School Visit Advice from the Back Row - by Robin Rosenthal

Zetta Elliott encouraged and empowered our students to write their own stories. (Photo: Len Small)

Okay so I’ve never done a school visit—my first books come out this year—BUT before you close this tab in disgust...

...I have SEEN about 50 author and illustrator presentations at my daughter’s elementary school when I was the parent coordinator for our Meet-the-Author/Illustrator program and I’ve got some perspective to offer. Here’s some of what I’ve learned from my corner of the rug at a public elementary school in Brooklyn.

WHAT TO TALK ABOUT

Our favorite speakers were entertaining, inspiring, and offered educational nuggets of wisdom. Here are some themes we loved hearing about that you can use in your presentation:

Demystify the process. It’s a big leap from writing a first draft or drawing a picture to having a printed book in one’s hands. Kids want to know HOW a book is made and they are interested in all aspects of the process. If you wrote the book, how did you come up with the idea for your story? Who or what inspired you and why did you write it? Do you keep a journal or sketchbook to capture your ideas? What materials and tools do you use to create your artwork? Where do you create your art? Save your in-progress work, or take photos and screenshots of it along the way. Talk about your research. Show your inspiration, thumbnails, character sketches, piles of dummies, and revisions.

Mike Curato showed students thumbnails from What If..., his picture book with Samantha Berger. 

Show that writing and illustrating a book takes time, patience, and practice. Revising is a new concept for early elementary school students. How many revisions did you need to do? Were there points along the way that were frustrating or difficult? How long did it take you to complete the artwork? How long did it take you to finish the most complicated piece in your book? Author Shana Corey showed us a draft of one of her books on screen, then in the next slide she showed it with all of her editor's comments, and it was A LOT of comments. There were audible gasps from the second graders.

Tell your own story. Some kids will be meeting an author or illustrator for the first time. The idea that this could be a job THEY could do is a new one.  How did you become a picture book creator? Do you have any writing or drawing anecdotes to share from your childhood? Some of our speakers shared that they loved reading as children. Others shared stories about how they hated school, or were reluctant readers when they were kids. Author-illustrator Christopher Silas Neal told our students he didn’t go to art school. He just loved art and practiced and practiced on his own and got better.

Encourage students to create (and offer suggestions for how they can start.) Show them that anyone can be an author or illustrator. One of our favorite speakers Zetta Elliott talked to our students about the lack of PoC characters in children’s books—with the help of this great illustration—and encouraged them to tell their own stories. Share your tips for getting started and getting better—like keeping a journal or sketchbook, or reading a lot.

Try interactive storytelling or drawing exercises. We’ve seen writers create stories with our students using various writing prompts and brainstorming exercises. The kids also love when illustrators do drawing demos. You can show how you draw one of your characters, or how you draw different emotions. If you plan to do this ask the school to have markers, paper, and an easel ready for you. We’ve also had illustrators request that we give each student a clipboard, pencil, and paper too so they could do a drawing exercise along with the speakers.

Andrea Tsurumi worked on an interactive story with students.

HOW TO TALK ABOUT IT

Find out what grade(s) you will be speaking to and tailor your presentation accordingly. What you present to a Kindergarten or first grade class should be different than what you’d present to fourth and fifth graders. Simplify explanations of the process for younger kids. When a speaker’s presentation skews too young or too old—and I’ve mostly seen it skew too old—it tends to fall flat. 

A Kindergartener once asked author-illustrator Ruth Chan, “How do you draw?” I've seen other illustrators stumped by this question, but Ruth, a former teacher, gave such a great, simple, age-appropriate answer to this five-year-old. I’m paraphrasing here, but it was something like, “I take a pencil and I use that to draw the shapes, then I use a paint called watercolor and I fill it in with color.” The child nodded in response and his expression was like, “Aha, yes, I get it now.”

Make it fun. Your talk should be engaging and entertaining. Chances are you will be trying to hold the interest of a six-year-old who has been at school for three hours already and hasn't eaten lunch yet. Read alouds, moments of participation and brainstorming, funny anecdotes, jokes and pictures work well. Show us your dog. Bring your energy and enthusiasm. You'll get a sense of whether you need to dial this up when you practice your presentation and ask for some honest feedback (see below.) 

PRACTICE A LOT

Winging it almost always sucks for everyone involved. We can tell. So if you are new to presenting...

Practice your presentation out loud several times. Try it in front of other people. Try it with a group of kids if possible. Feel super-comfortable with it. Ask for feedback on what is working and what isn’t and tweak it. (Highlights offers a course called “Crafting Successful Author & Illustrator Visits” and it looks great.)

Speak loudly, clearly, and slowly. 

Time it. Find out how long you have and time yourself. Cut things out if it goes too long. Leave room for five to ten minutes of questions at the end. 

ANSWERING QUESTIONS

Take questions at the END of your presentation. We always asked our students to save their questions until the end. But lots of kids have trouble waiting and will wave their hands frantically at you while you are presenting. I've seen some speakers take questions during their presentations, but I’d say that's an advanced move that can sometimes derail things. A gentle, enthusiastic, “Ask me/tell me at the end!” acknowledges that eager kid and usually does the trick. (I loved when I saw author-illustrator—and former teacher—Abby Hanlon do this on a visit.)

“My dad lives in Staten Island!” (Comments versus questions). You will probably get lots of statements rather than questions, especially with the younger kids. It’s just a fact. They want to share and connect with you. (Some speakers gently reminded our students that questions begin with who, what, when, where, and why.)

Sometimes a child will ask a question that’s been asked already or that you’ve addressed already in your presentation. Be kind and patient. For some of these kids it takes serious bravery to ask a question and they may have been rehearsing it in their heads over and over rather than fully listening. Sometimes they’ve known about your visit for some time and have been working up the courage to connect with you. I love this thread by Kate Messner that addresses this.

Shadra Strickland compared her sketch and final illustration for a piece in Please, Louise. 

Shadra Strickland showed students some character studies for Please, Louise. 

YES, YOU’VE MADE AN IMPACT (EVEN ON A “BAD” VISIT)

Sometimes the venue is noisy, the kids are jumpy, or the teachers have not prepared the students for your visit. All of these things happened at our school at some point, even with our best intentions. You might bomb. Or be just okay. You are human. Sometimes things fall flat. BUT...

Please know that you ARE reaching the kids, or some kids, or one kid, even if it doesn’t feel like that sometimes. One of our favorite speakers Jason Chin was inspired to become an illustrator when illustrator Trina Schart Hyman visited his elementary school. You may be speaking to the next Jason Chin and wouldn't that be cool? Two more stories:

I got to see my daughter see these presentations from first through fifth grade. She was silent during every presentation. No questions, no comments. Sometimes it looked like she wasn’t listening. But she would almost always come home and talk to me about them. About a year (A YEAR!) after Shana Corey’s visit to her second grade class she said to me, “I still think about how many drafts Shana Corey had to write for that book, like, a lot.” How cool is that?

A second grade boy at a recent visit started his question to another favorite speaker Nina Crews this way: “Hi Nina Crews, I have been waiting for you to come. I have two questions…” I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU TO COME. 

SOME PRACTICAL STUFF…. 

Have information about school visits on your website. By doing this, you let schools know that you are serious about doing visits and that you have presentations ready for different age groups. I rarely contacted someone who didn't have school visit info on their site.

Here are some examples:

Ruth Chan: https://www.ohtruth.com/appearances

Victoria Jamieson: http://www.victoriajamieson.com/author-visits/

Nina Crews: http://ninacrews.com/author-visits/#Schools

Christopher Silas Neal: https://www.csneal.com/school-visits

Shana Corey: https://www.shanacorey.com/school-visits/

Set your rate(s). Talk to other authors and illustrators about what they charge. SCBWI conducted a very helpful survey on school visit fees in 2018.

Most people have different rates for in-town and out-of-town visits, and different rates for full-day or half-day visits. At our school, we paid our speakers $500 for two back-to-back 45 minute presentations. For some folks this is too low, which leads me to the next point…

You can totally say no to a visit. Have some ground rules about what visits you will and won’t do. Is the money too low? Is the school too far? Are they unable to reimburse your travel? Are you in the middle of a deadline? Does it just not feel like a good fit? I suggest having a generic-ish email ready that you can send back to politely decline and don’t sweat it. I sent a lot of emails to potential speakers and got a lot of no’s. I didn’t take it personally.

And you shouldn’t take it personally if schools are offering little or no money. It’s not a reflection on you or the value of your time, it’s often the school budget. (If the school is trying to make you feel bad or guilty for charging what you do then buh-bye.)

If you are comfortable, put your fees on your site. Most of the speakers we worked with don’t publish their fees, but if you are comfortable, go for it. It will save you a lot of time answering emails from schools whose budgets don’t match your fees. (Though she hasn't spoken at my daughter's school, Aram Kim is a seasoned presenter and she breaks her fees down very clearly on her school visits page.) Some authors are more flexible on their rates, depending on what else they have going on, if they happen to be in town, or how far away the school is, so are willing to negotiate, and therefore don’t state their fees upfront.

Sort out the technical stuff BEFORE the visit. Can the school handle the format of your presentation (PowerPoint, PDF, Google Slides, etc.)? Should you bring your own laptop computer or is a thumb drive okay? Do you need the school to provide an easel, markers, and paper? We found it helpful when speakers emailed their presentations to our school beforehand so we could have it all loaded and ready when they arrived. 

After the visit, check with the school before posting photos of kids. Chances are the school will NOT have consent/photo releases for all the kids in your pictures. To be safe, block out kids’ faces before posting. 

You don’t have to do visits at all. Many successful authors and illustrators don’t do visits, or are taking a break for a year or two. School visits take a lot of time, energy and prep, and it’s not for everyone. If they stress you out, don’t do them. 

Robin Rosenthal is an illustrator and art director. She has illustrated Two Dogs on A Trike (Abrams Appleseed, May 2020) and the Big Ideas for Little Philosophers series of board books (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, July 2020). She will be doing her first school visit in May 2020. You can see more of her work at robinrosenthal.com and follow her on Instagram @robinrosenthal.

Artist in the Archives: How (and Why) You Should Be Learning With University Children’s Literature Research Collections

Dummy for In My Garden created by Roger Duvoisin (written by Charlotte Zolotow)

With a collection of over 100,000 children's books and original manuscripts, artwork, galleys, color proofs, and other preliminary materials from 1,700 authors and illustrators, the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis is, according to its website, “one of the world's great children's literature archives.” I spent three weeks there this past summer as the Ezra Jack Keats/Kerlan Memorial Collection Fellow digging through boxes of sketchbooks and drawings from some of my favorite kidlit creators; James Marshall, Arnold Lobel, Alice and Martin Provensen, Aliki, Edward Ardizzone, Betsy Lewin, Roger Duvoisin, and many more.

The stacks are where items are stored. There were rows and rows and rooms and rooms of these aisles. It was like IKEA, but all preliminary materials and books. It was incredible.

I didn’t know how profound of an impact this funded fellowship at the Kerlan would have on me. I encourage anyone reading this post to apply for the Ezra Jack Keats/Kerlan Memorial Fellowship (due annually on January 31st). It gave me the opportunity to set aside three weeks to dedicate to looking at archives, and it being funded allowed me to go to Minneapolis without financial burden.

Regardless if you apply for this fellowship and receive it or not, the fantastic thing about the Kerlan is that anyone can make an appointment to see items in the collection. You do not need to be a researcher or be affiliated with an institution to look at Arnold Lobel’s dummies; you can visit and see materials as someone who is simply interested. In this way it’s similar to a public library’s children’s literature collection, which I wrote about on kidlitartists in 2017.

The writer of this blog post and some Marshall watercolors

If you write and draw picture books it’s critical to spend a lot of time reading books. I would also argue that another critical piece of your never-ending education should be time spent in children’s literature archives and research collections. Archives give you a glimpse into an author-illustrator’s process and work. When you compare their preliminary materials to their final book you have a much deeper understanding of what went into making and developing it.

Before I went to the Kerlan I didn’t realize how alive archives can be. The Kerlan is constantly acquiring new items and curating exhibits that offer different interpretations of the collection. One upcoming must-see exhibit is called The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter which offers a brilliant survey and exploration of the way that children’s literature has contributed to and reflected cultural norms, politics, and society.

Many pieces in the Kerlan Collection resonated with me and I wanted to share some materials that I uncovered with the support of the collection’s Curator, Lisa Von Drasek, and the Assistant Curator Caitlin Marineau. Curators, like librarians, are basically walking resources themselves and I was lucky to be able to access their wisdom and their support in connecting the dots between pieces in the collection.

Onto the images...

One of the first items I looked at was Arnold Lobel's handwritten manuscript for Frog and Toad Are Friends. Archives can be a surprisingly emotional experience; you're closer than you've ever been to the creator. It's highly intimate. This passage describes what could be interpreted as deep love and companionship: "What you see is the clear, warm light of April and it means that we can begin a whole new year together, Toad... We will skip through the mountains and run through the woods and swim in the river. In the evenings we will sit right here on this front porch and count the stars." Arnold Lobel was closeted for most of his life, and died of HIV/AIDS in 1987. I think ‘Frog and Toad’ really was the beginning of him coming out,” says his daughter in a 2016 New Yorker interview.

Dummy for The Great Blueness, 1968

Lobel also made incredibly beautiful dummies. These were all handmade and bound (sewn together and reinforced with bookcloth). Lobel worked in color separations, so perhaps he had to make these very finished dummies as a way of communicating what final art would look like.

Spread from the dummy for The Great Blueness

Same spread from the published book The Great Blueness

I was quickly sucked into the Kerlan's collection of James Marshall's sketchbooks. They have about 44 of them (and this isn't even all of his sketchbooks! Many are in other collections!). Marshall is an archivist's dream; he recorded nearly everything in bound notebooks and then donated them to collections.

One box of James Marshall's sketchbooks. There were many boxes.

When looking at his sketchbooks you can see how much of a merciless self-editor Marshall was. He appeared to experience a lot of frustration; I noticed several drawings with scribbled out faces and his own commentary that drawings were not up to snuff.

"This is shit."

"Doesn't look like a kid."

Another thing I observed in Marshall's sketchbooks was his interactions with other creators in the children's literature community including Maurice Sendak, "Ted" Gorey, Hillary Knight, and more. In one section he writes about how he heard that one of Sendak's preliminary drawings for Outside, Over There sold for $12,000. In another passage he writes about hanging out with Arnold Lobel.

"B drives us to New York as usual. Terrifying trip as usual. Arnold Lobel comes over. We get blind drunk. Dinner downstairs at Meson Toledo."

"Arnold Lobel as a hard hat" sketchbook drawing by Marshall

Marshall self-portrait?

One interesting thing about seeing items from the Kerlan was seeing the different scales that artists worked at, and how they used a page. Alice and Martin Provensen worked at vastly different scales, and their use of ink and their ability to crowd so much storytelling into a small space was amazing.

Alice and Martin Provensen. Author of this blog post's hand floating over the artwork to show scale

"The Year of Mother Goose" by Alice and Martin Provensen. Ink on vellum?

I'm fascinated by the Provensen's story of collaboration in picture books, inspired by their jobs working as animators. According to an interview Alice did with Leonard Marcus they worked in the same space with their drawing tables back-to-back. "If you weren't satisfied with a drawing and didn't know what to do next the other person could help you along. Of course, it had to be the right person, one who understood what you were trying for." She continued, "We were a true collaboration. Martin and I really were one artist."


The Kerlan has a small Maurice Sendak collection, also of very small drawings, most of them for A Hole is to Dig and I'll Be You and You Be Me.

Aliki is one of my favorite illustrators, partially because she seemed to allow herself to experiment so much with materials and style. I'm fascinated generally with how technology was explained to children over 50 years ago, and Computers at Your Service (1962) does not disappoint in terms of the utopian promise of computers' impacts on everyday life.

A typical cart loaded with preliminary materials I requested

There was so much more that I saw that's not in this post, and I encourage everyone who makes picture books to visit the Kerlan Collection, or to see if there's an open-access children's literature research collection (CLRC) near you.

If you want to see additional materials I photographed from the Kerlan I archived some pieces through an Instagram story (you’ll need to log in to see it). You may also want to read a blog post I wrote for the University of Minnesota Libraries blog What an archive reveals about the life and process of a children's book creator which is, in a way, a tribute to James Marshall and a look at his work and him through his sketchbooks.

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K-Fai Steele writes, draws, and lives in San Francisco. She has three books coming out in 2019. Noodlephant by Jacob Kramer (Enchanted Lion Books) is launching at ALA Midwinter 2019 in Seattle followed by a west coast tour. Follow her on instagram (@areyouokfai).
A Normal Pig is her author/illustrator debut (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins Childrens, June 2019).

She's also illustrating Old MacDonald Had a Baby by Emily Snape (Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan, Fall 2019).

Your greatest (free) untapped resource: a practical guide to using public libraries (and librarians)

If you write and draw picture books, you likely have a bookshelf or two full of your go-to resources. You may even have a pile of books that you haven’t read yet. What you may not know is that you have another source of books that belongs to you and to your entire community—your public library—and chances are, you’ve probably only scratched the surface of what’s available. You don’t need to be an academic or a researcher to access research books and special collections; illustrators, authors, and casual readers are welcome. And it’s all free. It can be an intimidating system to navigate, so I spoke with some librarians to get some practical information on their amazing collections and how kidlit creators can utilize it all.

The author of this article poking through a favorite from the Free Library of Philadelphia

Despite having worked in and with libraries for the past 10 years, my relationship is pretty casual; I go in, browse around, get what I need, and generally want to be left alone by the staff. I sort of treat a library like a store. My local library is the Mission branch of the San Francisco Public Library, and I swing through it on my way home to browse the new books shelf, grab any holds, and poke around the carefully-curated displays that line the tops of shelves in the children’s department. SFPL has a great collection, I can almost always find what I’m looking for within their system, and it’s particularly exciting to to see books by people who go to SCBWI conferences (not to mention folks who also write for this blog).

But by treating libraries as places to scuttle in and out of with your holds (by treating it like a store), you’re missing one of the best resources in the library: the people who work there. Librarians, particularly at the branch level, are invested in knowing their community really well, and purchasing books that reflect and enrich it (for example, the Mission Library has a large spanish-language collection).

 Beyond being embedded in their communities, librarians are trained in helping patrons to access information. One of the librarians at the Mission branch helped me to find heavily-illustrated middle grade books featuring non-white protagonists. I had done a cursory google search combined with some amazon recommendations, but talking with her was a distinctly different experience: she gave me some recommendations based on what she knew was popular, we looked through some books together and talked about comics, and I walked away that day with American Born Chinese.

Finding resources for kidlit inspiration shouldn’t end in the children’s department. I spoke with Alina Josan at the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Parkway Central library Art Department about what they have available (so much amazing stuff), and who can access it (anyone). Like the curated book displays at the Mission library, Josan has curated a number of exhibits around items in the collection that she’s excited about and wants to share. For example, the show I saw when I visited over Memorial Day weekend was called The Art of Comics. It was amazing, with a number of books I had only heard of before and never seen.

photo from the Free Library blog piece on the Art of Comics

The label for each of these pieces includes the item’s call number. That means that once the exhibit comes down in two weeks, you can hold them in your hand, sketch from them, take photos, and more. You don’t need a library card to look at these materials. You don’t even need to be a Philadelphia resident, you can be visiting from Tucson, you just need to show an ID.

There are also special collections dedicated to children’s literature, ephemera and printed books, one of which is also at the Free Library of Philadelphia, and you, as a writer or illustrator, or a casual reader, can access any of these things. The Children’s Literature Research Collection (CLRC) is one of the largest research collections dedicated to children’s literature in a public library at 80,000-90,000 volumes, with both rare or out-of-print materials as well as artist materials.

from the dummy for RUFUS by Tomi Ungerer

from the dummy for CRICTOR by Tomi Ungerer

Christopher Brown is the Special Collections Curator at CLRC, and he mentioned that everyone is welcome to use the collection. When you meet with Brown, you are getting the individualized attention from a specialist; an expert who is enthusiastic to share the collection with you, a collection that includes dummies from Tomi Ungerer, William Steig, and Lloyd Alexander; art from Katherine Milhous, N.C. Wyeth, and Virginia Lee Burton (like every single scrap from LIFE STORY); the entire collection of children’s book week posters, and a growing collection of items from folks making picture books now, including Angela Dominguez, Isabel Roxas, Greg Pizzoli, Zach Ohora, Lauren Castillo, and more.

from MARIA HAD A LITTLE LLAMA, Angela Dominguez (2015)

Know that you have to set up an appointment (call or email), and they’ll do their best to accommodate and welcome you. You can't just show up like you can in the Art department, particularly now because their materials are held in offsite storage while the building is going through renovations. You don’t need a library card (again just an ID). Brown said that mostly people use the collection to find inspiration, or to see how something was made, and when they have questions about an individual piece (e.g., “was this made with gouache?”) they typically have a direct line of contact to the creator of the estate directly to get answers.

drawings from MR. POPPER'S PENGUINS by Robert Lawson

Another reason to call or email and ask for materials, rather than search the Free Library’s catalog online, is that only around 50% of the CLRC is digitally catalogued. The catalog was originally archived through a physical card catalog, and with so many materials and a small department, the staff is in a very long game of catch-up. So if you want to get a sense for what they have, you have to ask.

Asking for help can be intimidating at a place like the FLP, particularly if you’re coming from the stance of “I’m just a humble doodler, I’m not a researcher with the backing of an academic institution.” You’re wrong, anyone can access this stuff. Personally, I have a hard time approaching anyone at a desk (I can barely talk to people on the phone), and with the FLP you literally enter a marble atrium, ascend a marble staircase, and enter a huge room with some people sitting behind a large officious desk. All of these librarians I talked to reassured me that all writers and illustrators need to just ask. The librarian is there because they know their stuff, and they want to help you find resources. A good place to start is by telling them what you like and what you’re looking to see (I mentioned that I was really into Kuniyoshi and stories of yokai, and Josan pointed me to their early edition collection of Hokusai’s manga):

Many larger urban libraries contain some other not-often seen gems, like the circulating picture collections at the FLP and NYPL. Imagine google image search, before the era of the internet. There are dozens of file cabinets full of tear-sheets, brochures, and other ephemera, and it’s categorized by subject. You can actually check these out too if you have a card:

from the circulating picture collection, FLP

would never have found these otherwise

Your library card can also get you free passes to museums. A couple of weeks ago I used my card to get a pass to see the Roz Chast show at the Contemporary Jewish Museum (which was so good), and before that I used it to get into the Pacific Pinball Museum (highly recommended also). I also use my card to get e-books, audiobooks, and movies. 

 If you know there’s a book you really want to look at, but your library doesn’t have it in their collection, talk to your librarian about a service called interlibrary loan to request the book be sent to your library from another institution. For this you need a library card. Another option if your library doesn’t have a certain book is to make a request that the library purchases that book. 

 I do so much research online through google and social media because it’s convenient. These platforms are a useful vehicle for inspiration because other people whose tastes you share and like are now accessible; you can see what they’re working on, what materials they use, and what they’re inspired by. But I wonder if there’s a creative downside to using social media and the internet as your primary and singular source of visual inspiration, a sort of creative inbreeding that might be happening when you look at the same source materials that a lot of other people are also looking at. Searching for and finding materials in person, looking at items that aren’t archived on the internet, yields much richer results. It’s a different experience when you look through a stack of books for inspiration and talk to someone about what you’re finding exciting, versus doing some google image searches or taking screenshots of other people’s posts. 

OHO! A book that can be read left to right and upside down by the Whistler brothers (1946)

 Beyond the personal creative gain in using libraries, there is a larger political reason why you should use them: turnstile clicks count. The more these special collections and resources are used, the more libraries can advocate for their existence. In the latest FY 2018 budget proposal, President Trump has called for the elimination of the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the main source of federal support for libraries and museums in the United States. While most books aren’t purchased with federal funding, IMLS funds things like promoting access to resources, improving library services, encouraging resource sharing between libraries, and promoting librarianship amongst people of color in the communities they grew up in. This elimination reflects a stance that books, libraries, and the specialization that they offer are not important and not worth preserving. You can prove them wrong by getting a library card, using your library, and getting your friends to use it too. 

 I can’t encourage people enough to use libraries for inspiration, particularly special collections. I personally am so accustomed to paying for resources and materials in person -- going to a museum, seeing a show, that I often forget that many things are available to us for free. Buying books, period, is expensive, nevermind rare or out-of-print books, and when you purchase books or use something like google for inspiration, you’re not getting the help of someone who knows how to find materials, or has come across something amazing in their collection that they’re dying to share with someone.

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K-Fai Steele writes and draws, and she lives in San Francisco. She has worked for the Free Library of Philadelphia, and now works with a bunch of libraries (and museums) through the National Writing Project. You can see more of her drawings on Instagram.