The dinky cars of TOO MUCH! NOT ENOUGH!

When I started working on TOO MUCH! NOT ENOUGH! with Tundra editor Samantha Swenson, she had so many wonderful ideas to make the story bigger and more chaotic. My dummy was 32 pages, and the final book is 40. Sam tossed out a few ideas to make their rainy day chaos even MORE chaotic. One of them was playing with dinky cars. Now, I naively thought Sam meant little cars and that dinky was just a cute descriptor. No! She was actually referring to Dinky cars - a line of English metal toy cars and trucks made from the late 1930s to 1970s. And in a strange coincidence, I actually had been collecting metal matchbox cars and trucks from England in the 1970s. Not Dinky, but close! I loved playing with toy cars as a kid, but one little red truck was my favorite, and very much a symbol of my dad, who drove an 18-wheeler when I was a kid. It was also made the year I was born, extra special! I had been picking up similar trucks at antique stores the past few years. I loved how they were styled and hoped to use them as inspiration for another picture book idea I've been picking away at.

So of course I was excited to add toy cars to Peanut and Moe's play landscape. But when I started working on them, I realized it would be way more fun if I could make OTHER kids special toy cars and trucks part of the book, too. I reached out on instagram and several friends sent pictures. My son was also busy making his first Pinewood Derby car so that was an great source of ideas, too.

To celebrate the last 7 days leading up to TOO MUCH! NOT ENOUGH! being released, I will be sharing those cars and stories each day on instagram and twitter.

And while you are waiting for TOO MUCH! to come out, you can pre-order it from Water Street Bookstore (or anywhere books are sold) and the activity kit is ready now for your crafty kids!

Drawing Peanut & Moe

Please enjoy this time-lapse process video of me, drawing Peanut & Moe. I created all the final art for this book on a Wacom Cintiq monitor using photoshop. The drawing part is sped up, but I believe it took me about 4 hours to paint from a fairly tight sketch to finish. Look for TOO MUCH! NOT ENOUGH! in stores in just two weeks!!!

As a side note - many (many many) years ago, I worked as a compositor at several different animation studios. I worked with 2D, 3D, and stop motion animation - taking all the elements and blending them into final frames for TV, motion ride films, and video games. I loved my work. I was pretty good at it, too. But I knew I wasn't in the right field. I wanted to make MY ideas and stories come to life - and being a compositor is just about following direction. I've been too chicken to jump into making videos (or...book trailers!) because I thought I wouldn't remember how to do any of this. And isn't it a terrible feeling to no longer be good at something? But I surprised myself by picking it up quickly and having fun. Something old became new again, and it's lovely!

Design and Style: the Evolution of Peanut & Moe

These are just some of my original character design sketches for Peanut & Moe. I landed on Moe's design fairly quickly, but Peanut took a bit more tinkering. Once I had them fairly sorted, I made final art. For several years, all my Peanut & Moe art was a mix of gouache paint, colored pencil, a bit of multimedia (pink fur paper!) all cut and assembled to create a dimensional piece.

I'm still proud of the dry-brushing on that pancake stack! 

This phase involved photographing the finished art. It was a technical challenge to get the shadows just right - soft, but pronounced.

At some point I relinquished my layered/photographed technique. The above is a combination of gouache and pencil, combined digitally. 

And here they are, in the final spread from the book. 100% digital. I switched over to working on a Wacom Cintiq a few years ago and I am still over-the-moon-in-love with working this way. I hope it's as apparent to you also, how each iteration made the final idea and characters stronger. IMHO, every little edit to an eyebrow, finger shape, or color palette made an improvement. The power of persistence!

Once upon a Peanut & Moe...

I like a catchy jingle. I like to either make them up or co-opt them from pop-culture and make them my own. I guess you could say it's my 'thing', though not many people know this about me.

Many years ago I took a depressing indie tune with the lyrics 'too much, not too much' and turned it into the more upbeat and amusing, 'Too much mayo, not enough mayo'. (I will gladly sing it for you if you see me in real life and ask nicely)  Naturally, I sang it to make turkey sandwiches.

On a quiet drive home from an illustrator meeting, I somehow realized 'too much! not enough!" was a fantastic refrain for a picture book. This may have been my first original idea for a book of my own. And if it wasn't, it was certainly the first one that seemed good enough to remember.

It seems like a bit of a miracle, but this little note from nine years ago fits the book coming out in August. Originally I named the monsters Little & Big. Names would go through major revisions, but the characters never wavered.

I struck gold (sort of!) with premise #2. The first part is essentially what happens, and they do get to camp under the stars but you have to wait until book #2 comes out next year.

So, you might be thinking, "What the heck took nine years if you figured all this out from the start?". I'm showing you snippets from a notebook that I started on August 20th, 2009. My son was 8 months old and I was on the verge of a breakdown because I just needed time to myself to make art. That Sunday morning I left with a mission, putting my husband on baby duty, while I grabbed a new notebook and headed for the nearest coffee shop. I got there and it wasn't open yet. Wasn't going to be open anytime soon, in fact. I may have cried. But then I got to work. I sat in my car and wrote page after page. I doodled ideas for what these monster friends looked like. I thought of all the ways they could irritate each other, and how the little guy would make things better. And then I went home. Back to my overwhelmed new stay-at-home-mom life. But the glimmer of this book was a life line. 

I worked on this story all those years. Bird by bird, as Anne Lamott would say. I made art. I made dummies. I shared them with critique partners and started from scratch again. I got an agent and we submitted my dummy. It made it to sales and acquisitions and to revision with two lovely publishers at the same time. And because publishing is often perplexing and unpredictable, it ended up back on my desk again. There was a small army of wonderful friends who listened when I grouched about how long it was all taking. I got busy with other projects and sold my first book, SMALL. Around the same time, I illustrated a book with a fantastic editor at Tundra books. When it was time to think about my monsters again, my agent and I wondered. Perhaps Samantha Swenson would be a good match? The first news was good! But then time went by (again, publishing) and I worried. But the real news was spectacular. Not only did Tundra want to publish TOO MUCH, they offered me a two book deal. And as fate would have it, that second book is another Peanut & Moe story. I had known these characters for so long, that they almost wrote their own second story. Oh, pish. I wrote it. With the wonderful and smart guidance of my editor, Sam. And this one didn't take nine years from start to finish. It took under a year.

I will share a lot about Peanut & Moe in the weeks leading up to their book debut, but I wanted to start here. Whether you are a reader, a teacher, or a pre-published author, I hope you walk away learning a bit about what inspires me as a writer (jingles!) and what helped me publish this book (tenacity! passion! good friends! never quitting! a great agent, editor, and publisher!)

TWO Months until TOO MUCH!

1. Countdown to TOO MUCH! And just like that, a book I had an idea for about a decade ago will be in stores in two months! TOO MUCH! NOT ENOUGH! has been getting some excellent press. You can read reviews on Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, University of Manitoba (I really loved their review), and Story Monsters Ink. I was also recently interviewed on Boston Voyager where I talk about my winding journey to become an author/illustrator. I'll be blogging quite a bit more in the next two months - sharing sketches and videos about the making of TOO MUCH! Stay tuned!

2. In today's mail I've been squirreling away swag for just this moment. I'm finally sending out these boxes to independent bookstores across the US. If you are a bookstore owner, send me an email and I'll make one up just for you! Some of you will get a Moe box, some will get a Peanut box, and just one of you will get a Moe AND Peanut box! But who!

3. My To-Be-Read Mountain I've been incredibly busy at this time of year for the past few years. Which inevitably leads to a huge pile of books I desperately WANT to read but have no time for. I dream of a book vacation and until then will humbly share most of these books with the kids who are burning through books at a fierce rate. Also, there are a dozen books I want to add to this pile but I am barely restraining myself (Mary's Monster by Lita Judge will land there soon, I know it.)

4. Father's Day Shopping If you follow me on social media, you'll notice I've shared IT'S GREAT BEING A DAD quite a bit in advance of Father's Day. I had so much fun creating the illustrations for this book, and it's a little uncomfortable for me to hawk books aggressively but I really think more families need this book! You still have time to order from uh, that place with prime shipping and have something for Dad to cuddle up with on Sunday morning while you finish making breakfast (or getting dressed to go out!) ***But if you live near Exeter, Water Street Bookstore has a few copies left AND a million other awesome books - I dare you to leave with just one. I know I can't do it.

5. But I'm listening! Don't feel too sad for my lack of reading time. I am plowing through a lot through my ears while I work. Recent audiobooks I've enjoyed: Wild, The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl, and have just started Genuine Fraud. For podcasts I've burned through a ton of Hollywood Crime Scene (my new fav!) peppered with weekly listens to Westworld with Jay, Jack & Mike, Wait, Wait, and How I Built This.

April Five

1. SMALL is a Bank Street Books Best Children's Book of 2018 selection. Wow! I am so honored to have my debut make this esteemed list. I hope that it brings a bigger audience to SMALL. I just enjoyed a lovely book event at Wellesley Books this weekend, and was reminded once again how this book can empower all types of kids. A big thank you to my agent, Teresa Kietlinski and my editor, Jenna Pocius for believing in the power of SMALL and helping it become a real book in the world.

2. TOO MUCH! NOT ENOUGH! won't be out until mid-August, but a review is out today from Publisher's Weekly. It actually has a lovely reviews from Story Monsters Ink (p55), University of Manitoba, and Picture Book Sleuth as well. I have lots of surprises up my sleeve to celebrate Peanut and Moe's launch into the world, just you wait!

3. GIVEAWAY! To celebrate the one year anniversary of IT'S GREAT BEING A DAD in the world, I am hosting a giveaway on Amazon through Friday at midnight. It's super easy to enter - I hope you'll go check it out, here. P.S Happy Unicorn Day! (Thank you for the cute graphic, Tundra!)

4. On my desk I am working on another book for Tundra books (dream life, I swear!). When the time is right I will reveal the title, but for now I will just tease it by saying it's so much fun to be drawing these two friends again... I'm also doing a fun Halloween-y assignment for Highlights and waiting on a few last bits from the middle-grade project to wrap up. Happy to be busy!

5. Still spinning! One of my 2018 resolutions was to try a spin class (I know, I'm like a decade off trend). I started in February and it's totally my jam. I think it's the combo of a childhood love of bikes, a great instruction who pushes us every class, and blaring music. I'm often sitting at my desk for longer work stretches because I'm afraid to get up for the leg pains!

March Friday Five

1. Spring Author Festival - Tomorrow! Just when I thought my week couldn't get any more action packed, I have this to look forward to tomorrow. I can't wait to meet new author friends and share SMALL with lots of young readers. Come join the fun at Barnes & Noble in Framingham, MA from 12-4pm tomorrow, March 17th.

2. Back to School Today I got to visit a local school, Kensington Elementary. The teachers and students were so gracious and fun - we made a few wild mixed-up animal drawings and I also got to see some amazing drawings they had done earlier from my How-To drawing sheets. So much talent! I love seeing how many ways kids can draw the same thing. Special thanks to the school, staff, librarian Cheri Eastwood, Stef at Water Street Bookstore and the school PTA. It's wonderful to see schools support bringing authors and illustrators in for visits. I would have loved an experience like that as a young child!

3. TOO MUCH? Peanut and Moe's debut, TOO MUCH! NOT ENOUGH! won't be out until August 14th, but they would love for you to pre-order their book. Visit my book page for links to pre-orders from your favorite booksellers. While you are waiting, you can download the activity kit now, here! The page above is my favorite - you know I love making fortune tellers (cootie catchers!)

4. Wrinkle in Time (plus origami link!) One of my favorite childhood books made a gorgeous, glittery splash onto the silverscreen last weekend. My children loved it. I loved it. I want everyone to go see it. And after you do, check out this video on how to make the folded object we see Meg with at the start of the movie. It's a LOT harder than folding my cootie catchers, but I'm up for the challenge. Thanks to Diandra Mae for finding the link!

5. A spark! Let's just say that my plate is more than full right now. I'm finishing up illustrations for a middle grade book, revising the manuscript for my next picture book for Tundra, plus a major life change in the works, but... when inspiration strikes you HAVE to catch it. A spark found me this week and I made time to keep it burning and build it into a story idea that I can revisit when I do have time. Special thanks to Dr. J for listening and encouraging me!

February Friday Five

1. TOO MUCH! NOT ENOUGH! A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to have Mr. Schu interview me and host the cover reveal for my next picture book. Too Much! Not Enough! comes out August 14th, 2018 from Tundra Books. It's going to be SO hard waiting for this release. Peanut and Moe are very old friends of mine, and sharing them with readers everywhere is going to be EPIC. Much like Peanut's kazoo-leaping skills! Look for a peek at ALAMW this weekend.

Downer's Grove, Illinois Elementary: They had all read SMALL before and gave me a big cheer for reading it again. Love the crown they made to celebrate the day, too!

2. World Read Aloud Day 2018 What an amazing day I had last Thursday. I had never done a Skype visit before - what a treat to sit in your own home and talk to a classroom halfway across the country! I met with three amazing groups of students from South Windsor, Connecticut,  Downer's Grove, Illinois and the Schenck School in Atlanta, Georgia. They had such wonderful questions, were very patient and polite, and gave me some great book ideas as well. I will happily look forward to every World Read Aloud Day and hopefully set up some information about doing short and free Skype visits year-round. Special thanks to author Kate Messner who coordinates the authors and illustrators for this special day.

Love all the hands up for doing the monkey bars at the Schenke School in Atlanta, Georgia. My funny face and pointing is to share that I can't quite do the monkey bars (like my heroine in SMALL)

3. Love those Roses If you're not watching Schitt's Creek you are missing out on all the fun of Eugene Levy, David Levy (yes, father and son play father and son!), Catherine O'Hara, Annie Murphy and a whole cast of hilarious townspeople. Season Four is airing now on POP, the other seasons are on Netflix. If you ARE watching it, read this Mental Floss post for the inside scoop. 

4. Wrinkle in Time fever! I can not WAIT for the movie to come out on March 9th. But until then, I am super excited about another graphic novel of Madeleine L'engle's Time Warp series, Intergalactic P.S. 3 illustrated by Hope Larson.

5. It was a foggy night on old Cape Cod... As a kid I was truly obsessed with 'old time radio' stories. I even had a cassette player that looked like an old radio and each night I would pop in a tape of The Shadow, The Green Hornet, or a murder-mystery series at that time (the 1980's!) called Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater. I kept all my tapes and recently bought a little cassette deck and have been listening to them as I work. It's amazing how well I remember all these stories. And amazing that I liked such dark bedtime stories.