Welcome to our competitive world of picture book adventures! In this exciting episode, we bring you a thrilling face-off between two extraordinary snail tales: “Escargot” and “Snail Crossing.” Get ready to cheer on your favorite book in this Picture Book Showdown!
This last month has been unexpected in a bad way. We were planning one more family trip before school started to Lake Tahoe, Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park, and King's Canyon National Park. One week before it was time to leave, I found myself in...
It’s been a summer. Pool time. Lazy reading time. There was a lot of cleaning up after three children and feeding them and ALL the things.
I even missed my newsletter last month because, well, summer.
But I’m back and ready to get to work. I’ll be dropping kids off at school in a few weeks, and suddenly — or finally — I can take a whole hour in a row and do some work.
June is here, and it's good to talk to you again. Thank you for being a reader of my monthly newsletter! It’s no secret I love children. I want the children I interact with to be better for the experience of meeting me. I taught preschool for six years and have...
Welcome to May! How can it be May already? I don’t know. I have a busy month ahead, with my youngest graduating preschool this year, and my oldest moving out of elementary into intermediate school (which is just the other side of the school building, thank goodness!...
So, why create? Besides the joy of making something that came from your head and hands, we create to connect with other people. How do people make connections with other people? By sharing truth with them. It could be a personal story or a passed-on story that we have seen proven, or even a made-up story that proves the truth we have seen in our own life. We share these things with each other and suddenly, there it is, connection.
The best arguments in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.I’ve been listening to a new podcast (not new in general, it’s actually from 2018, but new to me). It is called You Are A Storyteller. It is two screenwriters...
January was not what I expected. I was anticipating being home again after the bustle of holidays and settling down into a routine of regular life, including continuing to work on picture book projects and illustration.
Instead, I had my first task handed to me of mothering my sick children. From before Christmas until just a few days ago, someone in our home has been sick. There were a few days in there of wellness, where kids all went to school and I did sit down to do a little bit of the other work I am trying to do.
Hello friend. Another year has blasted by! I hope your holiday season was filled with love and family, friends and memories to cherish in the future. Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing...
We hail the merry autumn days,When leaves are turning red;Because they're far more beautifulThan anyone has said, We hail the merry harvest time,The gayest of the year;The time of rich and bounteous crops,Rejoicing and good cheer. Being thankful for hard things...
It’s so easy to see the blessing others are in the world, and yet so hard to see ourselves as valuable. But friend, I want to tell you…
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.- Terry Pratchett“Seriously Funny: The Endlessly Quotable Terry Pratchett”, p.68, Random House When I was stumbling my way into adulthood, a college freshman on my own for the first time, I was certain...