My Story

Making art brings me joy! 🥰 I love to doodle and sketch✏️ and illustrate children’s books.📚 The most recent 🖌️ book I illustrated, Just One Owl, 🦉🌙🦇 is a sweet story written by Carolyn Crimi about a lonely owl in search of a friend. This Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection lands in bookstores this year 📆 in early November👏🏼. I just finished illustrating a fun fable 👑 about How to Be a Proper Ogre ✔🧌 written by Kelly DiPucchio. It will be in stores next fall. 🎉

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I love creating visual stories with heart ❤️ and humor 🤣 that readers can relate to. My characters are very expressive 😳, whether human 🧒🏻 or animal. 🐸

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For my art, I usually combine digital drawing, 🖋️ inking, and painting with traditional watercolor 💦 and other natural materials.

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As a kid, I was curious, creative, determined, and very chatty 💬 — just like Baby Chick from CHICK CHAT. 🐥 I was always ready for an adventure, 🏕️ whether real or imagined, and so is Baby Chick!

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That’s my first-grade school 🎓 photo at the top of this page ↑↑↑. My six-year-old self 🧒🏻 was trying to answer the school 📷 photographer’s question without moving my mouth 🥴 while having my photo taken! (My plan didn’t work too well.) Hair a bit messy, a funny expression 😏, and my arms crossed—that was me. (And probably still is! 😜)

 

Being the youngest child, 👶🏻 I entertained myself quite a bit when not playing with neighbor friends. 😋 I made up crafts 🧵 for myself, usually creating something new out of something else (like a robot 🤖 from oatmeal containers, cardboard boxes 📦, aluminum foil, and tape, LOTS and LOTS of tape).

 

I grew up in a suburb of Dallas, but spent a lot of time in East Texas 🤠 on my family’s 80 acres or at my grandparents’ farm. Poking around in creeks 🏞️ and back pastures, 🐄 I often brought home some new, non-human “friend.” 🪲🐸🦎🐟🐦‍⬛🐇🦝

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I like books 📚 about animals, especially chickens. 🐓🐓🐓. I grew up around them on weekends and during the summers in East Texas, and my parents kept a coop of “chicken girls” after they retired from the city to their small farm 🚜. I miss gathering farm eggs, 🥚 but now I buy local, farm-fresh eggs at the weekly market 🍆🥦🥕 near my ancient village apartment in southern France. 🇫🇷