Fabulous Children's Picture Book Event in San Francisco

Today I'm mixing it up a little and sharing about a wonderful children's picture book exhibition that I attended in San Francisco last night. I knew it would be wonderful because it was organized by the super talented Lisa Brown and featured best selling authors Lemony Snickett and Jon Klassen who is also an illustrator and Caldecott honor winner and some other wonderful folks including newcomer Dasha Tolstikova. So I drove down from Sacramento. But first I visited Kristin Abbott who teaches illustration at Academy of Art University and we made an in-depth video on world building or creating environments for picture books that was incredibly helpful and very inspiring for the upcoming interative e-course the Craft and Business of Illustrating Picture Books.

Next on my Bay Area agenda was the exhibition "I see what you say" at the Cartoon Art Museum, that I mentioned earlier. I watched Lemony be a shameless ham with Jon and it was hilarious. I got my copy of Jon's This is Not My Hat autographed and because I was lucky enough to get there early, got to hang out with him. He was absolutely lovely and when I asked him if I could interview him for the course, was thrilled when he said that it sounded like fun and agreed. I can't wait!

I also got to see brilliant old and new picture book friends including Julie Downing, Jim Averbeck, Maria Van Lieshout, Gianna Marino, Marcus Ewart, Katherine Tillotson, Vivian Walsh, Lynn Hazen, Angela Dominguez, Rachel Rodriguez, Karen Ehrhardt, Lissa Rovetch, Dashka Slater, Sharon Levin, Dasha Tolstikova, and lots of others. Lisa Brown said yes to being interviewed for the course as did many of the above. Famed Chronicle editor Melissa Manlove said yes to letting me film Chronicle's children's department to give students the inside scoop on how a publishing house works and Chronicle publicist Lara Star will also talk about the changing face of marketing kids books and socail media. I am getting way too excited!! If you are interested in learning more about this innovative course, click here. I'll be adding the awesome list of guest contributors soon.

On a final  note, one of the things that I especially liked about the exhibition was the combination of seasoned and new illustrators and how Lisa and Lemony are mentoring younger lesser-experienced children's book creatives. Like much of the art, it was beautiful to see.