APALA Honor

On Monday at the ALA Youth Media Awards, NANA, NENEK & NINA was announced as the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature Picture Book Honor title! I’m in kind of a daze, so I will quote Nina: “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh!!”

Thanks so much to the very kind librarians of the APALA picture book jury and the ALA; editor Dana Chidiac, my agent Kurestin Armada, and the team at Dial / Penguin Kids–especially Cerise Steel and Rosie Ahmed.

Happy New Year

Objects as memories! Asian stuff on Lunar New Year weekend eve.
🐇🧧🧨

PW Flying Starts

Publisher’s Weekly included me in their 2022 Flying Starts, a special feature about debut children’s authors 😮 The journalist I talked to knew Trina Schart Hyman 😮 It’s all very thrilling ❗❗😮❗❗

NINA at The Original Art!

Fab news, NANA, NENEK & NINA was selected to be in the Society of Illustrators 2022 Original Art show! Thanks so much to the Society and the show jury, and an excited high-five to team NINA–Dana Chidiac, Cerise Steel, Rosie Ahmed; all at Dial; my agent Kurestin Armada at Root Literary; and my wise critique group, Diana Toledano, Isabella Kung, and Kerri Mcdermott. Finally, a big congrats to everyone else who’ll be in the show too–if their timeline was the same as mine, it means we all held it together during the first wobbly pandemic year to make these books. Oof. I’m going to try to go to New York for the reception to either celebrate or commiserate about trembly lonely pandemic book illustrating. Please say hi if you see me lurking by the snack table. 🤓
🤸🖼️🤸
I made a stop at the Society building once ages ago and it’s wild to think I’ll get to put a painting up there with so many amazing illustrators. Also, I heard that the show was originally started by Dilys Evans, who worked with Trina Schart Hyman (a foundational illustration crush of mine) on Cricket. Eek!

NINA Books Inc Event

🧳 Join me for a storytime and booksigning on release day to celebrate!
Tuesday 8/9 at 4pm, Books Inc. Laurel Village, 3515 California St, San Francisco
🧳 More about NANA, NENEK & NINA

cover reveal

So thrilled to let you know that NANA, NENEK & NINA will be out from Dial Books for Young Readers on August 9, 2022!

👵🌳🤸‍♀️🌴👵

🧳Pre-order here or go to your very fine local independent bookseller
🧳How the cover came together

(somewhat) hourly comics day 2022

for Hourly Comics Day 2022.
2021 | 2020 | 2019

hello 2022

In 2021, I did a whole bunch of illustrations and worked with the very nice team at Dial to turn them into a real picture book–NANA, NENEK & NINA, which will be out next year! Then I curled up into a snail shell because social media seemed like a lot. In 2022, I’ll work on emerging. But slowly! 🐌
Happy new year to you (and hello again)
🎉😊🎉

almost there!

Outlining individual peas on my last painting 36 hours before my final book deadline. Sometimes I really question my style choices.🔍😆

work nest

I have added another paint palette tray to the right flank of my work nest, for a total of four. It’s starting to feel like I’m sitting in the middle of Nick Andopolis’ drum kit!
🎨🎨🤘😁🎨🎨

jab #2

Some illustration reportage from the post-vaccination waiting area at the Moscone Center for shot #2. I picked someone with interesting hair to sit behind for my 15 minutes (ginger braids!). Then I went home, inhaled a plate of food, and slept for three and a half hours. Steve isn’t eligible for shots til next week and I imagine appointments will be scarce at first, so we’re just going to carry on in our hermity way for a while yet (which is fine cuz I have a huge project to finish). Feeling relieved as more people start getting vaccinated.
✨💉💉✨
The Moscone Center has done a great job at making getting jabbed a cheerful experience! The staff was super friendly and helpful and there were lots of encouraging signs. I appreciated the enormous cavernous space and plentiful keep-your-distance instruction as someone who hasn’t been inside a public building for more than a couple minutes in a year. As I left, a security guard dancing to Pharrell Williams’ Happy waved me out the door. SF D6 Supervisor Matt Haney’s twitter is a good one to follow to find available appointments and myturn.ca.gov navigating advice.

one year at home

One year since San Francisco declared its shelter in place order. I didn’t know when I bought these slippers the last time I went to Japantown how many miles they’d rack up in my apartment!

New year, new slippers.

Keeping busy and waiting to qualify for the vaccine. My parents and my brother got their shots and it’s been such a relief. I miss everyone and hope you’re doing okay!

(somewhat) hourly comics 2021

for Hourly Comics Day 2021.
2020
2019

hindsight is 2020

great highway

Nice seeing you distantly, San Franciscans!

cheers

“…see yourself in a way that others might not see you, simply because they’ve never seen it before.” Don’t mind me, I’m just crying into my tandoori pizza. TBH, the part about being prepared brought on the waterworks too. I’m beyond ready for some competent response to control the pandemic. Cheers to the upcoming Biden administration and this strange feeling of relief.

the p factor

sheltering in place W12

panpocalypse tips

long loan from the sfpl

The new due date for SF Public Library books is September 30th, which means on drop off day I’ll have had these books for 7 months! Actually, I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Gharib was on its third renewal, so it’s lived with me since January and is pretty much my roommate. I really love this book and have read it many many times during its extended pandemic stay. I’m going to feel so weird dropping it off in the returns slot, but maybe it’ll find its way into the hands of another biracial, tricultural person who’ll love it just as much as I do!

Looking at these books all together is also a weird feeling – it’s a time capsule about stuff I was interested in during the last stretch of the before times. I’m still interested in all these things, but there’s been a chasm of sourdough, macguyvering, disinfectant, mask-sewing, grocery-washing, the Nothing gulping down vast swaths of the city, fascism and racism horror, reckoning with mortality and thoughts about legacy, hopeful picture booking, friends permanently fleeing town, hundreds of kitchen hours, wildfire freakouts, and anxious hand-wringing between then and now. Oof.