Surrounded by snow she spent her days dreaming, doodling and listening to the colorful stories of her dad’s life growing up in Puerto Rico while trying to figure out where she fit in as a mixed-race Latina Jew in a sea of Scandinavians. (She’s still figuring that out.)

These days, she lives outside of DC in a magical suburban forest with her Mad Man husband, her son, and curly coated corgi. She still spends her days dreaming and doodling, but now instead of listening to stories, she’s starting to tell some of her own.

Zara's first picture book, Thread of Love--published by Beach Lane Books  an imprint of Simon & Schuster in 2018, and written by mother-son team Surishtha and  Kabir Sehgal--was chosen by Seattle Public Library as one of the best picture books of 2018! Find her and her delightful portfolio at zaralikestodraw.com and  follow her on Twitter and Instagram @zarprey. Zara is represented by Andrea Morrison at Writers House. 

​How did you find your way to becoming a kidlit illustrator?

Before I decided to change careers, I used to be a high school teacher for German and English literature and so books always had a very important status in my life. When I had my three children, I obviously introduced them to kidlit early on and that’s when my creative side emerged again and it could not be stopped. It was a very powerful calling that made me see who I really am.

Your work infuses such true-to-life humor! How do you find your inspiration?

I just think I try to look at things in a humorous way whenever possible. Life can be too hard otherwise.

How would you say your cultural heritage influences your creative decisions when you are creating art for children?

My art is a direct reflection of my cultural heritage and upbringing—you will find a lot of the spirit of European kidlit or even music I was brought up with in my illustrations and stories. Themes with darker emotions are not taboo and unconventional characters are very common in European stories for children.

Please share a little about your process.

A normal work day without any pressing deadlines usually starts with a long walk with my dog to clear my head or even find inspiration in nature. Then I start drawing in my tiny studio until my children come home from school. In the evenings I often work on my manuscripts. 

When I’m working on projects together with editors, I usually spend some days reading the manuscript I’m supposed to illustrate. Then I begin rough sketching and collecting material. Next stage is the storyboarding and then, when everything has been approved, I start working on the final coloured illustrations.

What are you working on now? And are you enjoying it?

I’m currently working on a picture book about an English bulldog as the main character and am very much enjoying it. There are other projects in the pipeline I can’t officially talk about yet!

​When you first received the manuscript for BUSY-EYED DAY, what did you love about it?

Whenever I get sent a text, the way I know it is right for me is that I am immediately hit with  an urge to start drawing. I found the sweet jollity of Anne Marie’s text instantly appealing and all I wanted to do was to start creating the characters of the two siblings. My mind led itself into the oasis of a city park and I wanted to get drawing as soon as I could. 


How did you do to get into the spirit of the story so you could tell it authentically?

This project was the first thing I came back to after my maternity leave for my first baby. For the three months previous, I had spent pretty much everyday pushing around my new-born in our local park. She was considerate enough to be born in June so thankfully my walks were taken through the summer months. 

My local park is huge and is right in the middle of Brixton in South London. If you walk to the top of the hill you can look back over the expanse of the city and see the imposing and impressive Skyline of London, while still surrounded by bird song and greenery. I used this time to take reference photos of trees and other elements of a city park that I could work from later on. Although the park in BUSY-EYED DAY isn’t directly based on my local park, it undoubtedly influenced by it!

Do tell! What was your illustrative process? 

All picture books usually start with a storyboard so you are able to map out the pages before you start the actual illustrations. This is an integral bit at this point, allowing you to nail the narrative, and that makes the illustrative process a lot easier later down the line. I also spent a while trying to get the characters right. After this I would create rough pencil sketches that I would scan into my computer and work on digitally to create a collage layered look. I'd then add textures to achieve my final colour spreads. All of this is done within Photoshop. I used a mixture of scanned in mediums, such as paint textures, and also Photoshop brushes to achieve the end result. 

Describe how you and your art director, NAME, worked together on BUSY-EYED DAY.

Creating a book is such a collaborative project. Often you will send your art director all of the storyboards that they then comment on and there is a lot of back and forth to get them to a place you are all happy with. I then started on the first round of “rough” illustrations. This took me a few months and, when I felt I was in a good place with these, I sent them off to the publisher. This is always such an interesting and nerve-wrecking point as, once they have been shown around to the appropriate people at the publisher, you receive back all the comments. When illustrating someone else’s text, this is also the point where they first see the interpretations of their words and I am always nervous to hear their thoughts! 

What are your plans for launching this book? 

As I don’t live in the States, I am slightly removed from directly launching BUSY-EYED DAY in bookshop events or schools. The book isn’t currently being published in the UK, so my main aim is to support it on lovely blogs like this one and also to make use of social media to get it noticed in the world! 

​Frann Preston-Gannon is a London based author and illustrator of books for children. Her books have been published worldwide and include THE JOURNEY HOME, DAVE'S CAVE, BECAUSE OF AN ACORN, and HOW TO LOSE A LEMUR. In April 2011, she became the first UK recipient of the Sendak Fellowship and spent a month in autumn living with and learning from the great master of illustration, Maurice Sendak, at his home in Connecticut. Fran can be found at frann.co.uk, on Twitter @frannpg, and on Instagram @frann.pg.

How did you find your way into illustrating for children?

It was a loooong way. I’ve always wanted to be an artist. I studied graphic design at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest. I started my career as a graphic designer. Soon I became an art director at a big advertising company, DDB. Working in this area was fine, but I missed something. Eventually, I realized that my job as a graphic designer wasn't bringing fun into my life any more, so I started looking for something else. I saw that drawing gave me the best feeling I’ve ever felt, so the rest came quite quickly. One of my friends was developing a children’s magazine application and he asked me to illustrate some of the stories. The three bears were born then. I started to share my work on the Internet and finally an agency found me. Good Illustration Agency is a London based agency and I have a really good relationship with them. If I could start my career again, I would begin as a children's illustrator.

Why do you love creating illustrations for young readers?

Because I can be funny and make many, many children laugh through my illustrations.

​How do you tap into your inner kid when you are illustrating for children?

That’s an interesting question. I don't need to tap into my inner kid because I become kid when I draw! I feel happy and I am very open and creative. I see things as a child. It is very liberating.

What type of books for children do you enjoy illustrating?

My favorites are funny, humorous stories with a hilarious and surprising end. I prefer animal characters, but I like drawing human characters as well. I found that animals are very funny with cute facial expressions, and I use a lot of that in my illustrations. So I love funny stories with animals. My favorites are from Heather Pindar. She is the author of STRICTLY NO CROCS and BEWARE THE MIGHTY BITEY. I love both books very much. It was so much fun to work on illustrating them.

​How does your cultural heritage and/or family upbringing influence your illustrative style/voice?

My mother and my father had really good manual skills. My father loved to draw just for fun. I learned a lot from him. My mother decorated the walls of my room with Minnie and Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. I was so happy as a child and this inspires me very much.

​Life in the 70’s and 80's in Hungary was so much fun for me. Growing up, I was exposed to many kinds of illustrative styles. We had fantastic children's books (I still own a few!) and I loved the cartoons. Hungary imported cartoons from everywhere around the world. From the United States, for example, I loved the Flintstones. Plus we had our own cartoons. My favorite was a Hungarian one, Gombóc Artúr (Arthur Chubby--I can’t translate it exactly). Every Hungarian child knew him. He was a funny, plump blue bird who loved every kind of chocolate very much. I've just recently realized that my style is very similar.​

What children's project(s) are you working on now?

I am working on a Brazilian folktale--The Boy and the Violin. The other project is a Spanish book about Mama Duck and her little son who travel for a while. And I have just begun a book about cats--a lot of cats! I love those cats!

​Susan Batori is a Hungarian illustrator, graphic designer and a character design addict. She studied graphic design at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary. As an art director at DDB Advertising Agency, Susan designed many print ads, websites, posters, packages, etc. for years. Than she noticed that drawing hilarious characters was much more fun. She likes to laugh with her boyfriend Robert and her cat Kamilla. They inspire her funny characters. She also loves creating new digital textures, reading, watching great movies, drinking coffee, walking in a forest or pampering herself with a good salted caramel ice cream. Since 2012, Susan has been working as a freelance children’s book illustrator. Humor is the one thing in her studio that she could not live without. She is represented by Good Illustration Ltd., London. Her clients have come to include Maverick Arts Publishing, Highlights for Children's Magazine, Oxford University Press,  I See Me! Personalized Children's Books, and Spider Magazine, an imprint of Cricket Media. Find Susan and her fun-filled portfolio on Facebook, Behance, Instagram, Pintrest, at batori.hu, and susanbatori.myportfolio.com.

What inspired you to write THIS LITTLE PIGGY: AN OWNER’S MANUAL?

There were a lot of different inspirations for this book as it evolved. The idea first sparked when I found the word “hogwash” funny. I was just minding my own business, doodling on the couch when I heard someone on whatever show my family was watching say “hogwash,” and I got images in my head of kids trying to bathe a pig. The first version of my story was pretty much a long-running (and probably annoying) joke of having to bathe and immediately re-bathe, over and over, a pig named Snowflake. I had originally intended to title my project HOGWASH, but I found a couple of other children’s books with that title. Still, I finished creating the story, and my agent and I submitted it as THE ULTIMATE PIG CARE HANDBOOK. Eventually, it became THIS LITTLE PIGGY: AN OWNER’S MANUAL. 

In your story, Brother and Sister's mother is quite obsessive about her garden, and is not at all keen on them getting a pet pig. Any similar childhood experiences?
 
My own mother was equally obsessive and overly-fond of her garden, so much so that I used to tell her I hated her flowers and didn’t want to have to look at them. She (jokingly, I think) threatened to ground me once if I didn’t come look at her garden, so she partly inspired the mom-character in the book. (Incidentally, she still makes me look at her garden when I visit her, but I don’t mind so much anymore.) 

I also desperately wanted a pet when I was a kid and embarked on a many-years-long campaign of pestering my dad to let me get a puppy. When I turned 15, I changed tactics and my friend Rozz and I conspired. She got me a kitten for my birthday and I begged and made sad faces until my dad gave in and said I could keep him. 

In your illustrations, you chose to depict a blended family. Any particular reason why? 

I wanted to depict a blended family where two single adults with children come together. Brother and Sister are step-siblings, with the emphasis on siblings. There is also a dad in This Little Piggy’s family, he just didn’t make it into the final version, as Mom is the one they ultimately have to convince.

Why did you decide to tell the story using a comic-book style for a format, and was this type of book fun to create?

I think stories aimed at kids who are emerging or struggling readers work really well in a hybrid chapter book/graphic novel format. Speech bubbles help to break up the text into smaller blocks so it’s not as daunting to read. The pictures help them to decode the words and also provide a lot of humor and interest to hold their attention. Aladdin Pix books are part chapter book, part graphic novel, and part picture book. 

Besides, comic books are just cool and even cooler to create. 

As both the writer and the illustrator of this book, please share your process. 

For this story, I wrote the words first, then sketched the illustrations, but I made art notes for myself while writing. More recently, on a new project, I’ve simultaneously written the text and drew rough thumbnail sketches, and that’s been a really fun and productive way for me to work. 

Did you do a lot of research about pigs for this project?

I researched pigs because I wanted to include a few fun facts in the text, but the drawings of Snowflake came from my head with no visual reference. I meant for him to look like a child’s drawing. I also wanted the original version to appear like it was a how-to manual written by kids for other kids. I had painted lined paper, added the characters with a stick-figure feel to them, and doodled all over the pages. But that ended up being a bit busy.

I still drew the kids and Snowflake to be reminiscent of stick figures. And as the narrator of the book, I talk directly to the kids as if advising them on how to care for their pet pig. (Unfortunately, I don't always give them the best advice.)

What did you love about working with Karen and Laura, your editor and art director, throughout this project?

Karen and Laura are oodles of fun to work with! We had a few conference calls with all three of us to go over the art and text together as the book was developing, and my cheeks hurt from laughing so much. Plus, they are both brilliantly creative and come up with fantastic ideas. I couldn’t be happier with the outcome. 

When revising as per the suggestions of your agent, editor, and art director, what were some of the challenges? But why are you glad you made those changes? 

Adriann is a gifted editorial agent and is always super insightful and sharp. She suggested I cut short the running gag of the never-ending bath, and impose more of a narrative. So I went back to the drawing board, and included other kinds of pig care into the plot. The story ended with the kids doing a great job caring for him, and then presenting Snowflake to mom. (Only the house, garden, and yard are pretty much destroyed.) So Adriann's suggestions allowed me to further explore the family-pet relationship of the kids and Snowflake.

The biggest change I made came from Karen, my editor's, suggestion. After she acquired the project, she wanted me to turn the original story, a picture book, into a chapter book. So I had to start almost from scratch to expand the story. I really love the new version and I’ve recently discovered that a lot of my unpublished picture books really need to be chapter books, too. 

On the design end, Laura, my art director, asked me to redesign sister's look. Originally, Sister was wearing a purple dress with a strawberry on it. Her hair was similar, wavy and flowed horizontally, but it wasn’t pulled back from her face. She also wore big, red-rimmed glasses. Laura thought she looked a bit too granny-ish. She asked me to re-draw Sister wearing shorts like her brother. I  mulled over her suggestion, and opted to dress Sister in clam-diggers, as they were one of my favorite things to wear when I was a kid. I removed Sister's glasses and tied up her hair, and I think she’s absolutely adorable now.

When you received your box of author copies, what did you love about the final product? 

As of this writing, I haven't received my author copies yet, but my lovely and thoughtful editor, Karen Nagel, surprised me with two advance final copies, tied in a pretty red ribbon. I was thrilled! I think Aladdin makes beautiful books. I was giddy over the finishing details: spot gloss on the front and back paper-over-board cover, beautiful red end pages, and high quality interior pages. It’s a chapter book but it’s picture book quality. It will endure many readings and after-reading hugs. (Or am I the only one who hugs their books?) 

What kind of fun activities do you have in store for your book launch and school visits?

I live in a small town in Canada, so I haven’t really planned anything....yet. I did recently visit a school where I gave four presentations. I read from THIS LITTLE PIGGY and we did a few fun activities, including making our own Pet Wish-List, like brother does in the book. I’m pretty shy and get some serious stage fright, so I find in-person and even online visits a bit scary, but I am trying to be more outgoing and social these days. The kids are just too much fun.

What do you hope kids who read this book will carry away with them?

That being yourself is what matters most.

Brother and Sister want to adopt Snowflake as a member of the family. They think Mom will accept Snowflake only if he is well-groomed, eats his veggies, stays out of the compost, and wins a prize at the fair. Snowflake isn’t the perfect pig the kids thought they needed him to be, but they love him anyway, and are determined to keep him. But they have to convince mom. In the end, Snowflake is just being himself (chasing after some pesky crows eating Mom’s garden). He manages to win over Mom. She thinks, like Brother and Sister, that he is SOME pig. 

Oh, and I also hope kids will agree with Snowflake that eating jelly doughnuts is awesome (just not stale ones from the compost)!