Keith Mallett to Illustrate Brown Is Warm
Illustrator switch! Erin Robinson was on board to illustrator my upcoming picture book Brown Is Warm, Black Is Bright. Sadly, she had to drop the project.
Happily, a new illustrator has just signed on–Keith Mallett, whose glowing colors and expressive faces will bring a lot of joy and vivacity to the book. I can’t wait to see what it will look like!
Read MoreWombats Poop in Cubes
Photo credit: Dmitri Brant
Wombats are adorable. They are fantastic diggers. And they are the only animal in the world that leaves cube-shaped poop. (Everybody else does balls, tubes, or splats.)
Even more weirdly wonderful, they take the cubes of poop and arrange them into piles to mark their territory. Cubes are better than rounded shapes for this purpose because they don’t roll away.
This was not a fact that I managed to work into my new picture book, Wombat Underground, but it was so delightfully fascinating I felt I had to share it with you.
Read MoreThe Real Heroes
Jennings inoculating his first patient, eight-year-old James Phipps (who deserves a statue, too)
We put up statues to politicians and generals, but in a just world, people like Edward Jennings would have a statue on every corner. He created a true vaccine for smallpox, and the more I research pandemics, the more I understand how amazing his achievement was. This disease had been with us since ancient times and was capable of wiping out civilizations. Now? It’s gone. (Except for a few samples in laboratories which should be destroyed yesterday, if you ask me.)
Interestingly, he based his work on folk medicine practiced in Asia, where patients were immunized with pus taken from smallpox sores (it worked, though it was risky) and from the folk knowledge of farmers near his home, who insisted that, if they’d had cowpox, they were immune to smallpox (they were). So it was not just an individual epiphany, but an achievement built on observation and experimentation by countless others whose names science and history do not remember.
Read MoreThe Art of a Wombat
A sample of Charles’s warm, sweet, tender, richly colorful art
So excited that Charles Santoso has ageed to illustrate my upcoming picture book, Wombat Underground! I know he’ll give it both warmth and humor and pathos. It’s so great than an Australian artist will illustrate this story of fear and danger and community during the Australian bushfire season of 2019-20.
Read MoreSarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Thomson focuses on newfound connection, magic, and suspense to conjure a fast-paced, heartwarming mystery. Thomson’s world is populated by resourceful protagonists, fanciful creatures, and quirky supporting characters.”
—Publishers Weekly