I'm under contract!

I'm thrilled to announce that I will be illustrating a picture book by the illustrious Jane Yolen and her son Adam Stemple!! The book is called Crow Not Crow and will be published by the Cornell Lab Publishing Group, August 2018. It's a charming story about a father and son's first bird-watching excursion and a lesson in bird identification, based on how Adam taught his wife to bird!
     I love birds. In fact, I always wanted to be a bird. As a kid, I used to run across everybody's backyards, flapping my arms like crazy trying to get off the ground (which I swore I did). I studied bird wings in an effort to build my own. At sixteen, I went hang-gliding for the first time (it was attached to a zip-line). At 21, I hang-glided for real. Yup, that's me in the photo jumping off Lookout Mountain in Tennessee.
     But my most precious connection to birds came from my grandmother. She kept a pocket identification book and filled the margins with notes on when she'd spotted certain birds. It's falling apart now, so I treat it like the treasure it is.
     All that said, it is a joy to delve into all things bird, and mostly crow as I illustrate this new book. It will even be vetted by ornithologists, so I had to prove my salt a bit with some preliminary sketches.     I'll keep you updated with my progress, so keep checking back!