March/April Horn Book Magazine cover

Last spring I did a presentation at the Texas Library Association conference, as part of a panel on non-fiction books, alongside Marc Aronson, Viki Ash and Betty Carter. My presentation focused on illustrating nonfiction picture books. I was a little nervous, knowing that Marc, Viki, and Betty were all well-established experts in children's literature, and I'm still relatively new to this. But I focused on what I knew, didn't pretend to know anything I didn't know, and it went well. So well, in fact, that soon after the conference, The Horn Book Magazine asked if I would be interested in turning my presentation into an article for their magazine! (I think Marc Aronson and Betty Carter had something to do with this...)

Long story short, The UPS truck just pulled up to my house and delivered 6 copies of the March/April issue of The Horn Book Magazine, with not only my article inside it, but my illustration on the cover!

Here it is:

I still get excited when The Horn Book reviews one of my books, so to see my illustration right there on the cover is pretty incredible. I'm also extremely honored to have my article (entitled, A Reason for the Picture: Illustrating Nonfiction Picture Books) featured in this issue, alongside articles by some of the leading voices in children's literature, including Katherine Paterson, Marc Aronson, Steve Jenkins, Tanya Lee Stone, Elizabeth Partridge, Laurie Halse Anderson, Andrea Davis Pinkney, Leonard S. Marcus, Roger Sutton, Monica Edinger... the list goes on, and it's a pretty amazing list.

I'm honored to have my article and illustrations included in this issue, and looking forward to reading it!