Hi there! You don’t really have to be my mom to read this. As a matter of fact, she probably won’t read it, so someone might as well. I’m new to blogging, so please excuse my blognorance (blog ignorance). I’m going to do my best, but I’ll probably make mistakes!

I’m a children’s book author and illustrator, as you might have already gathered from my About page, but since this is my first ever blog I thought I’d let you know a little bit more. I recently moved to Austin, Texas, with my amazingly talented husband, fellow author/illustrator Jeff Crosby, our beautiful and hilarious daughter Harper, and our super funny, yet often stinky, dogs: Baron, Millie and Fritz.

Here’s an illo I recently created of Harper. She’s being quite scary! I use a slice of the art in my header.

In addition to my daughter, my dogs have also inspired my illustration work. Baron and Millie were the inspiration for my first published picture book, Little Lions, Bull Baiters & Hunting Hounds: A History of Dog Breeds. When we first got them, back in February of 1999, their unique personalities intrigued me, so I read about their breed histories. As I learned more, I thought it would be really interesting to create a book for children that connected each breed’s original use to its characteristics as a pet today. Plus, Jeff and I both thought it would be fun to illustrate dogs in their original settings. We didn’t see any books like it already out there, so we went to work. The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators thought it was a good idea, too. They supported our efforts with a work in progress grant. Which was great, since we had no contract and no money! Our big break came when we presented the dummy book for Little Lions at a conference to Literary Agent Scott Treimel. He quickly found a publisher for us, Tundra Books, and the finished book (published 2008) has received great reviews. In fact, it was awarded the gold medal in juvenile nonfiction 2008 by ForeWord Magazine! How great is that?

We just finished the second book in the series, Harness Horses, Bucking Broncos & Pit Ponies: A History of Horse Breeds. It will be released in October 2011 and I hope it will be as well received as Little Lions. Harness Horses was a monumental undertaking, in many ways more so than Little Lions. For starters, we knew nothing about horses. The learning curve was much greater and I still, after finishing the book, don’t feel anywhere close to being an expert on horses. There was also the added challenge of having a toddler at home! Even so, Harper’s passion for horses made the book much more enjoyable to work on; we took a great family trip to the Kentucky Horse Park to research and many of her toy horses helped us out by modeling. Harper even helped me to paint the green background on the cover, so it is truly a family project!

I’d also like to mention the wonderful book Upon Secrecy that Jeff and I co-illustrated, written by the talented Selene Castrovilla. It has also been getting great reviews and was selected by Bank Street College of Education as one of the best books of 2010. It recently was nominated for a 2012 Beacon of Freedom award. (If it wins, I might consider changing my name to Beacon. What do you think?) Anyway, this is a great book about Revolutionary War spies! It doesn’t get much cooler than that! Like our other books, a great deal of research went into this book, both on writing and illustrating. It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun. And it will always remind Jeff and me of the 13 years that we spent in New York, living near the historical places mentioned in the book.

Well, that’s all for now. I hope you have a better idea of who I am and what I do and are intrigued to learn more. I plan to talk more in the future about what goes into creating a picture book, how an author/illustrator works and all the other ins and outs of the biz. Drop me a line if there’s something specific you’d like to know and I’ll do my best to answer. Hope to see you here again soon!