Monday, August 9, 2021

Together!

The Unicorn and Yeti team has been working hard to put the finishing touches on book six, Together--virtually of course, and it has been so much fun. I love revising and editing! I love poring over Hazel's illustrations!! And I love this cover!!!

How can you not love those lips?!  And those fabulous hats!

The book's title was chosen quite a long time ago, but now it feels even more meaningful with how much we have had to stay apart in the past year or so. In the stories, Unicorn and Yeti enjoy each other's company (mostly.) They spend time watching things zip, zigzag, and zoom in the sky. Unicorn wants to do all the things Yeti does--and becomes a copycorn! And, as you can tell from Hazel Quintanilla's fabulous cover art, Unicorn and Yeti have a tea party. Of course there are rainbows and sparkles and magic! I hope that readers will love it as much as I do, and I hope that it will inspire some tea parties as well! I do love a good tea party.

Unicorn and Yeti, Together releases on March 1st, 2022 and is available from your favorite bookseller!

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Book Joy Live!


Book Joy Live happens every week and I love watching when I can. John Schu has so much enthusiasm for books and I always learn about some great new children's books when I watch. (And my heart wants them all!) 

So, it is amazing to say that today, Hazel and I were on Book Joy Live with John Schu! It was a lot of fun talking all things Unicorn and Yeti with Hazel and John, plus we did a reader's theater-- we read aloud the first story from Fair and Square (around 18:00). And our Editor, Katie Carella even popped in! It was my first live author appearance and I couldn't have asked for it be more fun.

Thank you to everyone who watched and was so supportive! I loved reading through the comments on the Facebook feed. I've embedded the recording incase you missed it and want to watch. We can all use more book joy in our lives! You can also find the recording on the Scholastic Book Fairs Facebook page and on John Schu's website


 

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Fair and Square!

 
Hey, hey, it's an exciting day! 
Unicorn and Yeti book 5, Fair and Square, is out into the world!


As you can see from the book cover, in Fair and Square Unicorn and Yeti take on painting! They also build a forest out of shapes, and Yeti makes a pie! Hazel Quintanilla's illustrations are so amazing, as usual, and bring such joy and wonder to the stories. I am so excited for kids to get to read it!

Alt text
Looking at the completed book I can see a lot of my family in these stories. When my kids were small we had so many fun painting days. We'd build with blocks and sticks and whatever we could find to make towers and caves and robots--whatever struck our fancy. Our house was also under construction so we always had lots of building going on. My husband
built our house in his time off from working construction, so mornings before work, evenings after, and weekends.
I did a lot of holding up of big pieces of stuff, handing of tools, and nailing of nails--construction support. But let me tell you that a lot of things that you hold up during construction are not easy! And when we built our barn I had to get really high up and I did not have a trusty unicorn to fly me! (I definitely did my best to stay close to a holding place like I am in the picture.) It seems to me that sort of dedication deserves some sort of a medal. But we settled for pie. I made us lots of pies, and that seems to be a better prize anyway. Is the appearance pie in this book a coincidence? I certainly didn't think about it when I was writing the book but now I wonder!

 
Here's the family building a barn. The kids were older and loved helping!

Building, painting, pie making-- it's all fun and magical to me! I'm thrilled that Unicorn and Yeti is a 5 book series now and am so happy to be able to share more Unicorn and Yeti stories with readers! Just look at all of those amazing covers with those two amazing friends!


I can't wait to get to show you all book 6, Together. It comes out in 2022!